Failed Musician Rants About Social Media Shocker

 

Call me a jaded cynic...

I’ve been rather hoping everyone in the DIY musician community would see the light soon and the whole thing would just “go away”.

Hasn’t the medium taken over from the message? Isn’t an artist lauded now as “a success” when their previously unknown tune becomes the soundtrack to the latest small-car TV commercial? Remember when artists didn’t want their music to be used to sell cars? Don’t they seem to write songs now with little else in mind? Number One album? No, incidental music on a Netflix series please!

Surely, for the 99% of us who are NOT that handful of actually, globally successful, big-budget musicians (nor ever will be) when our chances of selling a thousand CD albums for $10 each, to a thousand dedicated and engaged fans, evaporated (when was that... 15 years ago? iTunes launch?) the entire game was up; it’s just taken 15 years for everyone to notice. Views, likes, streams, comments - just a teaspoon of sugar in the teacup of life: a short-term serotonin hit and some long-term damage. Cut it out and feel better about yourself.

The musical department of social media is like a fight at the town butcher for the last chicken in the window. “Look at me! I won!” Yes you did, Well done! Now what exactly what did you win...?

After 30-plus years of “serious” effort, I’m at a stage in life where my songwriting, playing, recording and production have never been more accomplished; I turn out the sort of catchy (but sophisticated!) guitar pop I could only dream of creating back when I’d pay $200 every few months, for a day in a 16-track studio.

David Byrne (in his book “How Music Works”) asks, if you truly make music just for the sake of making music, then why “release” anything at all and tells the tale of a deceased chap whose home was found to contain shelves of cassette albums he’d quietly recorded and told no-one about. I’m convinced I only keep releasing songs now to see if I can make a pal of mine from those studio days raise an eyebrow at a hook, or force an involuntary chuckle at a well-crafted couplet.

I, we all, have near-instant, gate-keeper-less, global distribution of the kind I used to dream about every time I got embroiled in yet another six-month-long fall into the rabbit hole of “major-label interest”.

My iPhone makes better pop videos than several thousand dollars’ worth of camera crew and video editing suite-time did in the 1990s and gives me the same direct access to the hearts and minds of a billion potential “fans” that back then, a global record company’s yearly marketing spend wouldn’t come close to achieving.

So what’s the result?

Nothing. Nothing happens. Nobody listens, watches, reads, reacts. Nobody cares, nothing matters any more.

U2 release a new album. Nobody notices. U2 don’t release a new album. Nobody minds.

Social media for musicians is over, because far more importantly, The Music Business for musicians, (the 99%), is over. The music business we can all see, the Big One, over there, we are not in. Yet the little independent one, in which we used to thrive, has now vanished. All that’s left is a social media-generated echo of a Big Bang that happened long ago, like a photocopy of a photocopy that bears no resemblance to the quality and value of the original.

Any flurry of interest an artist creates via their iPhone is about as useful or valid a spectacle as dropping a handful of one-dollar bills in a crowded shopping mall; as time-consuming and pointless as trying to fish out a dime that’s rolled into the fluff under the vending machine. Oh, and there’s a hundred others there chasing the same dime!

You could say, “’Twas always thus!”

In the ‘90s (or ‘80s, or ‘70s) did the bass player in your favourite band ever really make enough money to live off, let-alone buy the Rolls Royce and the mansion in the country? No of course not. They just about scraped their rent together for the two or three years they remained musically active then when the second single from the second album failed to chart, their game was up. And like us today, it will have taken them a few years to realise it, to put down their bass and go and get a job in IT or radio jingle production.

Ultimately, it’s more of a “game” now than it ever was; the stakes are so low that anybody (and seemingly everybody) can (and does!) have a go, like some free-to-enter lottery where the prize is... a ticket for next week’s lottery (no doubt with a burger-outlet’s advertisement printed on the back.) Spotify recently confirmed they upload 60,000 songs every DAY!

