Archive for May 8, 2009
Why so secret?
I was originally planning to write a blog entry today about a great track that I’ve had for awhile, but only recently started taking to. It’s from a producer out of the UK that goes by the name The One Hundred, and the track is Still & Fine. It’s a sweet track, especially the Bellatrax remix.
I was going to write about it—until I could find absolutely nothing about the producer, the song, or the vocalist who sings on it.
So instead, and not to pick on The One Hundred specifically by any means, this is now going to be a mini-rant about some issues I see in the dance music industry that are among many that prevent it from commercializing much of anywhere, especially in the U.S.
The Web (it’s about the brand)
You really can’t do much of anything these days that involves reaching consumers of any kind without having a web presence. When someone wants to find you, or learn about you, or buy your product, where do they go? The web. And usually Google on the web. It’s literally the first look many people have of “an entity” (company, artist, individual, product, service, etc.).
It seems a lot of artists and producers (heck, even “record labels”) are content with their only web presence being a garish page on MySpace, with a crappy looking template generated by one of the hundreds of “crappy looking MySpace template” sources that are a mere Google search away. (And yes, my own MySpace page uses one of those crappy templates because it’s such a pain to customize MySpace otherwise.)
The web is hard for a lot of people, so fair enough. But if you can register a domain name and point it at a MySpace page, you probably have enough sense and skill to do better than letting your “brand” be represented by the ugliest web site on the planet (MySpace, in case you’re not following along here).
But be that as it may, let’s accept for the moment that MySpace actually makes sense, and that it’s a good thing, etc. Then why would you set-up your MySpace page, and then do nothing with it other than drop your music into the player and start making and accepting friends? MySpace has space for a bio. Pictures. It even has a blog feature (the world’s crappiest blog, but it’s there). But these things are hard too, I guess, and allowing other MySpace users to spam your comments with their new release banners and YouTube videos is easy, so there you go. But I wouldn’t call it “putting your best foot forward.”
Hiding the Details (it’s still about the brand)
It is truly beyond me why so many producers and artists (and DJs too for that matter) go completely out of their way to hide their own identities and/or the identities of those they work with:
- Pictures taken with strong backlighting so all you see is a silhouette; oddly-cropped pictures where you see nothing clearly; pictures taken from the back; or no pictures at all.
- Missing or first-name-only vocalist credits. (What, you want to make sure nobody else records with him or her? Give me a break.)
- Missing or first-name-only producer credits.
- No information of any kind about where to purchase the music, or which label(s) a song or artist has been signed to. (If this isn’t an invitation to piracy, I don’t know what is.)
This is, frankly, nuts. Promoting music is little different than promoting anything else, and that’s why people like Coca-Cola and Nike spend so much time and money building and protecting their “brand.” I think it’s even more important with music than shoes and soda, because there’s so much music out there, when a fan finds something they like, they probably would like more from the people who made the track they liked.
When you hide the vocalist’s name, it becomes impossible to find more music he or she has sung. When you hide the producer’s name, likewise on production. When you hide pictures, there’s nothing for a fan to relate to other than the music.
Part of this, I believe, is because in many cases, popular producers work under multiple names for record deal purposes. One producer I’m thinking of in the UK who’s a favorite of mine works under around 12 different names, and the explanation he gave at one point was just that… Some track under some name gets signed for release, and he picks a new one. Sounds like a weird set of contract terms to me, but whatever. It’s not a great way to build a reputation in my view, at least not among consumers. (If people in the industry know who you are, I guess that’s all that matters to some.)
Missed Opportunities
I think the bottom line here is that this is all about missed opportunities. To pick on The One Hundred a little bit here, whoever they are, is that I would have loved to write a blog piece about the song. Talk about what I like, and why I like it. Who’s behind the song. What other work they’ve done. Essentially, help spread the word and promote the track. But I didn’t, because there’s nothing to say. And there’s nothing to say because the artist hasn’t chosen to say anything; at least not anywhere Google can seem to find it.
Music, to me, is more than the music itself. It’s interesting people, with interesting backgrounds, from interesting places, with personal stories. Not unlike the way we feed off of Britney’s dysfunction, but hopefully in a more positive way, many people (myself included) like hearing about all that when we bond with a song’s great production, or insightful lyric, or smooth vocal. It’s part of the experience, frankly. So why deprive an audience of that? It makes no sense.
But then, many things don’t make sense. But I still like Still & Fine from The One Hundred. Whoever they are.
