yesterday i watched a (short) interview with CyberPR girlboss Ariel Hyatt .. while this is a bit borderline as someone actually advising marketing ‘tips’ i think her general direction is pretty on point for music autonomy: creating direct ‘bond’ with artist’s audience.. it’s bypassing a lot middlemen, disregarding big platforms, and especially numbers and metrics as relevant. i know this is far from new, but it looks like a mainstream resistance to numbers game - always a beneficial act?
I’m coming back for a second go at replying here - started writing and realised I was being a dick.
I struggle a lot with making music and considering an audience. For me, even the notion of forming a ‘bond’ with my audience is tricky - some of this is ND things, some of it may well be me being awkward. I like the idea of bypassing middlemen of course but I struggle with the assumption that to make people want your music they need a personality and a bond behind it. Of course that’s part of how it all works.
I was thinking recently about this period in experimental music when you had people pushing towards a kind of abject minimalism - people like Luc Ferrari having CDs that were almost entirely clear and the identifying details were in tiny letters. Kind of anti-marketing (which of course is generating a niche). It happened a bit in kind of ambient / soundscape / noise / sound-art worlds that people would try and entirely disappear from their art.
There’s a lot to be said for that being a fool’s errand, pretentious (or whatever) but for me it’s fascinating that it wasn’t that long ago and it’s unthinkable now. Unless perhaps there’s a world of music where people can create saleable products without much frillery?
Unfortunately that kind of quietism suits me very much - I’m happy to play and I’m very much a ‘local musician’ but as soon as it gets further than that I start shrinking away.
I don’t necessarily want to situate that as an ablism issue but I’m conscious that I know a great many musicians who go nowhere because they just can’t with self-promotion.
I’m not sure this is the thread for these thoughts but here they are - apologies if it’s a bit diversion-y.
This is exactly the point I was making in another thread. We are missing out on so much incredible art as a culture, because of our obsession with turning every artist into “influencers”.
It’s not gonna suit the personality of… I’m gonna say: most musicians. To get good at it, we’ve spent all that time hidden away practising and honing our art.
The minimalism you mention, @Hakarl, is so appealing to me. Most of the electronic music I was into, from late 90s & early 00s onwards, was similarly taciturn in their presentation.
The “bond” idea is interesting, @prinlu — to me, it definitely makes more sense in smaller scenes. Where the bonds of affection are likely to be two-way, instead of parasocial.
That said, I do enjoy being a fan. But there is always a bit of exegesis in it. Which, again, is why I kinda prefer a little bit of mystery — rather than knowing every passing thing my idol thinks, or what they had for breakfast and such. But I think I may be in the minority there, going by the entirety of Instagram culture lol
Strong agrees. This is how we end up with weirdos wearing futuristic/mouse/chrome helmets, alter ego characters and mascots, carrier bags full of wigs and marketing teams comprised of actual puppets. And to be honest, that’s the future I want. I’d much rather have that than viral TikTok trends and people doing the overly earnest thing to camera asking me to stream their new single.
Thanks everyone for these thoughts! And to respond to them, yeah I totally see and understand these feelings. I also agree to this angle. That’s why I already prefaced my post as “borderline”. And I know I know about social anxiety, ND, and a lot of different obstacles to being confident, and approach people, or to say “please buy stuff from me”. In fact I think that expecting that everyone are able to work on this bond in a way that requires so much confidence and consideration, is - from certain perspective - i guess ableist and privileged.
