5 Tips for Finding Your Online Voice

No matter the style of content you find most effective with your fans – blogging, tweeting, videos, photos, Vines, etc. – one thing remains certain: You must be consistent in your voice in order to build long-term connections with your fans.

This voice will become the building blocks for your brand both online and off, and will ultimately become the way your existing fans, new fans and the community at large identify with you as a unique presence. In other words, finding an online voice that best suits you is the first step to ensuring you are, to paraphrase Seth Godin, remarkable and not invisible.

Though there are a seemingly infinite number of ways to arrive at your own voice, here are five tips to help you focus in on what may come to define your voice later on:

Click to read more ...

How Important is a Lyric Anyway?!

I am about to propose that lyrics are perhaps less important than one may first think. I’ll admit, I am playing devils advocate a little because we all know that lyrics are very important, but stick with me, I may have a point and it may throw up a nice debate!

The overwhelming majority of people will say that the lyrics are the most important part of a song. They’ll claim that the lyrics are the thing they like most about a given song, especially a ballad.

This afternoon I played devils advocate with my girlfriend who told me how she loves Stevie Wonders’ “Over Joyed”. I agree with her that the song is awesome, but I wanted to know why she likes the song so much. She told me that the lyrics are beautiful and explained that the lyrics are the primary reason she loves listening to the song.

I proposed that the lyrics play a tiny role in why she likes the song. I explained that if we took the lyrics and sung them in a grungy, upbeat punk way (which I know she dislikes) then the lyrics would carry no meaning and she would avoid listening to the song!

Click to read more ...

Your Band Is Building a Name For Itself. So Where's The Money?

I was reading a New Rockstar Philosophy blog post this morning and it got me thinking.

The post was suggesting that major web media could theoretically perform the role previously performed by the major record labels. They are well-placed to get your band exposure, and have pockets filled with gold, in the same sort of way that the majors used to.

At the same time, there are a number of blog posts and tweets out today questioning whether downloading is dead, and suggesting that people can’t even be bothered to steal music anymore, let alone buy it!

Click to read more ...

Soul Tarmac

If you didn’t take a picture or make a video did you see it?  The other day I found myself walking past a house with windows open, a small choir practising inside, something vaguely modern.  My first thought was “I wish I’d brought my iPhone so I could record it and take a picture of the window through which the music came”.

I don’t imagine I had the same feelings at 16 about pop music as did someone born in 1900 and I don’t imagine young people feel the same about pop music as I did.  But.  There seems to be a movement towards admiration of craft and delivery that reflects the insistence of pop guru futurists that artists make sure they have a lot of interesting shit to show, as well as their fine faces and wonderful music.  That is, that we like the music, OK, but what sets artists apart is how and what they show about how they live and make their art.

And there are two strands appearing.  The first is the pure pop model that is as wet and spongey with its emotional and visual content as hard core porn.  Have a look at the Kate Perry Making Of… videos.  It’s not what she says or how she acts, it’s the actual tiredness in the eyes after a long shoot and the walking out of studio light into shadow.  You never used to see that.  The Monkeys did it in their incredible pop deconstruction film, Head, but who saw that?  The Beatles tried it but it always came off cute.  Both were scripted.  I don’t think Perry faked it, indeed, that would be directing and acting worthy of a Cassavetes film.  With the connivance of people like Perez Hilton the emotional pimples of superpop people are becoming as essential as the Max Factor that covers the physical ones up for the photo shoot.

Click to read more ...