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Art and Artist Input: It's All About Leverage
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As you know, the fuzz community of artists is growing at such a rate that enhanced "music discovery" tools beyond just the typical "check me out" entreaties are critical to aid us in finding music that we like [which is in the final analysis key to an artist's success].
There simply is too much music being added to all of the music websites, including fuzz [particularly with the well-publicized troubles and cut-backs at the major labels], to sort through without the assistance of others in aid of music discovery.
Preliminary to my comments below, let's review my quick take on the Stages Of Artist Development, which are pretty much common-sense, but bear with me:
1. Stage One. This is a preliminary and essentially one-way stage: The amateur artist-in-making [maybe] essentially says to his/her unknown audience without any focus, "Please Check Me Out", or words to that effect [politely or obtrusively]. Every artist probably goes through this god-awful beginning stage by definition. [Although it is tiresome to the outside world, I think we should be somewhat patient with this, unless it becomes abusive spam].
2. Stage Two. This is theOne-To-One stage: Certainly better than Stage One - at least there is the beginning of a two-way relationship between artist and fan; but, for the artist, it is difficult to get noticed and, for fans, virtually impossible to find artists except by random chance.
3. Stage Three. TheOne-To-Few stage: This involves primarily an artist, family and friends. Most artists get stuck here and never get to even the "semi-pro" level.
4. Stage Four. The all-important One-To-Many stage in artist development: This is the critical stage to professional success. Most semi-pro artists standing on the shoulders of family and friends do not know how to get to this one-to-many stage and just give up or run out of staying power [energy or cash]. This is the true "sweet spot" of music discovery [in its potential rather than fruition] and is where lessons at the Nightschool For Entrepreneurs provide most focus. If artists learn how to leverage their art to achieve one-to-many exposure and acceptance, the last stage of Artist nirvana will come.
5. Stage Five. Many-To-Many: Artist's Nirvana, but, to repeat, Stage Four is tough and most don't move on to Stage Five.
Recently, I have been experimenting with the "Playlist" feature at fuzz to see if we can get more juice out of this function beyond just creating a detachable player for pleasureable listening to music and sharing with immediate friends. In my view, to have fuzz evolve to become an effective music discovery platform for artists at Stages Two and Three to find firm footing at Stage Four will require more collaborative effort of both artists and fans interacting in a engaged way and, importantly, expanding beyond a "one-on-one" relationship to a "one-to-many" zone of exposure and possibility. The Playlist pages lend themselves to this communal undertaking more than PM's and one-on-one blogs IMHO and, most certainly, the collaborative approach is a better way to go than the one-way entreaties for attention.
If artists and fans can learn to collaborate on the development of playlists, lessons learned with these playlists beyond just being "lists" can be applied to the Mixtapes which in turn are more readily embeddable in other places such as, importantly, MySpace and Facebook, and thus have more "viral possiblilities" by providing artist exposure at greater leverage to reach the elusive Stage Five artist's nirvana of "many-to-many"exposure. It is important to note in this connection that going directly to MySpace or Facebook, without a triangulation of fuzz as a collaborative platform also gets one mired in Stage One - not too cool.
I believe that a major reason why, to date, "viral marketing" is a failed promise of the much hyped Web 2.0 is that the "many-to-many" zone of lift-off will never happen for most artists [at fuzz or anywhere else] if artists and their web-based platform of choice remain stuck in the "check me out" Stage One mode of marketing. Digital accessibility and an environment of "communications for free" are both the bane and the promise of the modern era as the old music ecosystem breaks down. We have to learn what artist/fan collaboration really entails in the new era before we can move to even the next stage [see Stages Two and Three above].
At my playlist, Epic/Experimental Sounds, I have attempted to get the artist's direct input to the listener compilation [Playlists and eventually the Mixtapes] with the thought that it would help both (1)the artists on the chosen list to be seen and heard above the crowd [we should all make more of these playlists and Mixtapes] and (2) the potential growing list of fans in the all-important "music discovery" process, by adding interactive and incremental content beyond mere compilation.
