Dubstepforum.com

Earjax wrote:hate what soundcloud has turned into these days...its hard enough to break through all the rubbish and get noticed as it is without sites like these

The mistake is thinking of soundcloud as a place to get famous in the first place. It is a place where people can listen to your songs for free. Getting those people to those tracks is your problem.

soundcloud is good for creating awarness of ur tunes but thats about it im afraid,

its the same with all these type of "social media" sites, if u dont join from the beginning u gotta a hell of a lot of catching up to do//

Acidhedz wrote:From a psychological stand point people have become programed to think if a lot of people seem to like it, it must be worth paying attention to.

The vast majority of people don't know anything about music, they follow popularity, then their own personal taste, then worry about how good it is.
I have talked to grindcore metal fans that will listen to complete garbage just because it's in that style, same with punk and any number of other genre's.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

On a related note, I recently got a spam email from an organization which offered to get me over 1000 more followers on Soundcloud for $30.

I'm good. I try not to follow very many people on soundcloud, because I like to think that my meager amount of followers actually follow me because they like my music, rather than wanting me to follow them etc etc etc


I see a lot of people who have like 2,000 followers on soundcloud but then I look at how many people they follow and it's something like double that. That doesn't really mean anything to me, it just means that they manage to get a lot of people to do that "you follow me I'll follow you deal."

No hate to people who do that, it's just not right for me.

Acidhedz wrote:I looked it up on google, and near as I can see it is a stupid song, I meant I don't understand what you mean in context to what i wrote.
I explained why a service like that could be useful, so your reply is nonsensical to me at best, and just plain trolling at worst.

i should explain, i mean that she never would have gotten famous and people wouldnt be liking her tracks if it wasnt for the mass hype that got created around her, like what happened with skrillex, but yeah its just generally a song that needs to be banned

How about this: You're only "successful" or "popular" or whatever if people compliment your stuff and ask for your music in real life. Online popularity/plays/etc. don't mean shit, I mean look at St. Eden (not to be "that guy", but this is just an example). How many of those YouTube commenters saying "MOAR EPIC DEN DA TIME I FARTED IN MY GRANDMAS DOG!!!" would actually buy a Mt. Eden song or actually attend (and pay for) a Mt. Eden gig?

That's why my only real judge of if my song is good or not is how well people are reacting to it on the dancefloor, cuz in the end that's all that really matters. Yeah, Soundcloud/Youtube plays are nice, but very very few of those translate into anything worthwhile.

Very few people will take the time to comment/whatever on your song, and even fewer of those comments are actually sincere.

who the fuck are st eden?

Nevalo wrote:who the fuck are st eden?

Sorry, meant Mt. Eden.. I don't listen to them..

Fixed

all good

InternetSlaveMaster wrote:How about this: You're only "successful" or "popular" or whatever if people compliment your stuff and ask for your music in real life. Online popularity/plays/etc. don't mean shit, I mean look at St. Eden (not to be "that guy", but this is just an example). How many of those YouTube commenters saying "MOAR EPIC DEN DA TIME I FARTED IN MY GRANDMAS DOG!!!" would actually buy a Mt. Eden song or actually attend (and pay for) a Mt. Eden gig?

That's why my only real judge of if my song is good or not is how well people are reacting to it on the dancefloor, cuz in the end that's all that really matters. Yeah, Soundcloud/Youtube plays are nice, but very very few of those translate into anything worthwhile.

Very few people will take the time to comment/whatever on your song, and even fewer of those comments are actually sincere.

I would agree, although they aren't 100% meaningless

theres a big difference between people who like your stuff enough to hit replay and people who like you stuff enough to hit purchase...

Sonika wrote:

InternetSlaveMaster wrote:How about this: You're only "successful" or "popular" or whatever if people compliment your stuff and ask for your music in real life. Online popularity/plays/etc. don't mean shit, I mean look at St. Eden (not to be "that guy", but this is just an example). How many of those YouTube commenters saying "MOAR EPIC DEN DA TIME I FARTED IN MY GRANDMAS DOG!!!" would actually buy a Mt. Eden song or actually attend (and pay for) a Mt. Eden gig?

That's why my only real judge of if my song is good or not is how well people are reacting to it on the dancefloor, cuz in the end that's all that really matters. Yeah, Soundcloud/Youtube plays are nice, but very very few of those translate into anything worthwhile.

Very few people will take the time to comment/whatever on your song, and even fewer of those comments are actually sincere.

I would agree, although they aren't 100% meaningless

Well no, but for the sake of argument and example they are. I'm not sure how many comments I've got, but such a small majority of them are actually meaningful that it's safe to say most aren't. (Again, not saying I don't appreciate all my comments or anything like that, even the pointless comments make me tremendously happy, but striving towards Soundcloud comments and internet popularity shouldn't be people's ultimate goal, that's my point.)