So. Why not stop "playing the game"? Delete the apps, stop logging in and Just Make Music. Yes, put it out, tell your friends if you must, but then go and make some more, better than the last.

If you’ve enjoyed this rant please subscribe, “smash” that like button and ... no don't. Really. Just don't.

Three Hundred to One?

 

It’s been a while, as usual…

Another three-month epic of a recording and mixing process for this latest Bikini Test Failure single, Nip And Tuck, but I’m happy to say only about ten days to make a little YouTube video for it; I’m clearly getting faster, if not better, at some things.

It was undoubtedly during a Word In Your Ear podcast that I caught writer/broadcaster David Hepworth repeat something he’d overheard, namely that you can always tell when someone’s “had a bit of work done”; they have the look of the permanently surprised!

Funny in itself, if not entirely fair or accurate, it clearly tickled something in me. For decades, again unfairly and certainly in ignorance, I’ve been aware that folk who “have a bit of work done” tend to look everso slightly ridiculous in one way or another and rarely “better” than they did before – whatever “better” means.

I can infer, of course, that for every oddly altered person it’s possible to spot, there may be dozens who go undetected, their subtle alterations serving them well in their finite battle against clock and calendar.

So a bit of hearsay and my low-brow pondering, triggered a very satisfying and productive bout of songwriting, which after only 20 minutes, resulted in all the lyrics I would need to complete the song and sadly, quite a few more I was unable to jam in.

Nip And Tuck is the 14^th release of Blague Records, which I started in the mid-‘90s. As time has revealed, a vanity label for my own music, nevertheless begun with serious intent and huge ambition. Like all aspiring indie label bosses, I subscribed to the UK’s trade magazine, MusicWeek (Billboard seemed an unnecessary extravagance!) In it, you’d find a complete list of that week’s single and album releases.

I would always feel swamped by the sheer number of competitors: 300 new singles per week. Many were from major labels and most of the others surely had larger budgets than mine (which was near-zero) but I was still proud and pleased to occasionally make it into MW’s review pages, perhaps one of only ten chosen that week.

It’s been clear since my Great Comeback last year, that the small-scale Indie Music Industry is not what it was; there was never much money sloshing around – now there aren’t even any sales to fight over.

It might seem obvious, but it’s worth stating: streams are not the equivalent of old-fashioned record sales! They’re far more akin to radio-plays. And where once my little BTF tunes might be played on a local, community, college or commercial radio station, here in the UK or across the States, Canada, and even Australia, each time to an audience varying from a few hundred to tens of thousands, (and earning performance royalties as they went!) I find that my virtually-free, modern-day streams can only limp slowly through double-figures before finally collapsing, exhausted in the low-hundreds. It’s quite devastating really.

I shouldn’t be so astonished. The aforementioned Mr Hepworth also recently pointed out that Spotify uploads a total of, wait for it, sixty THOUSAND songs a DAY! Apparently two-thirds of those are “back-catalogue” (meaning two or more years old). So that leaves a mere 140,000 new-new singles to compete with. That week.

I should have made my millions back in the day when it was just me and 299 other hopefuls!

 

Giving Thanks and Getting Back

Delayed November 2021 blather

It's been a while, largely through too much work and not enough brainspace, just like the bad old days. Sadly. "Let's build back better" is currently proving to be "Let's build back exactly the same but slightly more stressfully!" Horrible and quite oppressive. I'll come up with a "work less" (or possibly work-less!) plan to trial Jan-June '22. See if I can't redesign 200 years of corporate conditioning. 

Meanwhile, here's something I meant to publish TWO MONTHS ago before real life took over... Around the edges I'd been wallowing in the self-indulgent joy I can always derive from the latest Beatles renovations: film, book, multi-disc reimagining of an old album, YouTube clips and commentaries, Winter of Discontent, a podcast analysis of January 1969 to rival all podcast analyses (I'm on episode 21 and we're only up to 10am on the third day...) 

