Oh, hi! I didn’t see you there. You actually CLICKED the social media link? It was just there to nest the dropdown menu and it used to be a placeholder but I wanted to chastise people who actually clicked the link! You have no chill! I don’t either, as you’ll soon see.
Since you’re here, I’ll run down what I do on various social media outlets.
Spotify
Please listen to my music. I get paid almost a penny every time you do. Please share with your friends. It means more people will listen to my music, which means more almost-pennies.
Someone recently told me that they thought facebook participation was not obligatory. I think other people mistake obligatory whenever it’s convenient. Bottom line, if the vast majority of your target audience is participating in something and you put yourself at a disadvantage by not participating, I say that line has started to blur. Facebook. Who needs it? Nobody. Who uses it? Everybody!
That said, just because assholes own the phone lines or intertubes doesn’t mean you shouldn’t engage people through those means. The only point that proves is that you can cut off your nose to spite your facebook, which is what the sycophants and contrarians of the world want you to do. Sometimes I think it’s all that they want, which is why they are such frivolously contentious bastards.
YouTube
YouTube (videos at least, comments, not so much) is the best of what the internet was and probably still is. It is on the verge of being screwed up because someone owns it and can do whatever the fuck they want with it, despite all the user content they’re dependent upon. Once YouTube was a bastion for free speech and creativity and now it’s a political war zone, but they haven’t kicked all the good people off yet. It still represents users creating high level content and engaging with an audience with little barrier, short of public humiliation and getting screwed out of revenue, but I’m not even in a position to complain about the latter yet.
OK, fuck Twitter. Long story, short version: don’t stand up racist shitbags on Twitter or you’ll get gang-reported and the appeal process is a joke. Smile and nod because everything is OK, right?
Bandcamp
If you feel like legitimately patronizing me, buy some stuff on Bandcamp. (or in the hopefully near future, this very website) All my current and future releases are more than likely going to be there, and they offer the best profit margin for their artists over any major distribution channel.
Bandcamp still seems fairly pure and working well in service to both the musicians and the fans. I pay nothing to maintain that relationship, outside of a small sales percentage, and get a lot in return. They seem to be equally engaged with their user base as SoundCloud. Good vibes from Bandcamp so far. Rock on!
SoundCloud
All of my historic releases, including the latest album are on SoundCloud … for now. There is a lot of obscure stuff not on any of the releases. Most of it is even downloadable for free, including the newest full album. Please buy it, but if you can’t, don’t hesitate to grab it for free from SoundCloud while it lasts. In fact, SoundCloud, is at present the second most complete record of all the stuff I’ve done in the past 10 years but definitely no where near close to “everything.”
My relationship with SoundCloud is a long, cold one. They pretty much charge me $130 a year to host content and some pretty light statistics. No abandonment rates, no total play time like you get on YouTube or BandCamp, none of that shit. They have no capacity for me to sell my tracks, cost 4x as much as DistroKid, ∞x as much as Bandcamp, ∞x as much as YouTube, and seem to be useless in the promotion department, so far as getting your music in front of people who might like it. That’s your job from the SoundCloud perspective. After all, you’re only paying them with money, passion, and your user base who gets exposed to their brand for free. Who do you think you are, anyway?
Aaah, but if you’re an established artist, you will be invited to participate in the monetization ahead of even paying customers. The rates for Pro accounts didn’t come down after introducing monetization, and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find that my tracks have been played in juxtaposition to some cheesy ads.
My folly was making SoundCloud my only outlet of engagement for like 7 years. I was an early adopter and just wanted to put my music somewhere that I wasn’t responsible for the bandwidth or server up-time and let people download my shit for free. I paid for that privilege and while I wouldn’t say I got nothing, I would say I feel like it’s a crappy relationship and now there are other outlets. I would say that getting outside of the SoundCloud bubble is probably one of the biggest motivators for establishing other outlets in the past year.
Oh, and the spam.