This raises a number of related philosophical, but to me, academic rather than practical questions in "value-creation": How should artists present their art? Is it best for a work of art to speak for itself? Does one compromise the artistic endeavor by "adding color" through incremental comment?
The foregoing obviously are trick questions akin to the one about the tree falling, unseen and unheard, in the forest. Did it happen? Does it matter? Let's just get on with it and find better direction and solutions for the future of music in the Long Tail era. Onwards and upwards to Stage Five and excellence.
There simply is too much music being added to all of the music websites, including fuzz [particularly with the well-publicized troubles and cut-backs at the major labels], to sort through without the assistance of others in aid of music discovery.
Preliminary to my comments below, let's review my quick take on the Stages Of Artist Development, which are pretty much common-sense, but bear with me:
1. Stage One. This is a preliminary and essentially one-way stage: The amateur artist-in-making [maybe] essentially says to his/her unknown audience without any focus, "Please Check Me Out", or words to that effect [politely or obtrusively]. Every artist probably goes through this god-awful beginning stage by definition. [Although it is tiresome to the outside world, I think we should be somewhat patient with this, unless it becomes abusive spam].
2. Stage Two. This is theOne-To-One stage: Certainly better than Stage One - at least there is the beginning of a two-way relationship between artist and fan; but, for the artist, it is difficult to get noticed and, for fans, virtually impossible to find artists except by random chance.
3. Stage Three. TheOne-To-Few stage: This involves primarily an artist, family and friends. Most artists get stuck here and never get to even the "semi-pro" level.
4. Stage Four. The all-important One-To-Many stage in artist development: This is the critical stage to professional success. Most semi-pro artists standing on the shoulders of family and friends do not know how to get to this one-to-many stage and just give up or run out of staying power [energy or cash]. This is the true "sweet spot" of music discovery [in its potential rather than fruition] and is where lessons at the Nightschool For Entrepreneurs provide most focus. If artists learn how to leverage their art to achieve one-to-many exposure and acceptance, the last stage of Artist nirvana will come.
5. Stage Five. Many-To-Many: Artist's Nirvana, but, to repeat, Stage Four is tough and most don't move on to Stage Five.
Recently, I have been experimenting with the "Playlist" feature at fuzz to see if we can get more juice out of this function beyond just creating a detachable player for pleasureable listening to music and sharing with immediate friends. In my view, to have fuzz evolve to become an effective music discovery platform for artists at Stages Two and Three to find firm footing at Stage Four will require more collaborative effort of both artists and fans interacting in a engaged way and, importantly, expanding beyond a "one-on-one" relationship to a "one-to-many" zone of exposure and possibility. The Playlist pages lend themselves to this communal undertaking more than PM's and one-on-one blogs IMHO and, most certainly, the collaborative approach is a better way to go than the one-way entreaties for attention.
If artists and fans can learn to collaborate on the development of playlists, lessons learned with these playlists beyond just being "lists" can be applied to the Mixtapes which in turn are more readily embeddable in other places such as, importantly, MySpace and Facebook, and thus have more "viral possiblilities" by providing artist exposure at greater leverage to reach the elusive Stage Five artist's nirvana of "many-to-many"exposure. It is important to note in this connection that going directly to MySpace or Facebook, without a triangulation of fuzz as a collaborative platform also gets one mired in Stage One - not too cool.
I believe that a major reason why, to date, "viral marketing" is a failed promise of the much hyped Web 2.0 is that the "many-to-many" zone of lift-off will never happen for most artists [at fuzz or anywhere else] if artists and their web-based platform of choice remain stuck in the "check me out" Stage One mode of marketing. Digital accessibility and an environment of "communications for free" are both the bane and the promise of the modern era as the old music ecosystem breaks down. We have to learn what artist/fan collaboration really entails in the new era before we can move to even the next stage [see Stages Two and Three above].
