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-- Online networking and keeping up with gaget whores - a clusterfuk wall of agro.

Online networking and keeping up with gaget whores - a clusterfuk wall of agro.

Something a friend and myself have been saying for a while is that partaking in online networking and gadget gathering with all the associated tasks of updating and creating inertia can be very draining, time consuming and counter productive.

Twice Future Music mag has had a central issue 'how to get famous online', all about the plethora of platforms you are supposed to get signed up to and manage on a constant basis. Pages of shit you are supposed to do.

Now life is brief and already very full, so I just don't have the time for all this wank.
I have a family, kids I adore and spend time with, house to fix, lawn to mow, walls to clean, business to run, insurance to sort, body to excercise, clubs to attent, pets to feed etc etc. Life is already too full without all this other cold electronic soulless shit.


A Universe of 10 million bedroom producers and bands all screaming for love and validation, all clusterfuking thier days with a never ending mental list of online tasks to do.

Then you have all these gadgets that are mean't to make life easier and better, but just give you a load of extra tasks to do such as setting the things up, updating, sorting a new charger, resolving faults and bugs etc.

You know what, I have made a conscious decision just to focus on the music and if it gets noticed fine, if not then so be it.
Life is brief (about 20,000 days awake) and nothing but a collection of memories in the end. Fucked if I'm gonna have my head stuck in some silicon dick measuring contest, and worrying about whether I ought to be updating my collection of meaningless software / Twittering / Facebooking / sorting my pathetic sorry arsed IPAD apps, yawn, it'a all so damned meaningless and feeble. Give me a walk in the summer rain any day.

Re: Online networking and keeping up with gaget whores - a clusterfuk wall of agro.

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Originally posted by Richard Butler You know what, I have made a conscious decision just to focus on the music and if it gets noticed fine, if not then so be it. Life is brief (about 20,000 days awake) and nothing but a collection of memories in the end. Fucked if I'm gonna have my head stuck in some silicon dick measuring contest, and worrying about whether I ought to be updating my collection of meaningless software / Twittering / Facebooking / sorting my pathetic sorry arsed IPAD apps, yawn, it'a all so damned meaningless and feeble. Give me a walk in the summer rain any day.

+1

just make good music until the higher ups notice you and give you a team of people who do it for a living to do it for you. lol

i whole heartedly agree with you and nothing urks me more than seeing people with lack of talent/experience getting thousands of views/downloads on sites like soundcloud etc. due to social network whoring. sadly, i've recently jumped into the social networking battle and plan to keep it up until september when classes start but it's in hopes of getting some form of notice before i just don't have time to handle any of it

at least you're producing, and not trying to make it in a local DJing scene where it'd be absolutely necessary of you to be everywhere, in which case i have a feeling you'd have quickly made the switch to producing anyway

keep up the good work dude. you guys have sick groove and your production quality keeps moving up and up. besides that, there's a unique soul to all of your tracks. this alone separates you from the masses of not so memorable music. i have a feeling dirtbox divas will be a household name to hear from

I doubt that many of us will look back from our old age and regret not having spent enough time on social networking and self-promotion.

We might wish we had made more music, though.

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Originally posted by Excess i whole heartedly agree with you and nothing urks me more than seeing people with lack of talent/experience getting thousands of views/downloads on sites like soundcloud etc. keep up the good work dude. you guys have sick groove and your production quality keeps moving up and up. besides that, there's a unique soul to all of your tracks. this alone separates you from the masses of not so memorable music. i have a feeling dirtbox divas will be a household name to hear from

Ha, thx for the thumbs up - I needed that as I'm on one of my occasional downweeks where it all seems a little pointless. Don't know about others here, but I just never feel something I've worked on is as good as it might be - mind you I'd be the same whatever I was doing - even frying burgers.

