RE: The Steem-Powered Web Will Turn Musicians From “Unpaid Interns” to Paid Employees of Society
I know some people who have had great success with Bandcamp, and it looks like a pretty viable platform. As I produce sheet music rather than recordings it's not much use for me...
I think some of the issue, too, is that for most people, one platform isn't going to be the answer. That's mostly a good thing, because platforms come and go. When I first joined Twitter the signal to noise ratio was pretty good, and now it's terrible. I was never in the niche that found MySpace important, but when it basically collapsed (because Facebook had more people on it and was easier to use from a smartphone, among other things), some people who had been relying on it too much and not finding some other way to stay in touch with fans ended up being left behind.
So the thing that concerns me about Steemit isn't so much that I'm worried about blockchain currencies being Monopoly money (though I'm certainly skeptical), so much as the concern that people here don't seem to be linking to their mailing lists or websites or whatever very much: it's in the nature of the platform to encourage interaction here and here only. That's great until it implodes and you end up starting over elsewhere.
What is good about this platform, as far as I can tell, is that it does appear to work on the basis that the effort involved in writing blog posts, replying to comments, and so on is labour that adds value to the site (and maybe to wider society?) and as such should be compensated. To anyone who has spent half their life gigging for free "for the exposure" that sounds like a pretty sweet deal.
(Sometimes performance "for exposure" is actually a good idea, of course. It depends what kind of exposure you're talking about. I had an e-mail this afternoon asking if one of my pieces could be used for a choral conducting class at a university, and of course I said yes: having the next generation of choral conductors exposed to some of my work is a great thing, and this is exactly the kind of exposure I want. But that piece was already online for free anyway, so I didn't even have to think about it.)
Thanks for the yet another good comment with everything you state is not far of from what I think is the situation. Just to simplify: To monetise digital work, one need a place to store the work and can distribute it to those who wants to consume it. On top of that one need to use any appropriate channel to market their work. To market in the digital age using digital channels, I will say the same as you: Don't use a single channel. My producer friends are using Facebook a lot, but slowly they need to start incorporating Instagram and maybe in some years Snapchat due fans moving from Facebook to Instagram and the youth now on Snapchat, may stay on Snapchat when the reach the age being allowed to go out and party and with that become very relevant for artists to connect with.
I think it can be hard to predict which platforms are going to be around in five years, though.
I would suggest that a better strategy is to spend some time each week or month checking out new platforms, and starting to build some community on them. Not all of them will work out, and that's fine, but you won't find the new ones if you don't explore.
And, of course, have your own website and your own e-mail newsletter, so that if people from whatever platform want more of your work or want to keep up with what you're doing, it's easy for them to do so. The people who will sign up for your newsletter or read a blog at your own site or come back and look at your stuff when they're doing their Christmas shopping or whatever are the people you need to connect with; but you can't connect with them if they're on one platform and you're on another. So you have to go where people are, but make sure you have an online "home" that people can actually find.
I need to do better at this, myself.
That was also part of what I tried to say, not so many artists are business people, and/or know how to market themselves. That is where third party people and companies (big or small) come into play, they can advise, support, manage those aspects while the artist can concentrate on their work. I see to many good artists not reaching anything with their art, since they dont work with the right people to handle the 'business' side of things.
But a lot of platforms and businesses -- not all of them, but enough -- aren't interested in selling business and marketing services to artists at a reasonable rate. They're interested in owning the artist's output, and charging rents on it that the artist will mostly never see; and much of the time they are still expecting artists to do lots of networking and marketing, not letting them "concentrate on their work".
I'm really suspicious of any platform (whether it's a business or not) that tells me it's the only way to reach a certain part of the market. Most of the big labels are completely irrelevant for the type of music I compose!
I'm also really suspicious of any platform that's trying to be "the only place people go for X". The truth is, I probably wouldn't have access to a larger audience if my music were on iTunes, because I am actually more connected to my (very niche) audience than iTunes is. My niche is small enough that iTunes (or whatever platform), in turn, isn't going to put any effort into marketing my work, because they'll get a much bigger return on something less niche. The same is true for the vast majority of the big labels.
There isn't one solution that works for everyone, anyway; but the solution that works for the "big fish" isn't the solution that works for those who make good art, but are a little off the beaten path. The solutions that make occasional rock stars are almost universally unsuitable for someone working in a small niche.
And the thing is, and this is why it's relevant to @heymattsokol's post: everyone starts out in a niche.
Everyone starts out unknown. And to get known they have to be on a bunch of different platforms, going where people are, trying to find the group of fans who are dedicated enough to follow them. You can't skip that work by signing with a label. You can't skip that work by getting a publishing deal. If anything, once you've signed with a label, or gotten a publishing deal, or whatever else? You now have pressure from them to keep doing the social media marketing and you also have pressure to them to create work that sells rather than work that's true to your own artistic integrity (obviously, some work sells and also has integrity: but some doesn't).
@heymattsokol's point isn't that platforms like Steemit will mean artists don't have to do that work: it's that currently, artists doing that work on platforms like Twitter and Facebook are doing work by creating and talking about the content that makes the platform valuable and being rewarded by, er, being forced to watch ads, whereas here they are doing that work and getting paid for it in currency. That makes a big difference, especially if you don't spend that money on toys, but on things like music lessons, or rehearsal space, or maybe even something smaller like website hosting. Early on in my experimenting with Patreon I started spending the money I earned there on demo recordings of my choral pieces, and it made a huge difference to the accessibility of my music. I wouldn't have been able to afford that without the (small) income that I was getting from Patreon.
And now? Well, I'm probably never going to reach the rock star career trajectory, and that's fine. But the existence of and proliferation of alternatives to the prevailing model of how to get paid for making music means that I can expect, with a lot of work, to have a much higher proportion of my income come from composing and related activities than would otherwise be the case. My portfolio career can include more composing and less teaching, or less performing, or similar. I can pursue otherwise unavailable educational opportunities: my composing is paying most of the tuition fees for my PhD (the rest is covered by a scholarship).
None of that replaces me having to do work, both in terms of workng on my art and in terms of networking. But it sure helps.
I don't disagree with you. The point I was making was simply that fact that too many people sing hallelujah wrt art and music and blockchain based services! And that is so not true, since other platforms do exist already to allow the same, or similar. Also, the music industry may seem dominated by a couple of big companies, those who create the rockstars, but most of the music industry is very fragmented wit LOTS and LOTS of small players being able to help out on all sort of tasks and services. And YES, because on;ine platform only want to do the simple thing, you willnot get from them other services an artist requires, therefore the industry as it is will continue to stay as it is for a considerable time: many small companies, to single person companies, handling booking, publishing, label, and other needed artists services for most artists to be and stay relevant.