We do need curators, but we don't need gatekeepers or why you should stop using Pandora

Allegedly, Pandora now controls 3.6% of radio listening. This is an impressive figure, but, to me, a disturbing one. We’ve all spent the last few years touting how the Internet has changed music distribution and flattened the playing field so that everyone has equal access to distribution. Traditional terrestrial radio, with ever-shrinking playlists that contain almost new music certainly aren’t designed to appeal to a future audience, they are designed to grasp onto a shrinking past audience.

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Seven Rules for Effective Social Networking For Artists

Whenever I read about effective social networking for artists, I see the same few discussions concentrating primarily on examples of people who had traction prior to the use of social networks and found that they were able to continue to build their fan base using these tools.  

Amanda Palmer is the most common example.  She is excellent at engaging her fans and followers, but she has many of those fans and followers because of the significant backing of a label.  While her path is interesting, and it does provide useful lessons for artists just starting out, I don’t think all of her techniques and approaches apply to the beginner.  As such, my goal here is to discuss some of the things that I, as a more unknown artist, have found effective in building and maintaining a modest following.

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Microfunding Is The Future of Labels! (...But Kickstarter Is The Wrong Model For Bands)

By now we’ve all at least heard about Kickstarter. Many of us have helped to fund projects. I’ve supported 5 or 6 myself. The best I can discern is that Kickstarter projects follow one of thee models. The explanations are a bit long, but I hope to tie this back into music and into why I believe the Kickstarter models are mostly not the correct models for funding recordings, but are great models for other types of projects.

Additionally, if I ran Kickstarter, I’d disallow projects that did not meet a stricter set of guidelines because I believe that many projects that are on the site actually damage the Kickstarter brand and the entire concept of microfunding. I end this post with a proposal for a new fan-investment label model that I believe is viable, won’t burn out fan interest in investment, and inherently creates a dedicated “street-team” to help bands promote their work. Let’s start with my taxonomic breakdown of Kickstarter models:

Model 1 - Donation / Support

These projects are designed to produce art, ideas, operations, movements, or objects that supporters want the world to have. These notions (I’ve decided to use the term “notion” to describe everything in this category) are not really owned by any of the supporters and the supporters’ only reward is that they get to know in their warm, fuzzy hearts, that they helped make an otherwise impossible notion come into being.

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