2 posts tagged “youtube”
For you Oscar fans out there I'm sure you're familiar with the film 'Once', which is an indipendent production, filmed for about 100k which has subsequently gained recognition and support from just about everywhere. It's not just the story of the film that appeals to me but the stories behind the film. Such as Cillian Murphy was originally meant to play the lead but pulled out, apparently due to the nature/difficulty(?) of the songs he had to sing in the film. I think the storyline is actually based around the chap who ended up playing the lead. Also the story of the on-screen/off-screen romance of the leads and the fact that neither of the leads have any interest in acting again I find really charming. I've got my DVD ordered and will have a very rare night-in to watch it. Have a read about it here.
So as an entertainment industry are we for want of a better expression 'buggered' (still)? Should I go sell my soul and get a job at Foxton's now? We've got artists running around with handicams making their own films getting investment from here and there, placing their own music and getting international recognition without massive massive M&P costs. Then I hear about an artist I really liked (and pursued) having his album funded entirely by donation, soon to be distributed this week.
For me, someone who spends about 80% of their life infront of this screen and the rest (bar 2% sleeping) at gigs, film and music to me are basically the same thing, which is content. As are blogs, great sites (and crappy ones), viral apps etc. What I think I'm witnessing is a renaissance of artists who exist in several mediums with great ideas and the motivation to follow them through. About a year ago I was giving a talk at the Apple Shop on Regent St. about the industry as it is today. I had some rather irate guy in the audience tearing me a new behind about how the record industry was dead and in the hands of the artists. I retorted by asking him to name 5 truely landmark, critically acclaimed albums that had stood the test of time that were DIY projects. This was a little unfair as I knew he'd struggle. Looking back, if I'd said name 5 truely landmark pieces of content that were produced indipendently, I probably would have shot myself in the foot.
So, where's the money? Show me the money. Where in this huge d-list party is the money being made and where can I get some? Everywhere, absolutely everywhere in small amounts, here and there, on this site, that site, under the sofa at that gig, via that youtube channel. As an artist, or a label, I think the trick is to tie together and centralise the dozens, maybe even hundreds of channels of potential revenue. Pair this with not spending colossal sums of money. I'm talking about artists rather than labels on that one. Why spend £10k on what essentially is a 14 track demo (saw this recently) when you could spend £5k on a great EP with video and the remainder on promo? If I was still a recording artist I'd set up the following as the most basic set of tools.
Myspace - obvious but inclusive of
Online radio - get your music on LastFM and Pandora, befriend specialist stations and podcasts, really get to know them and get your stuff played, a kind of digiplugging I guess.
- Snocap, CD baby, Magnatune and any other distrubutors you'd care to involve
- Youtube channel - you need video content all the time, rehearsals, vidblogs, inspirations etc and get subscribers
- Tight analytics - you need to be identifying who is interested an where - getting lots of hits for Australia? Get linked on triple J's website etc etc.
- Top eight friends of bands very similar to you who yeild more than 1000 hits a day (it's not that difficult)
- 'Blidget' of your blog - go to widgetbox.com, they've got a great one that you can stick in Facebook aswell. Blogs are essential and the myspace one is fairly crappy.
- Merch - You need this, as simple as badges and t-shirts but you'd be amazed at how much you can make.
Blog - This isn't simply an endorsement of this platform (though it is pretty good). Everything you do should be syndicatable and very very easy to find, plus associated with stuff similar to what you're doing. Have your main 'this is us' blog which brings the fans closer to you. But also have blogs on all the major platforms with all your content on, heavily tagged in a way which doesn't have to compete with other popular tags. Get your lyrics up there, and tagged. If someone hears a line from your tune and google's it. You want your track, to appear, and from that page links to your other content and somewhere to spend some cash or re-direction to a site where you're making ad revenue.
Youtube channel - for me this is becoming as essential as myspace. More and more people use youtube as a method of discovering new music simply because you can search for that track you want easily and it ranks highly in google when you type a track title in. Even if you have no video's do an iMovie montage or something that promotes your track like I did for Dark Room Notes.
I-Tunes/Amazon - consider this your premium content host. This is where the people prepared to part with cash for what you've got. So make it feel special, exclusive mixes, access to content as a result of purchase etc etc.
Links Links Links - You need to be found easily by people who've either heard of you or are interested in the sort of thing you are doing. Myspace friends is the most obvious example of this, but new music blogs (such as mine ;-) are
great because search engines pick up the tags and links plus the posts themselves drive traffic.
Regular content - plus the means to distribute it. You want to be RSS'ed as much as possible and as interesting as you can be. Simply because public memory is short and the closer people feel to you as an artist the more involved they'll be and support you in many ways.
Anyhow, I've really rambled now about not a great deal. New showcase this Saturday which I'm sorting this afternoon, be sure to get yourselves down and tell people about the acts you see there.
Hope all is well with you.
IB
Interesting night last night.
The plan: to collect Chalky in Camden, head to the 12 Bar on Denmark street and see Sam Beer. After gig, dicuss forthcoming events to stage at his venue.
The result: Sam Beer actually played the night before (not my fault), ended up at Proud Galleries and didn't really start to discuss anything until 3am. Bum.
I did run into David Guest which was interesting. Actually, no it wasn't but I guess it was worth a mention. :-)
I have the suit dilema again as I am attending a wedding reception tonight which will be fun. I've never really been to a wedding before. Not as a guest anyway. I was at one as a photographer's assistant once. I will try to stay off the punch as I want to make it home early and get a good night's sleep.
Bit of a preview for you. I'm always trying to think of the most interesting way of presenting artists on the label blogs. Plus present them in a way that encourages people to take something away with them. So I had a stab with some more editing resulting in the below:
I think it works ok. If anyone is into the band they can embed the youtube player. I'm going to contact some other bands I've featured before as I'd like to put a few of these up. If you can think of a way to improve this format let me know. I've set up a Youtube channel so the videos can be rss'd
Speaking of which, I've added that bar to the left so my blog can be rss'd. You can have you igoogle page, or your feedblitz automatically update with content I post here. If you don't have a feed reader I'd recommend getting one if you read blogs outside vox aswell. It saves a lot of time having all the posts and content automatically updating in one place. Try the igoogle thing, you'll wonder how you lived without it.
I guess whilst I'm on the subject I should explain the other toys. There is my twitter window, so I can quickly mention anything that I'm up to. I find that quite fun as I follow several other people's who post messages on their wierd activites. Mine must seem quite bland in comparison.
My flickr slideshow which I've just got into is quite useful. Once I get a better camera I will take more pics and upload them so the slideshow will update. Vox has a great library but a slideshow makes the pics easily digestable/accessible I guess.
The blidget?!? Yet another term coined by Widgetbox.com. A couple of my mates were interested in following the blog but didn't want to sign up to vox as they stick with their own blogs. This tool creates a sidebar window that updates with posts and content.
To make up for falling off the healthy wagon last night, I'm going to try and have a super fit weekend. No booze, no pizza, no waffles. Apparently we're going to start getting a proper summer soon. I hope so, I want to be out enjoying it. :-)
So what's happening out there?
