This has taken several glasses of wine, and many, many hours. Why you ask? Not because I've been sending out individual thank yous, but because I, like so many of my contemporaries, have fallen into the trap of internet over-saturation.
First it was the thank you blog post, then the thank you website emailer, then the thank you Facebook fan page update, not to mention the uploading of tunes and video to ReverbNation, MySpace and YouTube. I sincerely feel bad for the people that in attempt to show support have signed up as "fans," etc. and have received my "Thank You" on repeat ad nasseum tonight (and to those people I offer my sincerest apologies)!
The problem is, in attempt to self-promote, it is easy to over do it. With all the available tools at hand, and with the trends ever changing (remember when Friendster was cool?), one finds themselves signed up to so many "communities" they begin to cancel each other out. My boyfriend laughs at me when I am online for long periods of time because I invariably keep a million tabs open at one time, each with one of my 3 active email accounts open, as well as Facebook, Sitemeter sometimes, and invariably some other community that I check with an OCD compliance every hour on the hour in addition to the one or two others that I am actually actively using.
One almost starts to equate their self-worth and confidence with the amount of activity generated by this internet socializing, particularly as it relates to one's music. Do I have another fan? Has anyone commented on this new post? Why not? How many plays do I have today? It can really create a false sense of security.
Not to mention confusion for those who truly want to support you as a "fan." Do they really need to be your MySpace friend, sign up to your mailing list, be a Facebook fan, a ReverbNation fan, and follow your every Twitter status update (which I found myself signing up for tonight!) to prove they support your music? Does one really expect these people to follow your every move, download your latest upload, and comment on every wacky status update you post? All in the name of promoting your music? And with so many reminders and updates from so many places, it wouldn't be completely unreasonable for said fan to start to ignore it all. Again with the canceling each other out.
And yet... I don't see myself cancelling any of my accounts. It's like an addiction almost. And a morbid curiosity to see which outlet will actually prove effective.
I suppose if one had the budget, one could do away with the generic Dynamod website and pay to have your music branded into a single website with a built-in blog, mailing list and downloading capabilities complete with trackers and statistics and filters galore.
But I know I am not there yet.
And while I could stand to cool it on the compulsive refreshing, I will continue to streamline as best I can under my given situation. This is the part where I point out the ReverbNation "fan collector" to the right of this post.
Do you want to receive emails with probably the same information you'll read on this blog? Do you want access to "exclusive" fan downloads for tunes you will most likely listen to just once? Then go ahead, enter that email address into the little green box and enable my internet addiction and false sense of popularity (as of the start of this post I had 14 fans on RN, let me check... sweet! I got one more!).
In all seriousness and impending hangover non withstanding, I am attempting to streamline what little fandom I have into ReverbNation. I welcome feedback and advice from those more experienced (and sober) in these matters and hope you will join me on this flighty dot-commy self-promoting ride (so drop that email into that green box)!
I now leave you for my warm bed and a tall glass of water with this last little bit of internet promotion:
That's Mike Fahie soloing on the second take of "The Injustice League" at the Brooklyn Lyceum this past Oct. 15.
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4 comments:
Internet addiction is an interesting thing, something that seems to affect a lot of people, especially Generation Y'ers like myself. On the surface it doesn't look it's that serious of an addiction until it starts to become too much and take away from real life experiences. I can't touch my computer without checking all my email addresses, my google reader, my blog, facebook, last.fm, and all the other traps I've fallen into.
I don't necessarily see diminishing returns when promoting music on tons of different online communities, but I suppose it's very possible.
the irony of you blogging about your internet saturation is much too rich for me to comment on effectively
jt
lol, JT! ;)
I feel that this post served as my intervention. I am Troy Hickman, and I'm an internet oversaturater...
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