At my playlist, Epic/Experimental Sounds, I have attempted to get the artist's direct input to the listener compilation [Playlists and eventually the Mixtapes] with the thought that it would help both (1)the artists on the chosen list to be seen and heard above the crowd [we should all make more of these playlists and Mixtapes] and (2) the potential growing list of fans in the all-important "music discovery" process, by adding interactive and incremental content beyond mere compilation.
This raises a number of related philosophical, but to me, academic rather than practical questions in "value-creation": How should artists present their art? Is it best for a work of art to speak for itself? Does one compromise the artistic endeavor by "adding color" through incremental comment?
The foregoing obviously are trick questions akin to the one about the tree falling, unseen and unheard, in the forest. Did it happen? Does it matter? Let's just get on with it and find better direction and solutions for the future of music in the Long Tail era. Onwards and upwards to Stage Five and excellence.
Comments
I think it's a good idea to work with the playlist and mixtape opportunities presented at Fuzz to further music discovery for it's members and listeners.
But I believe it's even more important to make as many attempts as possible to garner web and public radio airplay for one's works.
This is something that major and independent labels do for their artists. But it has now become something that the indie artist must do for themselves. It certainly is possible to have one's music discovered in a gated community such as Fuzz. But the many playlists available at the thousands of web and public radio stations who are urgently seeking new airplay ready works from artists, can give an artist a chance of widespread discovery, and an opportunity to enter the above mentioned stage five.
BB
I agree with BB that artists should explore multiple outlets to gain airplay since you never know what will strike the listeners fancy and eventually draw them to your art. However, I think the strictly "broadcast media" platforms such as radio and TV, being essentially a one-way mode of artist-to-fan connection [with the intervention of DJ commentary and the occasional interview], will not adequately address the Long Tail environment of limitless variety and choice we have today.
Clift also makes a telling point that I never thought about before that the record industry had in the past controlled the keys to the kingdom by establishing a "de facto" standard of aural excellence that could only be produced in their own shops. This is perhaps the logical consequence of the music industry relying on the one-way broadcast modality in the past to achieve one-to-many leverage, that is, the artist producing the best possible recording [according to the holders of the keys to the kingdom] and then utilizing a broadcast media to give it airplay to largely passive listeners. Clif's new "quantitative-based approach" to music generation bears watching. In fairness, this characterization does not mean that quantity is devoid of quality, but rather that chasing perfection may be a non-commercial and philosophical conceit - in this connection see my blog on Velocity vs Margin].
To reinforce the main point of my blog above on Artist Leverage with a developing example: I suggested that in the Long Tail era we need a more interactive "two-way" modality of artist interacting with fans and thereafter leveraging the "magic" of that interaction somehow [no-one yet knows how to package the interaction and make it scaleable]. This is the "failed promise" of the Music/Web 2.0 hype - so far [with apologies, the fuzz tech folk despise the term "2.0", but, hey, I'm a layman]. We need to keep experimenting until we find a "2.0 business model" that works, first, at the individual/local level, even if, as Clif suggests in some of his other postings, the undertaking is a more quantity-driven "trial and error" approach - [Lot's of clay to work with here in refining our assumptions about what will work best in the future.]
My ongoing experiment with a more interactive artist/fan playlist, such as the one at Playlist: "Epic/Experiment Sounds" is one of those "trial-and-error" undertakings. The additional input of artist feedback [in this case (so far) by Gavern and Locust 66] to a fan-initiated playlist adds immeasurably to appreciation and enjoyment of the playlist and represents an inter-active "two-way" artist/fan connection [check it out].
As to how to make this "scaleable" in a new business model in the Long Tail era, if the fuzz folks can then incorporate the essence of this kind of artist/fan value-added interaction in the Mixtape [and they tell me they are working on it], the artist and/or fans can take the "magic of the connectivity" in an embeddable Mixtape and repost it in countless other websites, and some of that magic will surely take hold in serendipitous ways to benefit both the artist and music discovery and appreciation.