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My experiences with netlabels have varied from "Yeah we'll release your stuff!" *fades into obscurity* to "Yeah man I loved your gig let's release music!" *fades into obscurity*
More sort of looking at local stuff, so I can hopefully gig off the back of any releases as well
I think it's bullshit to say "I make music for myself only". But it's philosophical and I don't want to extend this pointless discussion, I came here to learn more about it and I think I might burned some bridges in the past, that's why I'm not getting any gig while I see people I know doing every month.
Think about what you are promoting. What exactly are you promoting?
1. remove head from ass
2. if head is not in ass, put it up someone else's ass for awhile to gain some perspective
3. write better music than your peers
4. don't be shy
5. don't be annoying or stupid
6. comments on here or 8bc do not entail nor do they have anything to do with "success," they exist purely for masturbatory purposes.
7. don't get hung up on #6.
8. play more shows
9. you're fucking 17 bro, come back after a few years of doing anything other than posting on 2 forums.
yeah don't be shy! Some people may mistake you for a snooty asshole. keep it real dammit!! Especially with your bios (my personal peeve)... Respect all music, and everyone else, unless they're twats anyways. Definitely get on a net-label!! Chip music is based on the internet. you can become locally known through the internet. Go on forum threads, and see who is in your area= form a motley crew. It may take a year or so, but eventually you'll have steady gigs. You needs a lot of ambition, respect, and balls.
Fuck writing "better" music. Write more interesting music.
Less is more! When preforming live or recording at home, find a setup that works for you. I say the less equipment you have the better.
What this has to do with getting famous you might ask... know your hardware/software. Find what works for you and helps you do what you want to do.
6. comments on here or 8bc do not entail nor do they have anything to do with "success," they exist purely for masturbatory purposes.
this
form mötley crüe.
no wait this
Some people may mistake you for a snooty asshole
this could actually be a good thing depending on what kind of image you're going for, but you can do this if, and only if, you are really that fucking good. otherwise listen to shitbird
mostly be really good at what you do, don't be concerned with fans or gigs too much yet. not to be an ass, but you're not there yet, worry about being good at your music.
Great thread, even though I think it has strayed a bit from its original intention.
Edit: Blah blah blah
Edit: blah blah etc. etc. blah
You got a long journey ahead dude, just keep your head up (blah)
Last edited by Star Fighter Dreams (Mar 10, 2011 5:24 am)
promotion is a weird topic. think about the most popular chip artists and the "promotion" that they do. most of their "promotion" consists of posting about their release/show on various websites (boards, facebook, twitter, blogs). and that's it. if your stuff is good, it will promote itself.
as far as getting booked on local shows is concerned, i have two pieces of advice. #1 - book your own shows. it's a lot easier than you think and it can be incredibly rewarding. there's a ton of awesome chip artists in the UK that i'm sure would love to play a new town. #2 - think of all the reasons a promoter wouldn't want to book you and literally list them out on a piece of paper. then deal with each thing on the list separately.
also, someone mentioned this earlier but it wasn't addressed - maybe your town is just too small? what are the nearby towns like? is there a more active music scene somewhere else? if so, try getting a show there.
also, never burn bridges. it's really hard to be nice to people you hate but it's just something you have to do.
Bah, this networking thing convinces me that I'm never going to throw a show. I don't care about the whole making money side of things and getting fans to love you. I just want to play music and watch people rock out in some tiny, back alley room.
Hmmm, I'm really just about to grab one of those street performance licenses and lug an amp and my gameboy to a subway stop or public square and just write music all day.
Which reminds me... For some small town advice, I used to live in a tiny town and the most effective way to get people to recognize any musical talent was to just go stand in front of a storefront downtown (or the giant public park area) and play all day on the weekend. Some store owners would actually pay you to stand in front of their store instead of the other guy's if you were good enough.
also, someone mentioned this earlier but it wasn't addressed - maybe your town is just too small? what are the nearby towns like? is there a more active music scene somewhere else? if so, try getting a show there.
My town itself is fairly small, but it serves as a suburb for a larger city, which has a fairly active music scene.
I honestly can't tell if a lot of these comments are telling me my music is shit or not. Some of them seriously seem to be.
My problem isn't that I've sent people my music or whatever you're meant to do, and they have refused to give me shows.
It's that I have no idea what the fuck I need to do to move my music out of my bedroom. My friends know I do it, and that is pretty much it, and overcoming that barrier so I can get to doing gigs and stuff is something I just don't know how to do.
Some of the advice here has been very good. But a lot of it has been pretty pointless. Telling me to get better at what I do is a bit stupid (especially if you've not heard my music, or have only heard the demos I have on my Bandcamp), because I could be ridiculously amazing at something but still have no idea how to talk to promoters or whatever and get gigs and recognition. A lot of you seem to be totally missing the point. I'm not saying my music is amazing, but when you're 17 years old and trying to play any gigs, it doesn't matter. I know shitty Snow Patrol and Kings of Leon acoustic cover acts who get gigs. When I've played, the positive response has been absolutely overwhelming - however, it's just gigs organised by people at school.
I just can't break out of that.
That's probably the last time I'm gonna reiterate what I mean, and if people keep just saying "MAKE GUD MUSIC CUZ IT'LL GET U GIGZ" then I'll just let the thread die.
Yes, obviously it's a contributing factor. But I have no idea who puts on gigs, how to get in touch with them, etc etc etc, which I think is a much larger factor here.
A couple friends and I are looking at venues to possibly put on a gig. But yeah.
Thanks for everybody who gave actual relevant advice. Also, I'm sorry this thread became to personal to me. I really meant it to be more general and far-reaching, but oh well.
Random unpopular opinions:
1) Think about the genres you're doing within chipmusic and aim at websites in those genres, not just chipmusic ones. Enough 'real music' is using pure waveforms these days you can maybe slide into that genre under the radar. Don't think because it's chipmusic you have to stick to gaming pages or web sites like this.
2) Use a banner term like electronic music, don't describe it as "chiptune/chipmusic" unless they do. Those terms come with a lot of baggage, calling it electronic at least means they might listen to it just to check what type of music it is.
3) For a niche style like this internet IS the way to get a following rather than gigging, unless you can piggyback onto gigs with other types of artists. Because the gig scene for purely chip artists is small and infrequent, chances are people already know who you are there already.
4) For social sites just pick one main hub as your base and use a few other 'satellites' for certain aspects of it, rather than trying to cover all of them. (For example: Facebook as the main because it has good stat feedback and practically everyone has it, Soundcloud to upload streaming tracks, YouTube for videos, Bandcamp for releases, Myspace as an RSS feed for places like Last.fm)
I suppose it's getting into a "normal" music scene that I have trouble with. I've always felt somewhat on the fringes of the chip community (I make a sort of mix between indie, punk and reggae, which is fairly uncommon in chipmusic haha), but still a part of it. Any gigs or anything though would be "normal", cause I actually kinda have more in common with "normal" artists than chip ones. Could play either really.
Coming into that as an outside - rather than naturally growing into it - is a little confusing, haha.
Last edited by TraceKaiser (Mar 10, 2011 11:53 am)
I still consider myself stuck at #3.
I'm still at #1 lol