Friday, September 10, 2010

I'm Not Your Promoter

It started getting annoying on mp3.com and it's driven me away from Myspace completely. Now I'm getting this shit on Reverbnation. (I don't like to swear often on public forums, so this shows you how pissed off I am about this.)

What is it? People (artists) sending me messages and comments. Not about me or my music...about themselves. I log on today. I see that someone was kind enough to send me a message, or leave a comment. "Oh," I think. "Someone appreciates my music enough they wanted to talk to me about it." Then I click on it:

HI my name is _______ ,
I was hoping you could come and stop by my profile to take a listen to my music. Any feedback is also appreciated and if you like what you hear, become a fan. Thanks so much,
have a great summer,
all the best,
Hi,have a great day,

NEW ALBUM
AVAILABLE ON : (insert 20 links to where you can buy the EXACT SAME ALBUM)

That's a message I just got.  Obviously, very personalized and sincere...the capital HI with the space after it and the secondary Hi at the end proves it. I'm glad this person cares about me so much to include not one, but 4 closing lines. And I'm positive I'm the only person who got this message...that makes me feel special.

Ugh. You know what? This disgusts me. It's shameless at the least and downright disrespectful to me at the most. I'm NOT going to go to your page based on some anonymous message you send. Therefore, I'm NOT going to listen to your music and I'm NOT going to become a fan. And I am most definitely NOT going to allow you to put your shameless self-promotions on my page. My page is for me to promote myself, not you. What I WILL do is report your spam. I'm not even going to get to the comments I have to sift through and not-approve because I really don't like people trying to use my page just to promote themselves.

This is one of the less aggressive ones, but considering I get 3-4 of these a day it becomes aggressive to me.  Does this even work? Judging from the amount of messages I get like this, I'm sure through the wonders of statistics it does (I'm probably one of hundreds to get that message). But then again, I don't know for sure since I try not to do it.  Ok, yes..I do use what someone once called 'guerilla tactics' to promote my music now by posting songs on certain people's Facebook pages...but I post them only on the pages of people I know will enjoy those songs and I see no difference between doing that and posting some Youtube video of a song I really like and want them to hear on their page, except for the fact that it's my creation and not someone elses'.  If their friends want to check it out too, that's fine by me, but I don't ask them or tell them to.  It's up to them.

I'm not going to say I didn't imbibe in my own little bit of shameless self-promotion back in the day (over 10 years ago...hell, I was probably one of the pioneers of that), but I never felt good doing it and now my days of spamming message boards are far beyond me. If I really enjoy someone's music, I will let them know and hope that they decide to check mine out. I don't ask them to...I just hope they will. Maybe my passive form of self-promotion isn't the greatest, but at least it's honest and has a bit of integrity to it. I'm not in it for the money or the fans (although both make me happy to have), just the music and the hope that you will enjoy the little piece of me I gave to you to hear.  I prefer to make more friends than fans.

I'd rather know that than ask some anonymous shred-metal band to listen to my music.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot:


:D

1 comment:

  1. HI my name is Whyte Oktober ,
    I was hoping you could come and stop by my profile to take a listen to my music. Any feedback is also appreciated and if you like what you hear, become a fan. Thanks so much,
    have a great summer,
    all the best,
    Hi,have a great day,

    NEW ALBUM
    AVAILABLE ON : http://subnav.com/2009/05/31/silent-night-mix-by-whyte-oktober/

    ReplyDelete