The internet should just be the means to an end.

Just my two cents

ehbrums1 wrote:theres a big difference between people who like your stuff enough to hit replay and people who like you stuff enough to hit purchase...

id say these days its more along the lines of how many people show up to see you play

I would agree that getting bigger numbers is mostly pointless, except for helping a track to appear more popular. Which can be useful if used at the right time. However, quality is not what determines success, and selling albums or singles is not the only way to make money.

Quality wise all I have to work with is acid music studio, a 10$ crap mic, and a 6 year old computer. Yet I managed to impress a friend of mine with the album I'm working on who is an unapologetically blunt audiophile. So my work is not bad. I still can't get anyone to pay attention to my stuff on youtube or soundcloud because I don't have any notoriety, or hype. I know it only takes one person to really like something you made, to be your first superfan, but it can take forever to find that person doing things the slow, hard way.

Sorry, but the days of the best rising to the top are done. You want fame and fortune? You gotta pay for it, which is why I'm trying to get the funding on kickstarter to get my album finished, mastered and promoted properly.

On the money side of things, I've been doing online marketing almost as long as I've been doing music production. I'm too impatient to do it properly since most of it is tedious, repetitive, boring work, that may not pay off for months, if at all. I do know plenty about how things work, so I do my own shirt designs, have affiliate marketing on my site, can make money off youtube, possibly even ringtones off reverbnation. Things that tie into my music, but are not totally dependent on it. I also have two books self published on amazon that have nothing to do with music. Plus a membership on the site for teaching online marketing to producers and musicians. I've always been better at teaching some things than doing them.

I know what I'm doing, and have been working at it for a long time, the only thing I can't seem to achieve is the spark to light off the powder keg.

Point being to all this is I can't do live shows. I have to make things work online. So I do the online equivalent to playing monkey boy for a crowd, and if I have to lie, cheat and work it like Machiavelli now and again then so be it. I am broke, have no hope of finding employment, am living with my disabled mother and her best friend, on a fixed income and my website hosting runs out in a few months. I can't just wait around forever trying to make the perfect song to put out at the perfect time, or hoping a big name DJ finds one of my songs and digs it enough to play at some shows.

So ISM, the problem isn't with trying to make it online, the problem is not doing it the right way. If you're doing it the right way it's just a matter of getting the ball rolling down the mountain.

And accordianfan, you think this stuff is boring? If you ever get to the point where you have to do real PR and promotional stuff you better find yourself a really good manager you trust. Me, I prefer to have a handle on how things work so I can keep an eye on things myself. If you have no intention of trying to get somewhere with your music, then shut up and let the big boys talk.

I'm not in your situation, so I can't really judge, but that seems like a sort of short-sighted strategy in my opinion.

I've been working on my overall plan for over a year. It only seems short sighted because I'm trying to pull the trigger on the whole thing now. The album is good enough to get the attention I need to start moving my career in a more professional direction. I don't need a run away hit, I just need to find the start of a core audience. So really my plan is quite long term.

In a lot of ways doing online marketing, and promotion is like producing a song. You can sometimes work on the song forever but it never seems finished, and you can't figure out what it needs to make it complete. I have everything set up, but getting the ball to start rolling eludes me.

I am also a doom sayer, and worrier. So I tend to feel like the world is out to get me, that everything is going to fall apart on me tomorrow and generally stress about everything. Which comes across in how I talk.

ah, I see.

Is it still fun for you? It seems like it's pretty stressful, if it's not fun for you, then you should try something else. The music industry is not an industry that you want to enter right now if you're looking to make some money.

I love making music. That's why I try so hard with it. I am manic depressive and have a lot of social hang-ups, plus I hate working for people. So other than some possibilities with other website ventures, this is all I have going for me. Wichita's economy is heavily dependent on the airline industry so it's been bad since 9/11, now Boeing is pulling out after 85 years, and taking over 2100 more jobs with it. So finding a job is pretty much a bust even if I could force myself to try job hunting again. If I could get some gear to do live shows I might be able to get something going with that, but we don't have much of a club scene and from what I can tell the DJ's are mostly of the hit spinner variety.

I know it's hard to make money from music, especially they way I'm doing things, that's why my primary concern for now is using the music to pull traffic to my site. Once I have a steady stream of people coming there I have several ways to earn money.

Fair play.
Good luck and don't kill yourself over it! Just try to have as much fun as possible

You can just buy pussy and avoid all that middle ground if you wanna take this route..