Consequently, I've caved in, done something I'd very definitely planned not to do, and subscribed (1-month-only, £7.99! (Oh, now it's three...)) to a thing called Disney+. I now have access to FORTY-FIVE documentaries all with the word "Shark" in their title (I'm not kidding!) but crucially, sometime this week, (Nov '21) three films, eight hours' total, edited down from 55 hours or so footage, of the Beatles musical group, tiddling around for three weeks, making, performing and recording some new tunes. 

I do feel like this particular global content-provider company has won and I have somehow lost, but I didn't feel I could wait an indeterminate amount of time until a Blu-Ray version perhaps appeared in the shops (which shop is that?! An email in my inbox with a “Buy” button in it is probably what I mean) - for which, incidentally, I would have to also buy a Blu-Ray player - so, I crumbled and subscribed, however fleetingly.

These things "air" (?!) over three days Thurs 25th - Sat 27^th November 2021, dates chosen I assume, to accord with the US desire to Give Thanks. What day is Turkey Day? Thursday? Day-off work? Back in on Friday?

Now, being new to this modern way of consuming my question is: when such things are "released", are they like "old telly" and will appear on the front page of the "site" each day at, say 8pm, thus creating some kind of old-fashioned communal experience opportunity? Or are they just "there" from midnight+1-second? (Future ed.: I think the latter is what happened.)

Either way, I've got some daft idea to attempt to watch the three films as the same time the rest of the world does and indeed, cook some vegetarian poultry (and sweet potatoes and grilled squirrel, right?) on whichever day is Turkey Day. Y'know, "join in!"

Next week I Get Back in the studio (see what I did there? Always thinking...) to finish my new tune, meanwhile, Happy end-of-November, The Americas!

Now why DID George walk out…?

 

It was 20 years ago today!

It’s that time again…

My last Bikini Test Failure release, February’s Kiss Me Like You Mean It, seemed to be a bit of a watershed; for the first time since I began releasing music again last year (after a decade-long break) before I’d even begun to promote the track, DJs, playlisters and pundits picked up on it via Spotify and the usual channels - a most welcome change.

Over the next few weeks, I went ahead with my usual, old-fashioned radio promo plans, but beyond that initial flurry of interest, I mostly met with the usual, blistering indifference. The fans and champions I’d previously gained in Radioland knew about it already and despite a couple of thousand well-intentioned emails, I managed to add but a handful of new ones across the US and UK. I suppose there could have been a couple of hundred extra plays I never heard about but the truth is more likely to be that I never made it past a thousand Junk folders.

Not like The Old Days, eh?

So. THIS time around, as I released my latest single, Nobody Knows Anything, a 20^th anniversary, remultitracked, remade, replayed, remastered version of my first ever Bikini Test Failure song, (the title track of my first CD EP), I conducted an experiment:

NO PROMO!

My solitary Tweet was something like, “Shh! Bikini Test Failure is 20 years old! Here’s a new single…” Otherwise, just sit back, relax, see what happens.

Well, the results are in; what DID happen?

Somewhat surprisingly, absolutely nothing!

A handful of loyal listeners got in touch or playlisted the new song, but the respectable flood the last single self-induced was sadly missing.

It’s hard to know why. Did people prefer the first 30 seconds of the previous song more than this one? I doubt it. More likely, that was on a cold, dark Friday evening in February when staring at your phone was a more attractive prospect than it is in long, sunny evenings at the end of June. Can’t be sure though.

The writing was soon on the wall so I leapt in and quickly emailed my couple of hundred good friends in radio. Thankfully they instantly responded with plays, posts and playlistings. Release week had been rescued.

I've learned the lesson: whilst my audience and relationships are clearly growing, they're nowhere near the critical mass required to get off the ground. 

In short, as my pal from the studio days Parisson (and Curtis Mayfield!) says, keep on keeping on.

Does Anything Actually Matter More Than Music?

