GrindEFX

Been a bit of a quiet week , but I couldn’t let my loyal readers go another day with no posts! So here’s a little something from Bob Lefsetz’s blog – The Lefsetz Letter.

In his article Bob talks about how bands shouldn’t abuse social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, but rather use these as “tools” to build your own network.

Let me go over a few key points:

Social networks are islands that you must ask permission to enter, and behave properly or be ejected.  So, if you think you’re going to leverage all those millions of users, you’ve got another thing coming.

People now have the power of choice, whether it be what music they listen to or what source they get their news from. They like to make their own decisions, hammering a product at them is no longer effective, by “spamming” people you’re only gonna piss them off, and that ignore button is way too easy click! This is an area where a lot of people become unstuck, especially, as Bob points out, old media.

Old media doesn’t want to start over, it wants a short cut.  That’s what major labels had.  That’s what major corporations still employ.  You’ve got enough money to advertise, to bang people over the head.  But today people IGNORE advertising.  If you’re planning on ramming anything down anybody’s throat, you’re screwed.  But can you build something so good people will be drawn to you?

So ramming stuff down people’s throats doesn’t work anymore, what does?

1) Creating a product that people want.

2) Connecting with your market.

What does this mean in music terms? Sure, sign up with Twitter, Facebook and all the rest of it, make people aware that you exist. Connect with your fans, be interesting, be charming, be funny, don’t be an ass, don’t be annoying, don’t poke and prod them every 10 minutes, give them a reason to support you. If someone wants to support you, they will. Just because they like your music doesn’t mean they’re going to buy your album, or come to your show, or even tell their friends about you. Welcome to 2009.

So, when you sit in those marketing meetings, when you’re at home dreaming of a way to blow yourself up, don’t think about harnessing yourself to someone else’s rocket.  The key is to create your own rocket!

Bob doesn’t go into detail about how you go about creating “your own rocket”, and if you’ve done a bit of reading on this subject, you’ll have noticed that not many do. Because if they knew, they would be doing it themselves. Innovation cannot be shared, it can only be inspired. And that is what people like Bob Lefsetz, Mike Masnick, and even us at GrindEFX are trying to do; inspire you to create your own path as a musician and build your own success.