I wasn’t sure if I should start or end this with an emotional outburst…. lol… AAARRRRGH!
I think that’s pirate speak for…. AAAARRRRRRGH! Lol…..
but seriously…. it’s complicated. I mean, the music business that continues to grow in the modern landscape. What’s making it complicated is the amount of information, and sometimes dis-information, that today’s artist is overwhelmed with.
There’s also trying to decide if you should even bother to pay attention to all this information. It’s not just information that comes in… it’s also all the outgoing information. Today’s music fan and the websites they frequent are totally content driven. The newest content appearing at the top of the page. Then we add in all these “cookies” and “algorithms” that give priority to all this content based on what these mathmatical critics determine to be the most relevant to the interest of the readers/viewers/listeners and it starts to get complicated.
But wait…. because it doesn’t end there…..
Statistics….. these little computer critics also do another interesting thing. They help other computer programs generate statistics. Stuff like, what got listened to. How many people read what. What kind of content attracts the most traffic. How many people saw the latest blog posting of “The Unsigned Mind….” yeah, stuff like that…. which begs….. is there anybody out there?…..
On one site we’ve had a song in the top 100 world wide for months. It even went as high as number 11 or something like that. So, what does that mean…..?
Well….. it means that a lot of people that visit that site listened to the song. And honestly, that’s about it. Well, that and we get bragging rights to the ranking. It hasn’t put not one single penny in our pockets though….
Over all we are overwhelmed by all this influx of statistical information. So much so that it would drive a person crazy. Not to mention the stress caused when you see a dip in the progress of all this statistical information. I mean, this crap can cause a serious anxiety attack….. if you’re interested in such things.
As for me….. HECK YEAH I’M INTERESTED!
I could founder on numbers every day. I live to wake up and check our Reverb Nation Ranking, The Number One Music Charts, how many views our most recent Facebook post had. How many new “Likes”, our Twitter followers….. It’s just an endless nightmare of information.
Then there’s all the “linking” this stuff together so all these algorithms and cookies and websites and Google and Yahoo and Ask Jeeves and such talk to each other…… It almost makes each post take on a life of its own. Then you review all the site statistics and numbers and graphs and charts to see what people like and what they don’t so you can change how you post things…..
Heck, some of this stuff even changes based on what time you post. For instance, did you know the average life expectancy of a facebook post is only 4 hours? Yeah, me neither…. heck, some days my coffee last longer than that…… well, except that recently I’ve been informed that my days of caffeine enjoyment are OVER!….
DANG IT MAN…….
But I guess that’s another post for another day…..
What it all boils down to is this. Musicians will do almost anything to try and get noticed. We’re an unsightly crew and we thrive on attention. Well, everyone except the beautiful lady that plays mandolin in The Captain Ledge Band……. BUT, it is just amazing all the information that the Unsigned Musician is overwhelmed with. There’s all the stuff above plus more…. for instance. For some reason the “Likes” on our facebook page skyrocketed from teenage girls in Istanbul, Turkey at one point. There were several thousand of them and it happened without explanation. You should have seen all the numbers coming in as it was happening. I got so excited that there was serious danger of soiling articles of clothing….
But ultimately it slowed down, then has begun to reverse its self. BUT it sure was exciting while it was going on. I believe that’s called an “Anomolay” in statistical terms…..
It’s also enough to make a musician even crazier…..
I’m going to finish this up with one little thought….
If you see a particular sailing musician walking around in a daze completely unaware of his surroundings….. well, be nice, he’s just trying to understand what all those numbers floating around inside his “Neurologically Poor” mind really mean…..