Social Website Burnout

[saulstokes]

In the last few weeks I've been feeling like It's getting harder and harder to stay up-to-date with all the things your "suppose" to do to do as a musician to promote your music. I have been looking at some companies that offer packages that allow you to easily maintain a web presence but also offer ways to disperse your news to other sites like facebook. One of these sites is called GUGUCHU.COM. Reverbnation is another.  These sites allow you to create stores, presskits, mailing lists, rss news feeds that go out to your social network sites etc. etc.  Some of them charge a monthly fee which I guess would be ok if it would make managing everything easier. However, on closer look most of them don't seem quite right for me. Perhaps they're better fit for new singer songwriter type musicians etc.

Has anyone here seen anything online that is like GUGUCHU but more appropriate for electronic musicians? Meaning, I don't want another social network site. I want something that can serve as the central brain for my music, news, cd sales and promotion.

This is what's became of me:

Tunecore
saulstokes.com html
Facebook - finally broke down and made a page...
Lastfm


Other sites people tell me I need to have
Twitter
Soundcloud
Ping

Kind of getting ridiculous.  ?? :) How are we as artists suppose to manage all this and still write music? Maybe I need to get an Kramerica Intern.

[Julian Ray]

- Sites like Reverbnation are full of people, who is trying to promote themselves. So I really doubt someone will seriously read all these "mailing lists" and "feeds". The musicians, promoting themselves to musicians...  Sound useless.

- Twitter... To spend hours on chatting just in hope that someone will occasionally notice your message sounds also useless to me.

- Facebook maybe is a good place where you can find and contact with your fans, but the price will be the same - a lot of time for a small piece of attention.

I'm not going to say that situation is hopeless, but you definitely can't do all this AND write music :)

Good luck with it.

[jkn]

Oh yeah - there are so many places, so many ways - you can spend way too much time.  My experience:

facebook - great for casual conversation - things that are quick and only get a few comments.  I mostly "chat" there with people that I don't normally chat with - and I also found family I never knew I had.  (seriously)

myspace - sorry my_____ now.  let's move on.  I still have an account that i see once a quarter or so.

twitter - personally i like twitter - it's especially nice from my phone - but not in a promotional sense - just a personal sense.  I've found a few friends there and I like connecting with them now and then.  I've found music through twitter i may have never discovered - so ... ok - there is some benefit there. 

reverbnation - I need to delete my account there - i never connected with it.

soundcloud - great place to post music - and then use as widgets elsewhere (reverbnation also does this).  I don't really do much actual communication through it - although i do comment on people's tracks on the timeline (something I still haven't seen implemented anywhere else- being able to comment at exactly the 2:36 mark to point out how great that one synth sound is - or to point out a pop/glitch the artist probably didn't intend... wow - awesome.

.............

http://relaxedmachinery.ning.com  <---- my favorite place for highly biased obvious reasons.   Bonus:  if you post a status update on a Ning community like rM - it can auto-update your facebook and twitter status.  I update twitter a lot that way.   (you can selectively turn it on and off by post - very easily).    You can also update twitter and facebook for your blog posts.


John (a bit of a social whore)

[jkn]

Oh!  Forgot - I started to look into the sites that spread the word about what you want to post and update and found the cost didn't really fit the benefits for me personally.  I agree that many are more geared to pop / rock type of things.  If I find one I will definitely post about it.

[einstein36]

yes, definitely I think we have hit the technology wall to where we are so overwhelmed that we get stress in our lives just trying to keep up with it all:)

[mgriffin]

I agree with Saul.

The list of "presences" one is expected to maintain has grown to the point where it's a bit much even for a person who's online and in front of a computer pretty much every waking minute.

I already see signs of Facebook beginning to morph into Myspace. I'm getting more and more "Hey, release my album!" messages on FB, from people I've never heard of before. Very often they send a friend request, then start hitting my wall with a ton of self-promotional crap immediately.

[Julian Ray]

... Very often they send a friend request, then start hitting my wall with a ton of self-promotional crap immediately.

Unfortunately I have the same situation on my FB page. Finally just decided to "unfriend" everyone whose messages on my wall is self-promotional. Sometimes it really looks like "self-promotional obsession"  :-\

[saulstokes]

One thought I had was to start these accounts and then basically have a bio page and a link to your own website. That way you're at least "there" when it's in to be "there" and not much effort has been put into it.

John, I looked back at your blog offering on IM and it's really cool as it shoots out to other social sites. Very nice. I think RM is great so far.

[mgriffin]

Your idea of having a "placeholder" presence on social media sites sounds good, Saul, but I think you'd still have some burden to deal with A) friend/follow requests, B) posts to your "wall", especially of the unwanted variety, and C) direct messages.

I do occasionally see a Twitter account where someone has a bunch of followers, but they aren't following anybody themselves. Sort of a one-way broadcast function.

[jkn]

I am glad people like the rM community - now that I'm back to work and back to normal routine after my nose surgery (deviated septum, bone spur up there, tiny airways widened...) - I'm back to posting my not quite every day news updates... Saul you'll see your post mentioned:   http://relaxedmachinery.ning.com/profiles/blogs/motd-kelly-david-sleepmode

Before anybody goes - hey!  you're posting about rM on the Hypnos forum!  I try and promote all new Hypnos releases over there and I also link to discussions here now and then when they're hot and heavy cool ones...   Speaking of... Mike you should mention your new short story over there - or I can post about it for you.

