The Solemn Podcast

The internet is going crazy over 3 YouTubers asking 50 000$ to crowdfund their new album+music videos+merch production+promotion.  This discussion quickly seeped into production forums where the biggest hypocrisy known to man-kind unfolded. People who consistently nag about musicians needing to pay them more, are suddenly outraged musicians will be paying a lot of money for album production.  Here are my 2 cents ;) 

Whenever a new social platform comes out, there are a  few who catch the trend and ride that wave to the top.  Influencers like Logan Paul and Jake Paul come to mind  when thinking about who were the kings of Vine.  In this episode, I discuss said phenomenon and a new platform which has been catching some buzz lately. 

The one mistake I see every band make for some reason, is not take care of the little things.  This episode might be the least "fun" one but it's an important discussion to be had.  Almost every small band or even producer, I talk to does not file their taxes.  This can hurt you tremendously in the long term. 

I and many other creators fall into this trap at some point in our journey. We feel like our growth has stagnated and try to blame our gear, rather than our work ethic. So we decide to pick up a new toy and hope this fixes all our problems.  Today, I go over why that doesn't work.

The internet is a noisy place. More content is being shoved down people's throats every day. This saturation makes it harder to establish your first tiny fanbase. In this podcast, I go over how I think you can still reach your first subscribers (or fans) to then grow further in this crowded market place. 

There are levels of friction that can demotivate you from doing something important. You only have so much energy in a day. Today I talk about tackling this problem. 

I am gradually implementing habits to put out daily consistent content across many platforms. It will (hopefully) eventually allow my audience to consume and interact with my brand from many angles and that way, stay top-of-mind. 

Streaming has had a bad rep the past few years but the mainstream is starting to take note. As vanity metrics are being replaced by first week streams and even gold certification was forced to take into account streaming, we see a shift into a new generation of artists. 

Every year (or should I say every day?) the social media landscape changes as various updates are added to platforms in order to ensure their survival.  Facebook is no different. I am (finally) starting to get into a more consistent strategy for myself and my business and I figured I'd share some of the bare basics before getting into the nitty gritty.  I'd say this introduction is valuable whether you're in a band, you're an audio engineer/producer or you're a solo musician. 

Today, I thought it'd be interesting if we take a look at how big YouTubers grew in 2017 and the start of 2018 even.  I let my first YouTube channel fade into obscurity but my second (very niche) channel is actually growing fast now.  I thought I'd share some of the things I did wrong and learned.