Creative Sauce: WHY EVEN BOTHER MAKING MUSIC???

[PavlovsCat]

On 5/28/2023 at 2:06 PM, Colin Nicholls said:

Mike is a nice guy but recently his videos have definitely moved into the clickbaity borderline shill category.

This is pretty typical, once the number of subscribers hits a certain value, there are folks who can quit their day job and concentrate on videos and there is a lot of opportunity.  Check out Benn's take for some background on this:

(I am not saying Mike/Creative Sauce is in this category)

 

I've contemplated doing a new publication to inform the general public on marketing practices that are less than what I'd consider ethical. Years ago I had a marketing publication that became pretty popular for marketing pros. It had accolades from acedmia and business thought  leaders, got me a major book deal, media coverage,  speaking opportunities, etc. But I eventually got burnt out and shut it down (although I built a related dot com out of it that remains profitable). But I've contemplated a consumer audience instead of marketing pros and teaching them things like how influencer marketing works,  because the truth is, it is primarily shilling and I think most influencers don't shoot straight about this fact in order to appear more credible. Most people aren't aware that when a YouTuber develops a large following at that point they're commonly looking for money up front to do product reviews. And they're almost never straightforward honest about that relationship in their videos; they always claim to be unbiased.  They always downplay the fact that they're often product pitch people,  sales people, for the products that review, commonly paid a sales commission on the product being "reviewed" (AKA affiliate marketing) and/or upfront payment from the brand plus free product and income from YouTube and additional sponsors in some cases.  Even the ones with small followings in this market commonly look to developers as a source of money -- and the ones with small followings are looking for free product and will still try to find ways to make money from the brands they promote. It's a long way from journalistic standards for reviews or Consumer Reports. 

I recently shared that there's one influencer in this space I really respect.  Cory Pelazzari. Because this guy is the closest to the real deal that I've ever seen. And I know he's been pushed around by a number of developers for it. Developers don't want influencers who tell their viewers about major flaws, bugs and shortcomings and recommending against purchasing. But that is what Cory does.  I actually tried to intervene when one developer didn't like Cory's criticisms of their libraries and started to talk about suing -- as per Cory and got to know and respect Cory from the experience.

But even the influencers I watch, including Mike, are doing things that are about making more revenue instead of what's best for viewers (like making overly long videos to optimize revenue).  In the end,  they're in it to make money. But Cory is the one influencer in this space I know of who prioritizes being honest with his viewers over optimizing his income opportunities and I greatly respect that. 

Edited June 15, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[kennywtelejazz]

Hey I feel dirty thinking dirty little thoughts when I look at her in that video because she looks super young to me .

 I don't know what year she originally filmed and performed in that video which was posted 4 years ago . And YES she is currently 24 years old .

Think about it for a moment .How many times have you met a drop dead  gorgeous Asian Woman that easily looked 20 years younger than her age ? 

I just ran out of fingers and toes trying to count all the times that one has happened  in my life

Kenny

Edited June 15, 2023 by kennywtelejazz

[craigb]

19 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

I've contemplated doing a new publication to inform the general public on marketing practices that are less than what I'd consider ethical.

But will you use a busty young women for the thumbnail? ?

 

?

[PavlovsCat]

6 minutes ago, craigb said:

But will you use a busty young women for the thumbnail? ?

 

?

A friend of mine,  the former editor of a popular marketing magazine, as well as the editor of couple of popular tech magazines before  that, had suggested that we use sock puppets in videos because our appearances are not camera friendly enough. Ouch. So yeah, there's that. 

Edited June 15, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[kennywtelejazz]

Let's Call in the Sock Puppets ! We have another musician here with a Face For Radio ! 

