Musicians used to make it with recording tapes, promotional cd's, and mainly from live performances. Word of mouth (and obviously a talent) was prime for a musicians success. With the digital age at it's all time high, music has flipped a complete 180 in my opinion. Not only is it easy to manipulate talent and what's natural, but live music is decaying, raw talent isn't at the top anymore, and becoming famous is as if the 70's, 80's and even 90's were a whole different world.
MTV. MTV was big in my household as I grew up in the 90s. Keep in mind I don't do any research when writing most of these blogs, they are purely my observations, memories, and understandings; whether they be wrong or right. Waking up to music videos every morning is definitely a part of my mental photo album. Pokemon is in there somewhere too..but let's forget about that. Matchbox 20, Goo Goo Dolls, Will Smith, Destinys Child, and many many more. Some of them are around today, either doing it the same or having changed completely. But television. Television was the big selling point while producing CDs. Bands made money off of what they sold and where they performed.
Quick story that I find humorous to this day. My brothers and I (triplets) wanted to listen to the brand new DMX cd. When convincing my parents to let us buy it, we somehow concealed the "Parental Advisory Explicit Content" warning. It probably wasn't too hard with three of us running around, several toys and cds in hand hoping to land them in the shopping cart. Once we got home, in the stereo it went. From the living room upstairs once the first song played with the lyrics "Just cause I love my n*****, (Ruff Ryders) I shed blood for my n*****. (Ryde or die)" and so on and repeated many times. Instantly I hear my parents coming to the room, stopping the cd, and taking it out of it's tray. Not sure what we did next..I just remember it being hilarious.
So first was MTV and various music television sources for a band. Next came the illegal downloads of Napster, Kazaa, etc. But I think the biggest way for bands to promote themselves was through Myspace and band web pages. In the early 2000's I used a website called Purevolume for most of my music. Myspace was also a main contributor for my speakers. I stopped using Purevolume altogether in the recent years..not sure what I can contribute to that exactly. Myspace was HUGE for the music industry. Not in the sense that it helped generate money directly to bands or producers, but it caused a huge spike in where and how far you can spread your music. I think this is best because it may not be for a chance at fame, but just for a basement musician to express his or herself through their talents (or lack of talents). Myspace was big for advertisers and started the whole social networking world we see today. I just heard a fact..there's more people on Facebook today than there was in existence on this world 200 years ago. Crazy right? Not as crazy as there are as many galaxies in our universe than there are grains of sand on planet earth. Holy shit that's for another blog.
My biggest reason for writing this blog was my amazement at YouTube. Remember, youtube is one of the most successful online websites ever. Successful meaning the amount of hits, uploads, comments, etc they receive. Not the money they (Google) make. Google loses MILLIONS from YouTube every year. They pay the most popular YouTube channels but lose money as their main revenue is the advertisements, which doesn't make them squat. They wouldn't dare charge people to use YouTube as members. Too risky and Google makes enough money to be able to sustain YouTube as it is. Not sure what will change in the future.. But YouTube has found it's way to being the biggest promotional site in my opinion for musicians. They post live performances, covers, acoustic versions of songs, unique ways of playing songs (like the cover Somebody That I Used to Know by Walk Off the Earth), and any other way to gain attention. YouTube is the key venue because people can see how you look, act, perform, and..look. Looks are a key to fame and fortune. I think it goes 50/50. It's rare that someone who really sucks makes it while just being really goodlooking. Lady Gaga has a unique style I don't find attractive but is extremely talented or vise versa. Who is really attractive but the talent isn't quite there but it doesn't matter? Justin Bieber?? Nah he's got talent I'm not a hater.You can think of people, but it is much harder. My point might be blurry and not agreed with, but when writing on a whim, it's the general impression I get. Want to get famous? YouTube, YouTube, and YouTube..or some dumb reality show.
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