Yeah those SC whores with nothing but lame shallow cut n paste praise comments really bug me lately. Makes me want to do the opposite and pour all available energy into the lovely electronic instruments and leave the attention seekers to it.

hah i feel the same way occasionally, especially when it comes to tracks ive done only by myself. i find knowing that others have worked on the track gives me a sense of relief with the finished product - as if to say that if they're okay with putting it out too after working on it, it must be decent. when only i have worked on a song, i feel as if it's just not making the cut and i've wasted time lol.

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Originally posted by CalvP Wholeheartedly agree with this *existential discussion warning* I've spent the best part of 10 years in bed either sleeping or thinking (because i can't sleep) due to chronic fatigue syndrome. Now does that relate to this? I woke up one day & realised something...life is full of worthless distractions, distractions which divert us against the big question we all face "what are we here for?". It is so easy to get swept up in modern living & all the demands it brings, that you can end up living a life in which your not the captain of the ship, you become passive, you don't live the life you always dreamt of because, as said by Chuck Palahniuk "The things you own end up owning you". Life is not about being a caretaker, it's about doing what you love, it's about expressing your love to other people & most importantly it's about leaving this planet in a better place. I would advise everyone reading this, to sit down & take stock of their life. Are you doing what you dream of? do i NEED all the possession i own? if they were all destroyed in a fire, would i buy them all again? etc etc life is far too short (like you say) for trivialities. As for music, my advice is simple... Write for you & only you, from the bottom of your heart. If you do that, you're a success, you don't need the adoration of others, that is simply pandering to the ego. I believe the universe has a natural order, if something has value it wont go unnoticed forever. Failing that, get yourself into a position of power...never fails

I get more out of exestential posts like this. Wonderful stuff mate.
I often feel I'm a bit of an alien looking in on the Human race. An example; I see these drones walking along with thier heads buried in thier stoopid menaingless devices and I'm thinking does this person truly know why they are doing that? I'm analysing how the air smell this damp warm day reminds me of playing under a big tree as a kid and yet these drones around me seem to be sooo into thier cold digital otherworld.

Like this Woman we know spends a lot of time every day updating facebook to tell the world the great things she did yesterday, It's as if her whole life has condensed down into this place where she does stuff she would not otherwise have done, just so she can have something to add to her page each day. So instead of enjoying a moment for it's own sake, it's like the moment is secondary to the point that it will now form a piece of narrative capital for her facebook in order to keep her nosey neighbours jealous and hooked.

Fkin wierd shit

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Originally posted by Tasty Onions I doubt that many of us will look back from our old age and regret not having spent enough time on social networking and self-promotion. We might wish we had made more music, though.

Amen.

Everyones now at the whole online frenetic hand waving attention seeking thang, so I say, time to do the opposite to the crowd. I love being a contrarian and not following the herd.

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Originally posted by Richard Butler I'm analysing how the air smell this damp warm day reminds me of playing under a big tree as a kid and yet these drones around me seem to be sooo into thier cold digital otherworld.

YET, we're the weird ones when mentioning these feelings. i often stop what i'm doing to look at the clouds or go for a walk just for the need of being outdoors and away from the busyness of every-day life (and my computer screen). not once have i ever felt the need to post a status complaining about the day sucking - and i truly believe it's because i take time out to actually enjoy the simplest things in life and really acknowledge the true joys that others seem to miss while buried in their social networks.

worst example of a disturbing occurrence with facebook was a friend of mine who got into a car accident hitting a tree. first thing he did? update fb from his phone complaining about it.

why wasnt he kissing the damned ground for being alive? why wasnt he calling loved ones? it kills me to think his first thought wasn't "i can spend tomorrow with the people i love" and was rather thinking that he needed to make a fb post about it.