Kenny

Edited June 15, 2023 by kennywtelejazz

[PavlovsCat]

Okay, for my own take on why to keep making music. I played music publicly since age 4 with a family band and went on to play semi professionally for more than a decade with the most popular band I played in doing mid size concert venues (a couple thousand people), nicer night clubs and colleges and got some very positive critical reviews  in the media. I loved playing with talented musicians and I loved playing for audiences that appreciated the music we were playing (and miss that experience). But a little over 20 years ago I had an injury causing lifelong tendinitis in both wrists that can make playing for even a minute painful; I can't even turn a screwdriver without some pain. It was through playing on my son's keyboard a couple of years ago that I realized I could play really simple rock songs all the way through without too much pain,  but I can only play for a few minutes at a time. So,  I can no longer play very well. I was never a good singer and I can't play live with other musicians. I was once a really good rock drummer and loved playing with other musicians,  and it is depressing I don't play very well anymore and playing with other musicians will never be an option (although I have done one collaboration with a very talented friend, which was very exciting,  but my performances are pretty bland at best). 

So what's the point of playing when I physically am not able to be a decent musician again, when my performances will never be at a level I'm proud of? The point is that artistic expression is important,  not just for those with exceptional talent,  but also for the everyman. I used to advise an organized for people with disabilities and ended up spending time at their forum and found a group of people,  some with very severe disabilities,  that loved to play music. They didn’t  let their disabilities stop them and I thought my situation is not nearly as challenging and I would regularly encourage them in that forum, while at the same time I had given up on music in my own life. Over time, I realized I should try the advice and encouragement I was giving them for myself. 

Edited June 15, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[PavlovsCat]

3 minutes ago, kennywtelejazz said:

Let's Call in the Sock Puppets ! We have another musician here with a Face For Radio ! 

Kenny

Hey, that was his opinion. I think he's just jealous of my good looks.

Okay, not really. 

Edited June 15, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[craigb]

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

Okay, for my own take on why to keep making music. I played music publicly since age 4 with a family band and went on to play semi professionally for more than a decade with as many as a couple thousand people and getting positive critical reviews for the most popular band I was in. But a little over 20 years ago I had an injury causing lifelong tendinitis in both wrists that can make playing for even a minute painful; I can't even turn a screwdriver without some pain. It was through playing on my son's keyboard a couple of years ago that I realized I could play really simple rock songs all the way through without too much pain,  but I can only play for a few minutes at a time. So,  I can no longer play very well. I was never a good singer and I can't play live with other musicians. I was once a really good rock drummer and loved playing with other musicians,  and it is depressing I don't play very well anymore and playing with other musicians will never be an option (although I have done one collaboration with a very talented friend, which was very exciting,  but my performances are pretty bland at best). 

So what's the point of playing when I physically am not able to be a decent musician again, when my performances will never be at a level I'm proud of? The point is that artistic expression is important,  not just for those with exceptional talent,  but also for the everyman. I used to advise an organized for people with disabilities and ended up spending time at their forum and found a group of people,  some with very severe disabilities,  that loved to play music. They didn’t  let their disabilities stop them and I thought my situation is not nearly as challenging and I would regularly encourage them in that forum, while at the same time I had given up on music in my one life. Over time, I realized I should try the advice and encouragement I was giving them for myself. 

*Ouch!*

I can relate a little bit!  Not long after I was in a band that opened for Blue Oyster Cult (January, 1984), I broke my arm.  It was a very nasty break of the upper left arm that caused major nerve damage.  It took months to regain decent use of that arm and hand (my fretting hand) and it was years before I tried playing again.  Ironically, it's how I ended up here in the Cakewalk community because I began making music using my computer with MIDI, entering values using math (this is where I helped Greg debug Cakewalk v1.0!).  Oh, well...

[PavlovsCat]

11 hours ago, craigb said:

*Ouch!*

I can relate a little bit!  Not long after I was in a band that opened for Blue Oyster Cult (January, 1984), I broke my arm.  It was a very nasty break of the upper left arm that caused major nerve damage.  It took months to regain decent use of that arm and hand (my fretting hand) and it was years before I tried playing again.  Ironically, it's how I ended up here in the Cakewalk community because I began making music using my computer with MIDI, entering values using math (this is where I helped Greg debug Cakewalk v1.0!).  Oh, well...