John

p.s.   Maybe facebook will start getting like myspace where it can start auto-accepting friend requests for you...  yippee - what an idiotic update that was!

p.s. #2:  twitter - yeah - people who follow no one and aren't super celebrities... are annoying unless it's specifically a news broadcast account (like Taylor Deupree has a 12k_label account just for label news and then his personal account is separate - I started to do that with my rM label - but gave up...)

p.s. #3:  I drastically cut back on the number of mailing lists and forums I was on a couple years ago - and gradually added a few new ones in the last year or two - but overall - I only check here at Hypnos, at the rM community, facebook, and twitter with any sort of "daily" or every few days regularity.   I am on the ambient mailing list at Hyperreal - but it emails me and usually is dormant.  That's it now... I used to be on a ton of communities...  It was too much.

p.s. #4:  Mike - wanna release my album???   LOL!   kidding.

[mgriffin]

I don't have any problem with you talking about RM, either the community or the label, on this forum. So let no man complain!

I'd say "man or woman" but everyone knows there aren't any women listening to this kind of music anyway! ;)

[jkn]

 :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o
:o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o

So... Lena's a man??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

:o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o
:o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o

You weren't kidding about those five surgeries!

...not that there's anything wrong with that... 

[jkn]

rM vs. Hypnos - there's overlap - but neither totally replaces the other.   That's my feeling and why I'm a regular here (and have been for a decade).

[APK]

Now if only RM had a good forum.
And Hypnos let you add flash and youtube videos.
8)

[jkn]

LOL!  You just nailed it APK.   

The forum on Ning is bad enough that I've just tried to convince people not to use it at all and instead always post blog posts.

[hdibrell]

I have a fairly  small presence on the web. I used to follow quite a few forums and lists (mostly concerning specific instruments and Analog Heaven) but I hardly look at them anymore. I have a Facebook account which I use mostly for finding old friends or them finding me. I've belonged to the Hypnos forum for quite sometime and have been on RM a short time. They are the only forums I look at any more and really enjoy both.

[mgriffin]

I have social website burnout but I think the solution is to keep addition social website accounts until I'm on all of 'em.

;)

[Numina]

Saul - I think many of us electronic musicians are in the same boat - especially us Americans. In addition to posting to the Hypnos Forum and rM and a handful of the e-lists to network (speaking of which I never see posts on spacemusic e-list anymore) I think you should set up a FaceBook artist/music page (looks like you just did? - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Saul-Stokes/113538502068257?ref=ts&sk=wall )

At this point, aside from some key contacts, I don't bother with promoting much because there's just too much muck to weed through and I'm afraid it will only get worse and takes an inordinate amount of time with little to no response.  The good news is you have a pretty big name in the EM scene and hopefully past and present fans will continue to keep track of your work and continue to return to your future music.  We also have at least 5 decent radio programs in the US that do reach people.

More importantly, I don't know about the rest of you, but I almost only sell CDs to folks outside the U.S. - it's probably about 95% within the past year - Europe, Canada, and Australia are consistent places I send tunes to - and they all still LIKE CDs!  The U.S. is not receptive to this music like it used to be (although I do anticipate a turnaround at some point), people here are not buying as many CDs, and the fan base is really small in the States.  My point being if you do spend time on networking and promo, I suggest looking into radio programs and reviewers and forums outside the U.S. while continuing to send the usual stuff to (at least) Bill Fox, Eric Meece, Diliberto, Renee Blanche, and Star's End for Stateside support.... or maybe I'm just too old fashioned.

[Julio Di Benedetto]

I would say for myself Im not burnt out but more likely lost as to what and where to be web-wise.

I quickly ruled out Facebook, Myspace, Twitter as colossal waste of time and energy, and a waste of time regarding EM and its various genres..... that being said Im still signed up with all of them. For touring Indie alt rock bands....its a different story.

First and foremost people need to be able to hear your music and then purchase it with the least amount of hoop jumping.....I feel thats pretty mush taken care of with the artist that post hear, though I would mention the pit falls of sites like cd baby as far as audition the music.....30 sec sound clips dont cut it.  As a retail e store I imagine its fine, but not without another site where fans can listen to a few minutes worth of music per track and or an e radio on your website that streams a wonderful flow of your sonic flavours

Blogs.....these do offer the fan a chance to get closer to the everyday of the artist / record label, but also require quite a commitment to stay on top of.  Today we have bloggers for hire.  Yeah right!

So whats left......enter the Hypnos Forum,  sounds like enter the dragon, a lot more gentle, same spirit.  I have been here off and on since 2000 AD, more or less, and this forum has been for me a home to return to, a place where I can discover more ambient/electronic music than anywhere else that I have ever come across.  From the "Now Playing", to "Non Hypnos Artist" and of course the ever expanding Hypnos catalog of music. I have purchased more music via this forum than anywhere else

As for my own music, I have sold more cds though the Hypnos forum than anywhere else, humble though those sales maybe.......So kudos to Mike Griffin for being a guiding light when all else seems somewhat dark.

Cheers!

[hdibrell]

"I have purchased more music via this forum than anywhere else"       Yeah! Same here. I make most of my purchases through Hypnos. It's a really good source of info and a great bunch of people.