Well this one has been a while in the gestation… not because it’s been a difficult write, rather that I’ve been busier than a one-legged man at an arse-kicking contest over the past few weeks. 

Oh, and I had The Covids of course…

As inevitable as an iceberg breaking off the Greenland sheet at the same time the Titanic left its Belfast shipyard, when my mother was admitted to hospital in December following a minor fall, at the end of nine months in which she and I had so assiduously kept her (and me!) “safe”, it seemed predestined in her brief home-release at Christmas that she’d develop “a bit of an infection”.

It was Coronavirus of course and (after passing it on to me!) she sadly died on New Year’s Day, ten minutes before all her octogenarian friends received their first dose of the vaccine. Such is life (and death).

Besides working every job the so-called “Live Events Industry” could throw at me in this new Virtual World and looking after my Ma until her unfortunate demise, back in December, I’d scheduled the release of my new Bikini Test Failure single, “Kiss Me Like You Mean It” for the end of January.

By the time the big moment arrived, my plate was so full I barely noticed and honestly just thought, “Oh, forget it!”

But then something extraordinary happened. Somewhere in that (rare) moment of emotional extreme, far from ignoring the only truly creative, stress-relieving thing I’d done in the previous weeks, I decided to put it front and centre; grieving, funeral direction, house-clearing, work, could all go whistle and find their own place in my schedule; I had this lovely new tune to unleash on the world.

Then, perhaps predictably, the world of music took me over, calmed my soul and diminished any horror that was going on. Not for the first time my own musical outpourings, or those of a select few others instantly gave me that godlike perspective which is usually absent in times of personal distress.

And what’s that? Two people in Stoke-on-Trent have retweeted the link to my new video? Ahh. All better now.

Screaming Into The Abyss

Already six months after my last technically-qualified haircut, some might say I’d started to resemble a slightly less-approachable 1955 version of Dr. Emmett Brown, (although in reality I’m nearer in age to his 1985 self.) The evidence in the smashing little video I recently made for the latest Bikini Test Failure single makes it clear my Hugh Grant-esque, youthful good looks are now a distant memory. Post-session with my Amazon-purchased clippers and wearing my severe, black-framed Ray-Ban varifocals, the best I can aspire to these days is a Once-In-A-Lifetime-era David Byrne.
Said single, “Are We Having A Good Time Yet?” has been out and about for the nominal couple of months and whilst it is essentially a remake/remaster of a BTF golden oldie, to the current audience, some of whom were barely born when it was first released, it’s effectively a “new” single and I treated it as such when approaching radio stations and music reviewers. 
After the hard slog it took to research and contact these folk in March-April about the previous single “Uncomplimentary”, I’d imagined those weeks of effort might be compressible into a few days of swift communication this time around, but whilst information about US radio is plentiful, with details of specific “Music Directors”, the patchy nature of my UK files led me back to re-research stations down to DJ and individual show level; if “Radio Knutsford” has an alt.rock show at 11pm on a Wednesday evening but no Head of Music to speak to nor serviceable submission system, I need to try and find the actual human behind it. Tricky and very time-consuming. However, whether contacts were firm or fuzzy, it’s been a universally poor response across the board.
I’ve chosen tonight to close this promotional effort and take stock. Simpler than it sounds, but I’ve picked some representative measures and counted up the plays, views, reviews, friendly radio stations and stuck them in a spreadsheet in an attempt to glean any pattern of “progress” since “Uncomplimentary”.
Sad to say, whilst views of my lovely homemade video compare favourably with “Uncomplimentary” at this point in its cycle, and streams, followers and written reviews are up, that old-fashioned, most-fundamental measure of promotional success, “radio plays” barely crept beyond single figures both here and abroad.
Granted, there’s a lot going on in the world at the moment taking people’s attention away from the latest Bikini Test Failure masterpiece, but even so, my initial “comeback”, zero-level-starter single ("Uncomplimentary") had twice as much confirmed radio attention.  
“Are We Having A Good Time Yet?” originally featured on the first Bikini Test Failure CD, the “Nobody Knows Anything EP” released in 2001. When promoted in the shadow of the esoteric title song, “Nobody Knows Anything”, “AWHAGTY” garnered plays on around four HUNDRED radio stations, playlisted on many of them for several weeks. I’ve written here before about shows that once boasted tens of thousands of listeners, now taking their shoes and socks off to count them on fingers and toes. But wake up, James! This is the new “normal” after all!
Throughout August, I listened to Daniel Kitson’s excellent midnight show on Resonance FM. One night, broadcasting via laptop and phone from his campervan parked outside his friend, poet Tim Key's house, Tim mocked Daniel for knowing he had “at least 69 listeners” (based on the emails he’d received when asking earlier if the signal was working.) 
“Screaming into the abyss!” declared Tim. Good name for a Bikini Test Failure album.

