saw this article and thought it was interesting!....this producer cat Major Keys speaks sum truth!..thought id share it with my fellow siccness breh goons,..enjoy!
By:Indie-spensable.com and MusicBusiness101.info
Bridging the gap between audiences and artists
A few weeks ago, I got a very open and candid email in my ReverbNation box from a fellow artist and as I read I was like “yes, yes, yes”! I too am sick of the ‘like me or fan me and I’ll like you’ method of ‘promotion’. I honestly think this is a terrible way to get authentic fans. Plus, why are you asking other musicians to be fans? It’s akin to cannibalism! Go out there and find regular people to be your fans. Don’t be lazy. Network with music business professionals and musicians to get your music and promotional efforts to where they need to be but go find regular people to be ‘fans’… anyway, my friend Major Keyz sums it all up in the email he sent to me on RVN:
If you don’t know already my name is Major Keyz a producer, one of the top ranked artists on Reverbnation (sales, plays, views, fans) one of the top ranked R&B/Soul producer over all. When I first started with here I realized how different it was from the other sites out there. I liked RN.
Recently after seeing people shoot messages back and forward generically asking for fan after fan not even realizing who they are talking to because of their autopilot horrible marketing techniques, after seeing people write comments and messages saying “like my page then I’ll like yours” and all the rest of the childish like actions as if liking comments or pages will make their music sound better, as if withholding your “like”, comment, fan-ship, hostage until somebody likes your page is even a respectable approach to do business. Or the “collaboholics” that act as if these records that have come out in the past century where you had a singers, songwriters, and producers happened without any money flowing from each others hands, which of course they know isn’t true because they see the success and fortune these people are having because they each PAID for the services they needed and understood that there was a service they were providing in business, the music business, and for it to stay a business that each service had to have a fee, every time, always, like in every other business.These missteps that I speak of may get those people more random faces to look at, but it won’t give them a better mix, quality tracks, or get them sales, better singers, songwriters, producers, to a label, or build real relationships that inspire creativity.
After all this finally I decided something different has to be done if ReverbNation will not follow Myspace’s fate of being just an online spam billboard. There are fans and there are musicians. Yes you need fans (real fans that will buy your album or promote you, not faces you just collect randomly), but equally as important to make it into the music business are all the musicians you bump into and have access to each day. Equally important is doing business with the people that will make your project better and get your further than you are right now so you get to the point where you’re touring and selling (keyword sell not give out) to where you even need fans. You don’t need fans to play your music for free, it doesn’t take a real fan to do that right? It takes a real fan to pay for something and value your craft enough to want to compensate you for it. That’s what you get when you slow down and develop a product and real relationships.
We are all businessmen and women because at the end of the day we all say we are in the music business. Business as you well know sustains itself by more business. If there are no real business transactions on a music networking site. If there isn’t any real business relationships on here, then aren’t we no more than face collectors hoping for a higher ranking by collecting more faces?
The whole point of this message is to tell folks to get a grip. Slow down and look at who you already have on your page and see how they or you can be of service. Slow down and actually get back into the business of the music business instead of the face collecting, fake friend collecting business. Stop giving out your craft for free or hoping others will, for not even the junk yard does that and you are claiming you are a professional with something of value. This is what it’s going to take for this site not to become irrelevant and for it to do something none of the other sites have done, which is actually make artists money and real connections. Those other sites I just mentioned advertising dollars have gone up on the backs of naive artists that keep using the same inefficient tactics that drive their numbers down and the stats don’t lie.
We’ve got to start doing business amongst ourselves and start understanding this is a real business if we are to start handling it as such.
By:Indie-spensable.com and MusicBusiness101.info
Bridging the gap between audiences and artists
A few weeks ago, I got a very open and candid email in my ReverbNation box from a fellow artist and as I read I was like “yes, yes, yes”! I too am sick of the ‘like me or fan me and I’ll like you’ method of ‘promotion’. I honestly think this is a terrible way to get authentic fans. Plus, why are you asking other musicians to be fans? It’s akin to cannibalism! Go out there and find regular people to be your fans. Don’t be lazy. Network with music business professionals and musicians to get your music and promotional efforts to where they need to be but go find regular people to be ‘fans’… anyway, my friend Major Keyz sums it all up in the email he sent to me on RVN:
If you don’t know already my name is Major Keyz a producer, one of the top ranked artists on Reverbnation (sales, plays, views, fans) one of the top ranked R&B/Soul producer over all. When I first started with here I realized how different it was from the other sites out there. I liked RN.
Recently after seeing people shoot messages back and forward generically asking for fan after fan not even realizing who they are talking to because of their autopilot horrible marketing techniques, after seeing people write comments and messages saying “like my page then I’ll like yours” and all the rest of the childish like actions as if liking comments or pages will make their music sound better, as if withholding your “like”, comment, fan-ship, hostage until somebody likes your page is even a respectable approach to do business. Or the “collaboholics” that act as if these records that have come out in the past century where you had a singers, songwriters, and producers happened without any money flowing from each others hands, which of course they know isn’t true because they see the success and fortune these people are having because they each PAID for the services they needed and understood that there was a service they were providing in business, the music business, and for it to stay a business that each service had to have a fee, every time, always, like in every other business.These missteps that I speak of may get those people more random faces to look at, but it won’t give them a better mix, quality tracks, or get them sales, better singers, songwriters, producers, to a label, or build real relationships that inspire creativity.
After all this finally I decided something different has to be done if ReverbNation will not follow Myspace’s fate of being just an online spam billboard. There are fans and there are musicians. Yes you need fans (real fans that will buy your album or promote you, not faces you just collect randomly), but equally as important to make it into the music business are all the musicians you bump into and have access to each day. Equally important is doing business with the people that will make your project better and get your further than you are right now so you get to the point where you’re touring and selling (keyword sell not give out) to where you even need fans. You don’t need fans to play your music for free, it doesn’t take a real fan to do that right? It takes a real fan to pay for something and value your craft enough to want to compensate you for it. That’s what you get when you slow down and develop a product and real relationships.
We are all businessmen and women because at the end of the day we all say we are in the music business. Business as you well know sustains itself by more business. If there are no real business transactions on a music networking site. If there isn’t any real business relationships on here, then aren’t we no more than face collectors hoping for a higher ranking by collecting more faces?
The whole point of this message is to tell folks to get a grip. Slow down and look at who you already have on your page and see how they or you can be of service. Slow down and actually get back into the business of the music business instead of the face collecting, fake friend collecting business. Stop giving out your craft for free or hoping others will, for not even the junk yard does that and you are claiming you are a professional with something of value. This is what it’s going to take for this site not to become irrelevant and for it to do something none of the other sites have done, which is actually make artists money and real connections. Those other sites I just mentioned advertising dollars have gone up on the backs of naive artists that keep using the same inefficient tactics that drive their numbers down and the stats don’t lie.
We’ve got to start doing business amongst ourselves and start understanding this is a real business if we are to start handling it as such.
