Deflected!: Great Ways To Insult Your Fans.
Album sales are down. Record labels are tanking – the only way they can make money these days is to sue middle-aged women whose kids illegally download a couple Britney Spears songs. More people listen to music than ever, and yet all labels can think about is how to suck every goddamn penny out of every re-hashed and recycled sound-a-like band that they can until people are just fed up with it. We’ve come to and surpassed the corporate-arrogance tipping point long ago, and yet they keep piling up fresh insults, rubbing more salt into the wounds of the kids who fund their expense accounts.
White hot rage!
Nowadays, there are so many tools out there at your disposal as a musician that you don’t need a label, a marketing company, $20,000 to record an album, or half a million to promote it. You can rely on good old fashioned word of mouth. Except today it isn’t just word of mouth – it’s word of mouth on steroids. So why is it that bands who are still unsigned, have no shows booked, and have no major accomplishments to date are in such a hurry to place a gatekeeper between them and their fans? That’s right – I’m talking about deflecting me to a manager. I’m not trying to book you for a show, or sign you to a label. I just want to tell people that you probably haven’t reached out to before how great you are.
We’re not the oldest music site on the internet, or the most widely read. But in our few short years of existence we’ve amassed a fairly sizable following; we have a couple thousand people that visit our site on a regular basis and trust us to recommend music to them because we’re honest rock ‘n’ roll enthusiasts. So when all I want to do is tell the thousands of visitors we have per day on our website about how much I love a particular bands music, it’s not a bad idea to send a quick email saying “Thanks, here’s a .zip file with our music and a couple pictures to include in a post.” We’re not asking for anything besides what you’d gladly give a major magazine or blog, and the only difference is that we won’t embarrass you with stupid questions or try to psycho-analyze your music. And this isn’t just with unsigned bands who should be taking every opportunity for free promotion they can get – the problem is even more intense with mainstream bands that I have adored for the last 10 years and given up gas money, food, clothing, and just about everything else I can think of just to buy their album or go to their shows. If you’re a mid-size band with loyal fans, you should either be responding to tweets directed at you, including an email address on your website, or (at the very least) making sure your record company is responding to blogs that request information (that is a separate blog post for a different day – my main man Oswald Hobbes could surely wilt your boner with horror stories about attempting to contact “punk rock” record labels to -*gasp*- promote their bands).
All I want to do is tell the small audience I have amassed in 2 years of blogging that I’ve found a cool band you’ve probably never heard of and that you probably should check out, and here’s why they are awesome. Simple.
So why on earth do you not respond to countless emails, tweets, phone calls? Not even, “Sorry, we’re not touring so we’re not doing interviews,” which I would accept as an answer. Not even “Sorry, but you’re not big enough to cover us.” The best fucking part is that sometimes bands do respond to us and they then tell us to email their manager.
I’m sorry. I told you I was going to do a 300 word write up on you on my blog, not a cover shoot for Rolling Stone followed up with an acoustic set with Hayley Williams and Travis Barker. Answer my 5 questions and take 10 minutes to email me about your upcoming shows and albums, and I will tell my small army of music fans that your show is worth attending.
The thing that pisses me off most is that there are bands that are successful, that have been around for a long time, that have never had legit mainstream success, but have always been SO close to breaking out and taking over the world. The one thing they’re inevitably missing is that final push to get them over the tipping point. The thing they’re missing is those lifelong ambassadors, the superfans who have been with them since the beginning and who are still fighting for them.
Why? Cause you shut down their fan club. You ignored their emails. You didn’t release an album or have any fan interaction for years on end, and you failed to be human. You gave them press releases.
In “Third World” Timmy’s fantasy universe, the almost-big time bands would still interact with their fans. (Exhibit A: Hayley Williams of Paramore does this right. See also: Ted Leo, definitely among the world’s five greatest Tweeters.) If fucking Paramore has the time to interact with their fans amidst their grueling touring schedule, I’m pretty sure that four guys who just made it out of the basement last month can return an email without too much disruption. I’m not asking you to leave your girlfriend for me or invite me to your family reunion; just a quick response, some token participation to show that you take this shit seriously and that you actually want more people to hear your music.