I'm just a teen, so my outlook has not nearly as much experience as your's, but the way I see it is that I want to make this music thing my job, so if that means I have to network now until I'm good enough that people do it for me, so be it. Because if I grew up to where I can make music/gig/network instead of working a 9 to 5, I'd be relatively happy, because at least some of my job (gigging and writing music) is pretty damn fun.

quote:

You know what, I have made a conscious decision just to focus on the music and if it gets noticed fine, if not then so be it. Life is brief (about 20,000 days awake) and nothing but a collection of memories in the end. Fucked if I'm gonna have my head stuck in some silicon dick measuring contest, and worrying about whether I ought to be updating my collection of meaningless software / Twittering / Facebooking / sorting my pathetic sorry arsed IPAD apps, yawn, it'a all so damned meaningless and feeble. Give me a walk in the summer rain any day.

Well put. After all is said and done, it's what you created that matters, not what you consumed. Social media, app this and app that, are all made for mass consumption. While these can make you feel "full" or content based on the instant gratification factor, you tend to forget the much more fulfilling experience of delayed gratification, when you put work and effort into something to create something much more worthwhile. It's akin to building your own canoe vs. buying one, or even growing your own food. The desire to create and contribute versus spend and consume is part of what makes us human, and what drives us to explore such a niche as EDM production.

Good topic - The thing is with a mass consumption of social networking platforms, it's never meant less to so many people, and it's only devaluing further.

I own a business in a seriously competitive field (nothing to do with music) - at first we attacked social media in minute detail on every front. What we realised after some time was that the effort put in on most platforms was not worth the time in the long run actually contributed to both our own and a collective dissolving of any meaning. It's like advertising here in the states - People are so over-expsosed and saturated that it's value is worthless.

1m people screaming constantly about how great their music, just forms background noise which actually obscures the music.

now to a point you also have to be a bit daft to be a luddite, and ignore modern means of mass communication, especially when, it on it's most basic level has been made so easy. Again, especially so with something like EDM which is inherently interlinked with technology and social activities.

For my business I made a concious decision to only use platforms that yield the maximum result, with the least effort.

This mean consolidating FB and twitter together (FB being the primary concern as twitter is more disposable and less rich an experience for the recipient) - so know when I post of FB, it goes to my twitter. I then integrated the review sites for my business, so that certain content is automatically shared on FB and other platforms. This along with a few other minor things of smart social networking means all I do is an occasional facebook post and some review monitoring and I have a cross platform networking system with minimal effort.

So far it's working and I have more time to focus on the things that actually make money, which with a business is the bottom line.

The same can be said for music - find a system that allows you to keep in touch, without forcing you to devote production time it. There's no point spending your life networking for music connections if the sacrifice is your personal life and musical content.

If you listen to the stories of all the old school, big name DJ's, they all made it, with music being a hobby, something that they did outside of their dayjob, until it got so big they had to make the jump. There's a great interview from a couple of years back with Danny Howells about how terrified he was to make the jump to full time profession in music.

Simply put, you have to network to some degree, but you have to let the music speak for you. great music plus a small amount of networking and marketing will always be more powerful than crap music and tons of networking (that is, until you made it big. After that you can churn out rubbish all day long and market like crazy...see SHM for more details).

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Originally posted by cl0ckw3rk After all is said and done, it's what you created that matters, not what you consumed.

That's going straight on facebook! lol just kidding. I like it though, concise.. sig worthy.

What makes me mad is that people who follow you on soundcloud to get vanity followers. Same thing with facebook, but replace 'bands' with 'friends'

A good example of a producer who got famous by "accident" is Burial. I don't know how many of you guys know about him, but he remained completely anonymous until a couple years ago. From his Wiki:

"Although both albums have been met with much widespread acclaim, Burial remained anonymous until August 2008, and said in an early interview that 'only five people know I make tunes'."

Oh, and an another interesting blurb:

"Bevan claims to compose nearly all his music in SoundForge, a digital audio editor, and to eschew the use of trackers and sequencers."

It just comes down to whether you produce for yourself or for others. I guess the ultimate aim is producing something for ourselves that others happen to enjoy.

Some great points people. I like Ranns streamlined networking approach - something I might try in my own small business. My home made sh1tty business website is no 1 on Google though (for the typical search term used) so yet again not a bad result without the clusterfuk bollogs I was told I MUST do to achieve this.


