So me and the wife were talking today about maybe trying to find ways of making more than £20 a year from making music. We both agreed that the first step involves expanding my audience beyond the safety and security (but relative obscurity) of the Elektronauts family. Given the current impossible nature of good old fashioned local gigging and grafting, the only real option is to create some social media profiles and network the shit out of it. Other than here, I’m only on YouTube, which I only use to post videos on here, so a bit of a cul de sac there.
Then we came up with the bright idea of signing up to Instagram, because I like making videos for my tracks, which is kinda what they do, right?
Anyway, long story short, I’ve signed up and posted two things and now I feel fucking sick because I’m going to have to go round social media following and liking people in the vain hope that they might follow and like me back and in turn might buy some of my fucking music, which I won’t be making as much of because I’ll be throwing all my spare time peering into the friend-smeared abyss of public self-harm that calls itself Instagram trying to get people I hate to like the me that I’m pretending to be.
Needless to say I’ve sacked that shit off.
Back to obscurity for me, after I’ve had a bloody good bath.
So my only real question is how do you guys on Instagram or wherever do what you do without becoming the news story that ends with “before turning the gun on himself”?
I just post little tidbits of music randomly. With proper hash tags, people can discover you. I’m very non participatory on there, which is probably why I don’t have a big following. Oh well. Just take the hands off approach like me, should gain a few followers here and there. Then link your Bandcamp page in your BIO and you may get a few sales.
You can either approach it in a way which goes against your personal values or you can use it exactly how you see fit.
You don’t have to play the IG game of hashtags and constant content and engagement.
But you can follow who you like, engage with them in their comments (people are pretty open there) and create a feed which is very specific to your interests.
Im not as disgusted by IG as FB… I’ve found some decent stuff on there.
If you don’t have the option of a physical network, social media is your next best shot at exposure.
Can relate to this on so many levels. I’m not social media savvy, I’m not even on any of them. Was prepared to go down the Instagram route once my album is ready but I’m already second guessing it. Would be so uncharacteristic of me and such an endless uphill battle - and for what? I can see what it’d do to me creatively, even beyond me wasting some of the little time I have for making music on something I fucking hate. Then again, maybe make a compromise and have a presence on Instagram, like @Cepheid suggested?
I’m no social media expert or bigshot, I only have around 500 instagram followers and about 4000 youtube followers, but I never use gimmicks or follow for follow BS, I just put content on there that I like and if other people like it enough to follow me then great. If I look on their profile and they interest me I follow back, if not then I don’t.
I think it can be easy to get into that high maintenance social media trap, but I think that a few that do that just end up being social media successful, the vast majority don’t though.
#bestranteverLMAO
Seriously though… couldn’t agree more.
What a heap of total bullshit hoops you’d be jumping through!
I’d have a hard time letting someone else manage ‘my’ social media too - I get why and how that can happen but hey isn’t that even worse - double faker.
as was your original