The unsigned bands would stop fucking worrying about playing big time and answer my two or three emails and not forward me to a manager with a fucking Yahoo! email address because I mentioned the word ‘interview.’
I shit you not, this is an example of the kind of shit I have dealt with in the (recent) past:
Hey you guys are great! Heard your single somehow/someway and saw you live and thought it was even better! I’d love to do a quick write up, or maybe ask you a few questions about the band, and link to anything you’ve got in the works, and possibly put you in a larger round up of up and coming punk rock groups.
-”Third World” Timmy
The band’s response
Hey thanks for the kind words! We’re definitely excited to get something going on your site. Could you possibly contact our manager? He’s a better person to talk to about this stuff.
I’m sorry, a better person than the band themselves? What’s he going to do, exactly? Give me permission to ask you questions after I already asked you? Ask how much traffic our website gets? Find out if we’ll hand out flyers for you? I really just don’t fucking get what else he could answer for me that you can’t answer in a 10 sentence email. The manager’s response, from a Yahoo email address:
Thank you for expressing interest in our band. The reason behind you contacting me is that I handle all media including any kind of interview. The band is excited to be on your website, and feel free to contact them to further your write up of the band. If you have any questions or concerns contact me at your convenience.
Gee, thanks. As soon as you start putting more layers of abstraction between yourselves and your fans, you look stupid. (Hey, guys – Oswald here. Just wanted to point out that not only is the manager’s response superfluous and high-handed ["feel free" to talk to the band? I'm not trying to set up an interview with Fidel Castro over here], it’s also retarded. Since I don’t know what would possess an unknown band to waste money on a manager, I’ll go out on a limb and guess that it’s because you want a veneer of professionalism and class to impress people. This band obviously chose the wrong dude.)
Another question I’ve been asked many times when I’ve expressed interest in sponsoring young bands struggling to make a name for themselves: “So, what does this mean you want to sponsor the band? What do they have to do exactly?” My response: “We want to give them free stuff. That is all. Maybe let us snap some photos of the band while they’re on stage. That’s about it.”
98% of the bands I’ve been in contact with are awesome. This isn’t a perfect world, and not everyone knows what the rules are so, in an attempt to appear as professional as possible, they’ve made themselves look like assholes. Next time you’re trying to negotiate a record deal, or a sticky PR situation, by all means consult your manager, or your PR person. If you need a tour planned, by all means, a Tour Manager is the way to go. But for fucks sake, we’re basically music fans who spend a bit of free time writing about bands we like. (Oswald again: I think what Tim is trying to say here, through his thick red screen of rage, is this: Act like a person. It’s that simple. We are a few guys that work our asses off running a blog that aims to share the gospel of rock with people on the internet; we’re not slimy industry insiders. Before you give us the brush-off, take a look at our site. Spend a few minutes to understand what we do here, and the amount of space we give away – this is called “free promotion” – to up-and-coming bands that we find by going to shows and scouring the internet. If you honestly don’t want to be a part of it, then say that; we won’t get offended. But have the decency to check us out and then respond like normal people instead of turning us away like we’re diseased and it’s catching.)
I’ll close this out with a quick passage of what I read from Seth Godin’s interview on Derek Sivers’ blog
“Get over the idea that your success is equated with selling the right to listen, or selling control over when people listen. Relinquish the opportunity to make money by controlling who can listen and when. That’s gone. It’s over. It would be like a bakery selling the right to sniff the fresh bread or a wine maker selling the right to look at the cool label. It’s now a public good, something you see as you walk by.What you can sell, what you better be able to sell, is intimacy. It’s interactions in public. Souvenirs. Limited things of value. Experiences. Memories. People will pay for those things, IF: your art is actually great and if you make it possible for them to buy them. If it’s great, let it go. You’ll do fine. If it’s not great, figure out what great is and do that.”
Also: don’t give a middle-finger to people who are trying to help you; don’t be arrogant. You’re not Fall Out Boy yet, and with a shitty attitude, you never will be.
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About the Author
Tim is the co-owner of Assault, and tends to think he can party twice as hard as anyone. Follow him on twitter @assault Email this Author | All posts by tim
Unbelievable! I can’t imaging behaving like that in this day n age.
Trust me, any help and interest you’ve shown with us is HUGELY appreciated!