Here's a coincidence. My most popular band (we were out of Chicago) had a gig where we opened for Blue Oyster Cult (early 90s) that was canceled a few weeks before the show because the venue was temporarily closed down for serving under age kids. We had a great agent who booked major national acts who could have gotten us to be the opening act for much more popular groups than BOC, but the lead singer would turn it down because they wouldn't pay anything and we'd play colleges and mid size venues and make a few thousand bucks, but it kept the band from making it from a regional act to a national one. I still think about how I could have played cowbell with BOC if the show wasn't canceled.

[craigb]

Unfortunately, the S&L skit with the cowbell came out long after either of us would have known about it!  (First aired in 2000!)

I was just the added backing guitar, but the main guy, Craig Goldy, went on to join Guiffria when they started and then joined Dio (Ronnie was his Godfather).

I didn't have any rock star aspirations, so it's all good! ?

[PavlovsCat]

2 hours ago, craigb said:

Unfortunately, the S&L skit with the cowbell came out long after either of us would have known about it!  (First aired in 2000!)

I was just the added backing guitar, but the main guy, Craig Goldy, went on to join Guiffria when they started and then joined Dio (Ronnie was his Godfather).

I didn't have any rock star aspirations, so it's all good! ?

I saw Guffria when they opened for Rainbow back in the late 80s or early 90s. You might have a better handle when. I didn't have rock star aspirations,  but I did dream of playing music for a living. When I had my big opportunity when the co leader of a major band called me and tried to persuade me to meet with her just signed band for a major national tour, I was deep into my faith and turned it down for that reason. I was a very idealistic man in my earlier years. But a few years later I had my injury that stopped me from playing again and about 20 years later, I decided to attempt to try recording some of the old songs I wrote as well as some covers that are fairly easy to play.  I keep thinking,  I hope no one adds any of my covers to my Cover Song Hall of Shame thread!

Therfore I propose a rule for our Cover Song Hall of Shame thread: cover songs performed by Cakewalk forum members are excluded from eligibility. Can we agree to that one guys?

Edited June 15, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

Back to the original question ;  WHY EVEN BOTHER MAKING MUSIC???

I make it beacause

( 1 ) It keeps me occupied, I don't really ahve much time for TV and Pubs etc as I'd rather be in the studio

(2) It keeps me outta my wife's hair ! 

(3) Music earnings are part of my retirement income plan, there is a very long tail to the backend sync royalties - passive income type stuff

( 4) Most of all I love the process and I still get a kick when a track gets used on something I might actually want to watch

When I didn't do it to try and build an oncome and just did it as a hobby I was a lot slower at making it  - Can't believe I used to spend 6 months on something that now would take me no more than a week and when you make a lot of music you just get better at it. My tracks from the old hobby days are fairly terrible subjectively.   

[kennywtelejazz]

 WHY EVEN BOTHER MAKING MUSIC???   When even " my own guitar is sometimes against me " ....

It just happened to me again tonight .

My guitar didn't feel like behaving or sounding the way I wanted it to sound when I first started playing it on this song.
So I grabbed it by the strings rather tightly and started choking it's neck to get it's full undivided attention!

Sometimes you just got to show your guitar who the boss is.?

Kenny

 

Edited June 16, 2023 by kennywtelejazz

[rfssongs]

WHY EVEN BOTHER MAKING MUSIC???  

 

For sanity.

[Notes_Norton]

To answer the original question, I only need one word:

 

 

FUN!

[PavlovsCat]

On 5/28/2023 at 2:06 PM, Colin Nicholls said:

Mike is a nice guy but recently his videos have definitely moved into the clickbaity borderline shill category.