I think what I wanted to convey here is that so many people get distracted by nonsense and this quest to be in touch everywhere and know everything can be a side show and leave you mentally spread too thinly and digging for turds.

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Originally posted by skyhunter I'm just a teen, so my outlook has not nearly as much experience as your's, but the way I see it is that I want to make this music thing my job, so if that means I have to network now until I'm good enough that people do it for me, so be it. Because if I grew up to where I can make music/gig/network instead of working a 9 to 5, I'd be relatively happy, because at least some of my job (gigging and writing music) is pretty damn fun.

I can understand your logic in this but I'm a firm believer that if your music is truly good enough then a decent label will sign you up (providing you send it to them) and they will have the contacts and the reputation to do all the shit stuff for you.

If your music is okay but not any better than the 1000's of other people's stuff out there, then yeah, to have even the slightest chance of getting some exposure, you've gotta do as much networking as possible with all the bullshit that Richard and others have talked about. If you fall into this category then the chances of you ever getting to a stage where you can live off your music is incredibly slim, simply because your music isn't good enough.

So why bother spending your time networking if the product (your music) isn't good enough anyway?

If your music is of true quality, you won't need to waste time with all the bullshit because the music will speak for itself.

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Originally posted by G-Con I can understand your logic in this but I'm a firm believer that if your music is truly good enough then a decent label will sign you up (providing you send it to them) and they will have the contacts and the reputation to do all the shit stuff for you. If your music is okay but not any better than the 1000's of other people's stuff out there, then yeah, to have even the slightest chance of getting some exposure, you've gotta do as much networking as possible with all the bullshit that Richard and others have talked about. If you fall into this category then the chances of you ever getting to a stage where you can live off your music is incredibly slim, simply because your music isn't good enough. So why bother spending your time networking if the product (your music) isn't good enough anyway? If your music is of true quality, you won't need to waste time with all the bullshit because the music will speak for itself.

True, and I don't network very much now. I will start to network when people start to do it for me. Look at my soundcloud, I have like... what, 30 followers? not great. Someday I'll send my stuff to labels when my music is good enough (I have another 50 or so years on this earth so I have a little breathing room). I spend most of my day producing music, simply because it's more fun anyways. The type of music I'm really good at is more mainstream anyways, so I could probably just go to ultra or whatever like basshunter and be through with it.

Lol, I reaad through this thread, then went to make some room in my soundcloud for a set that's exporting atm, look at what I found in my inbox!

"Hi,

I really like you track Alfi - Technotic pt 1 (Work In Progress).

Are you interested in account at Soundcloud with 4500 followers come from all the world? I have one for sell. You can change username and profile link -> it's no problem you can ask me anything you want to know about this profile."

That pretty much sums up the music business today I think.

haha, actually i just asked him how much.. i think i'm gonna see if i can get him to upload one of my tracks for free to see how many comments i'd get, kinda proof of service or something..

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Originally posted by CalvP as said by Chuck Palahniuk "The things you own end up owning you".

I agree.

Here's an aside: It saddens me that people think that Fight Club is about fighting. I just want to punch them in the face.

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Originally posted by -FSP- I agree. Here's an aside: It saddens me that people think that Fight Club is about fighting. I just want to punch them in the face.

Just like people think "The Book of Eli" is about the Bible...hahaha

never saw Eli, but it seems like it was about the bible from what I've read. Was the Bible the facade for some other theme in the movie?

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Originally posted by -FSP- never saw Eli, but it seems like it was about the bible from what I've read. Was the Bible the facade for some other theme in the movie?

The bible represented the struggle for the preservation of knowledge, and hope for a better future. There are some big twists in the movie that revolve around these themes that I do not want to give away. This is one of the more recent hollywood films that has surprised me with a decent story. There are a couple of twists in the movie that I thoroughly enjoyed.

The first half of the film leads you to believe its going to be another bible thumping joy ride, but luckily it goes deeper than a post apocalyptic search for a holy land.

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