Warning: If You're Just Online Because You Think You Have To Be, You're Screwed

Don't break your keys in frustration...

Photo Credit: thms.nl

Yes it's true. You do need to be online if you want any measurable success in the music industry. Its by far the most effective and sustainable platform to connect with your fans. But if you're just online for the sake of it, you're not only limiting your potential success you could be doing some damage.

Anyone can set up a blog, forum, twitter, facebook, or even release their music free. But if you don't know why you're doing these things, or know what you should be able to achieve with such tactics you will end up wasting your time, your money. Or worse, you could damage your reputation.

You look at the success people are having with their twitter accounts, blogs, and their free music ventures. You try replicate them. You setup a twitter account, but you post rarely and its usually boring inane comments (but thats what twitter is, right? Please note the sarcasm there). You have a blog, that you haven't touched in years. It's full of juvenile comments that you either haven't moderated or responded to. Finally you release your music free, and expect the world.

But none of the success you were hoping for comes. So the model must be shit, and only work for people with already huge fanbases.

The Cargo Cult of Internet Success

In reality you joined the cargo cult. Imitating the external, superficial effects of a strategy, without understanding the true causation. That is, not knowing why that strategy actually works in the first place. If this is you, don't feel to bad. The major labels are in this cult as well, all their money and power obviously can't buy them intelligence or success.

That's precisely what this blog is all about. Understanding why these strategies work. Most of the success comes from hours of extra work you wouldn't even know about.

There's two things you can do. First you can continue copying the superficial effects of others, like paying for twitter followers for example. Giving away your music and leaving it at that. Not having any more contact with your fans. Or worse, releasing your music on iTunes and disappearing from the internet. You can keep having a lame boring blog full of comments better suited to YouTube or Digg.

Don't feel discouraged by this post, its merely a reality check

Or, you can open your eyes and look beyond the metrics. Look beyond trying to have 10,000 followers or 50,000 RSS subscribers, or 20,000 sales. Analyse how others do it. Imogen Heap has over a million followers on twitter. But why? Becuase for her, fans are friends.

Trent Reznor has built a massive active community on his website. He has a blog and a forum, should you? A blog yes, but initially a forum would not be the best move. If it sits quiet, it is essentially abandoned. Which does nothing but discourage people to post. You could replicate his entire website overnight (superficial result), but you can't replicate his community overnight (the underling cause). A community takes time to develop.

This is Just a Reality Check

Don't feel discouraged by this post, its merely a reality check. All this takes time. In my (anecdotal and empirical) experience it takes about two years for any artist to build a strong organic community. But it is doable. Focus on the underlying causes. Build you community around a simple blog. Then when it gets a bit crowded move to a small forum. Let it grow naturally, organically.

If you were going to build a car, you wouldn't just build the body with wheels. You know that it needs an engine to run. What's the engine of new media success? Let me know what you think it is in the comments.

The following is a (very) short presentation by Jeff Veen on design and cargo cults. Watch it, and see the stark parallels to the music industry.