But, I want to also present a different angle. And my almost kneejerk reaction to “to make people want your music they need a personality and a bond behind it” was “but it’s not about making people want your music!”. i think it’s about allowing appreciation of those who already like and want your music. in other words, and lets’ move away from mrs Hyatt marketing-speak, I feel like here are “friends to be made” on the basis of already existing appreciation - audience who appreciate you as a musician, as creator, as someone who entered their space by allowing them to have an aesthetic experience of your art. there already IS a bond.
i always felt that i rather play to 50 people who i know will go on a music adventure with me, than to play the stadium of people who came to either have fun or drool in total star-struck mode, missing the sound world that i’m trying to make.
i don’t know if i’m making sense, but, i have a feeling that if you aproach this idea of simply allowing being yourself, and openning a window, a door, to your work, your passions, your peculiarities, even your introvert vulnerability, those who really listen will appreciate being part of this community of equals - in the weirdness, in performance too (to adress roberta’s weirdos with mouse helmets) - and those are the ones we actually really want to ‘consume’ our art (no matter how minimalist, queer, or weirdo it is), - not numbers on tiktok and twosilable utterances on soundcloud,…
one of the little advices that i picked i don’t know where but it really stuck in my head, when somehow faced with the question “but what should i communicate to my audience out of actual art” was “just talk about why this matters to you, why is it important to you, regardless how weird it seems”. we are all humans, and apart from aesthetic experience that we as artists provide members of our audience, we also create a feeling of being human, and that includes being part of a community.
and that’s the angle i’m getting out from this what Hyatt is talking about. like austin kleon wrote “you want hearts, not eyeballs”. vanity metrics don’t mean anything. they are worthless, so we should stop chasing them.
100% agreed about vanity metrics. And it’s certainly a very nice thing to know more about the art you love.
So I do think yes, it’s good to talk about ways to do this, for artists that are interested in learning to share more about their process. I’d include myself in this.
At the same time, I think we need to continue our work on more “anonymity-friendly” music discovery modes (such as radio → direct artist support with buy links). This will help level the playing field, so artists that aren’t comfortable with social media etc also have a chance to thrive.
Eg, a lot of radio and music discovery is more focused on supporting the curator than the music artist. Which, ok, curation is a valuable thing too. But case in point, NTS: their track lists are hidden behind premium subscriptions! Horrible for the mostly obscure artists that are played on there.
Read this earlier and feel like it’s sort of related? Note by @areon - Iceshrimp.NET
So for me I think there’s a bunch of things about stage size here. There’s a Stewart Lee quote, something like ‘playing to more than 100 people is basically a rally’, which I think is about right - once someone is on a larger stage, the ‘do I like this?’ impulse is relaxed. It’s always easier to get people to come to a gig of an out-of-towner than it is a local, and it’s usually easier to convince people that a ‘person over there’ is worth listening to than ‘my mate Mel’. I don’t think it’s any reflection on Mel’s music - I strongly suspect if I say ‘MelJoann is from Ireland’ it’s more appealing than ‘MelJoann is from Brighton’ (where I am).
I don’t even necessarily think that’s about capitalism per se so much as it is how a lot of us enjoy music - something ‘exotic’ (in however narrow a sense) is appealing in a way something local, domestic (etc) isn’t. I’d probably go further and say that’s laudable.
The problem comes for me that I can’t pull much of a crowd locally and I have quite significant executive dysfunction such that playing out of town and releasing music is very difficult - I’d also couple that with the notion that I think some music is ‘live’ and some is 'on-record’ (some is both) and mine is definitely ‘live’ - aesthetically I’m way more into the immanent and the exigent.
Anyway - all that is to say that I think that there’s a gulf between ‘local music scene’ and a wider appeal. In a sense that’s less of a problem for places with a visible, active, social scene - where my Mum’s from in Donegal there’s three pubs and you sit in any of them and someone will plonk down with an instrument and play some music. The pub is still a social hub. In the UK the problems of landlordism and licencing mean that having a social hub filled with local music is (at least) privated, if not exclusionary / ticketed. I suspect Mum’s village is a bit old-world but I also suspect that that’s how music happens in a lot of the world and in which the local music to wider appeal gulf is less of a problem.
edit: for the avoidance of doubt I am very much fond of being a fan. I’ve been to plenty gigs with 5 audience this year but my favourite was Mariah Carey at Sandringham.
So, for reaching beyond local music scenes we have limited options (if Big Tech algorithms keep us out):