 

How Do You Eat An Elephant?

Gosh, this “starting again from a fan-base of zero” malarkey is hard. Once upon a time, one play on my local station, Piccadilly Radio, Manchester, UK would garner more listeners than my entire Spotify back catalogue has had in the past ten years.

But one thing is for sure: for every audio stream of my last single, “Uncomplimentary” released into a world-on-the-brink of COVID-19, the accompanying video was watched five times. This could simply be down to the enormous popularity of its creator and star, “The Ape”, AKA DJ Alf Kremer, from KTCL Radio, Denver or its videographer Bryan Bugfrog but I have to also conclude, people would rather “watch” music these days.

So with the release of my follow-up single imminent, (fortuitously delayed as it turned out - it hadn't occurred to me that my distributor CDBaby would be inundated with new releases from fellow locked-down songwriters), I got my finger out and made a video for it.

The idea was effortless and had been at the top of the pile for twenty-five years, waiting to be made: me, playing all the instruments, a bit of singing, the odd lyric plastered on top. Simple. Obviously a video idea I could only use once, but valid and no better time to make it than now, whilst stuck at home.

The single itself, a re-multitracked, re-produced, re-mixed, re-mastered, 2020 version of one of my first and most-loved BTF songs, “Are We Having A Good Time Yet?” came out of the work I’ve begun to do, saving my Old Masters from their now obsolete recording formats (Roland VS and Fostex D-90 multitracks) potentially to use them as part of whatever technological setup I end up with, whenever I end up taking Bikini Test Failure out on the road, whether solo, with a couple of musicians or as a full band. Somehow, that glockenspiel will need to be heard and I don’t think I can justify the expense of a dedicated glockenspielerist.

Five minutes into scrolling through those now-un-synched instrument tracks I realised some of these songs really should be dusted-off, given a polish and shown the promotional light of day again. AWHAGTY is the first off-the-line and between releases of brand new songs I’m planning to renovate a few more.

But OH! the video. 

I’d set my parameters: it would all be filmed on an iPhone i6 (either on a tripod or using a Hohem gimbal), and edited in iMovie. I’d written a shooting script of sorts, which had thrown up a few additional “B-roll” ideas (“slow-motion falling and smashing beer bottle”) and whilst I tried really hard not to fall down the rabbit-hole of watching TOO many YouTube tutorials, it quickly became clear that if I were to try and chop the by now more than 50 performance clips together, I’d need software with more umph than iMovie offered. 

A quick download of the free and very excellent "Da Vinci Resolve 16" from Black Magic Design (plus several MORE tutorials) and I was ready, six weeks after I started filming, to start the edit.

When you take those 50 video tracks and chop them into 250 beat-synched clips, you soon realise you’ve just given yourself 12,500 editorial decisions to make - and that’s before you consider jamming in the near-100 “B-roll” clips you’ve come up with (“Some sheep, looking at the camera”).

But it turned out really well. Have a look!

So how do you eat an elephant? 

Answer: one small spoonful at a time.