This is pretty typical, once the number of subscribers hits a certain value, there are folks who can quit their day job and concentrate on videos and there is a lot of opportunity.  Check out Benn's take for some background on this:

(I am not saying Mike/Creative Sauce is in this category)

 

I ended up watching this video and I think the guy is being fairly honest -- but there's also a bit of self deception involved, which, if I'm going to be completely candid, that is the norm with influencers. And I realize someone is going to take this the wrong way, but my writing on marketing, largely on digital marketing has been recommended by every ivy league university but Brown (I went to a small humble private university and would never have dreamed of applying to places like Harvard, Princeton, Wharton, Yale, Northwestern, etc.), so I come at this not as an outsider, not as an anti-marketing person, but as a marketing pro with expertise in digital marketing. Influencer marketing is a fundamental part of promotion for any brand that sells to consumers today. Years ago, I wrote some articles on marketing ethics that I expected would get a lot of hate -- because, believe it or not, I'm a marketing pro (although today, the CEO of a small dot com) who is very ethics driven. And any job in the business world is a challenge when you're ethics driven, especially marketing, finance, HR, sales or executive management, because compromise and less than ethical decision making is, in truth, the norm.  But what this influencer says about disclosures, is pure BS. 

FTC regulations are never over the line. They're always very watered down. I made the case long ago that ethical marketers shouldn't merely abide by FTC regulations, they should hold themselves to a much higher bar, and I made the case that the reason is the long-term reputation of the brand should be the focus. That if your brand engages in say, less than honorable marketing practices -- in this case, if you're paying off influencers to shill your products and they're hiding the shortcomings, as they do (regardless of their self-serving claims in videos like this), it will come to haunt your brand. Why? You don't have to be a marketing or branding expert to understand this. It's because pre-purchase communications from the brand or its agents (which is really what most of these influencers are) set expectations. If they set those expectations higher than the product can deliver, you're going to have customers who didn't have a great experience. And they're experience not meeting expectations may result in their having less than great feelings about the brand and their sharing their experiences with others in social media and real life. 

So, why do influencers almost always violate FTC regulations (this just applies to the American ones, as other countries have their own regulations -- often much more stringent than FTC regulations)? Because influencers are about building trust with consumers, so they never want to appear to be shills to their fans. Why? An influencer's value is selling their credibility to brands, that is how they make most of their money (beyond YouTube ad revenue).  

Consider what I do in social media with developers I've consulted to -- it would be a really stupid thing to do if I were attempting to be an influencer. I generally do not discuss any of the two dozen plus sample and plugin developers I've given marketing and branding advice to over two decades. Why? Because I realize that when I do an honest disclosure, that my opinion will come across as lacking credibility and may even do damage to the developers. However, there is a developer whose sample libraries I use in nearly every project, Orange Tree Samples. And I've consulted to the owner of the company since he released his first couple of sample libraries. And he is the one developer I will give a testimonial for. But when I do, I mention that I've consulted to OTS and I consider the developer a personal friend so I completely understand if people don't see my opinions as unbiased. I doubt I would if I saw someone else doing that. So, yeah, once I do that disclosure, it reveals so much bias that you would -- understandably, say to yourself, "Maybe PavolvsCat is giving a legit opinion, but he has so much bias for that developer -- he shared that he's personal friends with him -- that it could easily significantly bias his views." 

It's the same if an influencer told you, "Disclosure: I've received this product for free and the developer paid me X amount of money to do this review and I make a sales commission if you buy this product..." Other times, influencers with smaller followings may be trying to get the developer to pay them money for reviews in the future. One thing is certain, if they do a very harsh review, they're not going to get more money or free products, so you can expect that bias against doing a very negative review is extremely common. 

So, as a consultant, I have worked with influencers, they are an important part of promotional planning these days. And working with them, there's no question that they're looking for free stuff and for money. But again, if that was transparent to their audiences, they would harm the credibility that they're selling to brands of the products they review. There's an old saying in digital marketing, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product. The bottom line is that you -- the audience for the influencer -- is the product that influencers are selling to brands, to developers in this case. Consequently, a developer doesn't want to fully disclose their bias to you and follow FTC regulations because the influencer realizes that it would cause you to see him for what he is -- and that would damage your trust in his credibility that he's selling to brands. 

