The Social Muso

Again I haven't written for a while and for that I apologize. I intend to put that right over the coming months, but I'm full of good intentions. Feel free to have a go at me, but many thanks to the people who've kept in touch, sent comments and viewed the site.

I've got various social networking sites on the go at the moment, including Twitter and it can be difficult to keep on top of all the stuff that's going on. Twitter did seem a little pointless to me at first but once you get into it, I think its one of the essentials for the today's musician. I've kept in contact with some of the musicians and bands I've worked with, found out about airplay and licensing opportunities, not to mention gigs etc... and now find myself with over 1000 followers - don't these people have anything better to do? I'm joking of course...

Facebook again is great for your band. I'd recommend starting a Group on there which will allow you to post much more content than the fan based sites. You can have discussions, add pictures and video, invite people to join, invite them to related events (gigs) and generally keep in contact far easier. Its important not to "spam" your members for obvious reasons and keep the content updated and interesting. We have a Big W jokes page on our site, feel free to join and tell us your best or worst music related joke. (The few we have on there are terrible, mostly mine!!)

Many bands have been using myspace for years and I think it still has its place, but its going through a transitional stage. It needs to change to survive and become more flexible with its layout and give us more options on how we get our music out there. It was the dominant force for years, but has failed to evolve quickly enough.

I use Bandcamp.com for my music which is much more flexible, advert free and you get a dedicated page for each song, you can also set the price of your songs, allow free downloads and they give you the option to download the tracks in various formats such as MP3, Wav etc..

There are many more networking options out there but you can only do so much. Its important to remember that people want to be entertained and informed with good content and then hopefully they will listen to your music download a song or two and turn up at your next gig, meet face to face and continue the relationship. Its all about socializing for today's musos.

Finally, just wanted to mention Big W again, (hence the picture) as I'm very much enjoying the gigs with the boys and feel like I'm settling in. Hopefully we can move to the next stage and get some of our own music out there.