I mentioned earlier that there is one influencer I seriously respect and is the closest to the real deal -- and to what is called de-influencers (people who don't shill and give negative reviews) -- that I know of in this space,  Cory Pellezari. I became a fan of Cory when he did the below review for a drum library and called out problems with a drum sample library. Go to 2:35 and you'll see Cory pointing out problems with the reviewed sample library -- and it's the most useful influencer review I've ever witnessed. This is the greatest example of an influencer with integrity that I've ever seen.  And if you look, Cory updated the problems he found with this comment: 

"UPDATE - Joey Sturgis Drums simply does not care about their product or its customer base. Despite customer feedback, they've maintained silence and refuse to optimise the patches, so it looks like my custom patches are the closest you'll get to a smooth working experience with Miles McPherson Drums. sigh Developers really need to keep their egos in check." 

Of course, you can bet that Cory wasn't compensated for this video and didn't receive any more products or further correspondence with Joey Sturgis after doing this library.  Cory chose to do the right thing and give an honest review, putting his audience first, not his own self interests and desire for freebies and money, I don't know of any other influencer in this space with Cory's integrity. 

But, though it looks like it, my post isn't simply intended to praise Cory Pelazzari, it's about the truth of the motivations, integrity, disclosures and FTC compliance of influencers. I do watch influencer videos to learn about products, but I see it like I do a car salesperson telling me about how great a new car is -- I take their words with a grain of salt, maybe a few tons of salt.  
 

 

[PavlovsCat]

Back on the original topic, I just saw this story in my Facebook feed and thought it was inspiring.  A 78 year old man who has used music to help him deal with depression.  I think music has important benefits for our mental health and it is great to learn of stories like this one, where music has helped someone. 

https://www.musicradar.com/news/78-year-old-techno-producer

Edited June 20, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Notes_Norton]

I've made a living doing music and nothing but music for most of my life. I did have two 'wage slave' jobs while investigating what it is to be normal. I found normal to be over-rated.

Why bother???

• My job makes people enjoy myself
• I do what I love to do, and it pays the mortgage and grocery bills
• I have fun at work, I'd do it for free if I didn't need the money
• I make people smile and dance
• I get applause every 5 minutes or so on the job
• I get a 20-minute break every hour if I want, but I'm usually having too much fun to take the break
• I am my own boss, nobody tells me what to do
• I don't have to do 'busy work'
• I am living life on my own terms
• Before I was married, there were always girls who wanted to 'date' musicians
• I married another musician, and we have loads of fun together on stage
• At the end of each gig, there are usually people telling us what a great time they had listening and dancing to our music
• Instead of saying, “I have to go to work today.” I say, “I GET to go to work today!”

Perhaps because I have fun at work and truly love my life, it keeps me from getting sick. I'm on zero medications, catch a mild cold every 10-15 years that never lasts more than a day or two. I can't remember the last time I had the flu (it's been decades). A heart doc says I have the circulatory system of a person over 20 years my junior. I haven't missed a gig since I went pro back in the 1960s.

For probably 99.9% of the time when humans made music, it was done live, in front of an audience and there was no audio or video recording of the performance.

In the early days of records/recordings, the bands mainly used the recordings to promote their live performances.

Live music is interactive between the audience and the performer. It's a conversation, not a lecture. Recorded music is sterile by comparison.

If you do question why? You are asking the wrong question. Get out and play music in front of a live audience, and you will have your answer – as long as you are good enough to pull a crowd. If not, practice.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

 

Edited June 21, 2023 by Notes_Norton
Typo (I'm Tupoman - writing all wrongs)

[Nick Blanc]

I make music because I'm the only one who can make exactly what I want to hear at that particular time. And when I bump into limitations like lack of knowledge or lack of ability which keep me from achieving that, I make sure I learn. I have a bit anxiety about performing live, but when I record a performance at home all is well.