Last night me and the homies from Seattle, Ryan Lewis and Macklemore (download, their mixtape asap if you haven’t) saw Questlove speak on a panel at Social Media Week about what it takes for an artist to be successful nowadays. Quest said that many upcoming artists approach him with, “I can spit, I’m next, check me out!” and he replies, “Can you blog”?
Can you?
Ask yourself. But being able to blog is just scratching the surface. You should be aware about what is going on in your industry. You should know who the music marketing people are at brands so you can present your material to them. You should know what websites to visit to build a custom iPhone app by yourself. You should know all of these things to help you further your career because for better or worse artists have to be much more than people who make music these days.
I have a lot of friends who are artists and when they are not making the music that we love you better believe they are spending hours upon hours online.
But.
A lot of this time is spent doing absolutely nothing, nothing productive at least (I do the same thing, YouTube’ing for hours).
If you cut your Facebook pic lurking time in half you will find that there are so many sites for musicians that cover an array of useful knowledge and insight, that is FREE 99. Some hot topics in the space right now are; using social media to get your music heard, what is the future of the music industry, making money while being independent, etc.
I’ve decided to compile a small lists of sites that I like and are purely meant to benefit the artist of today, check these out.
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/
http://www.musicthinktank.com/
All of the above sites cover pretty much of the same thing but put their own little twist on it, fish around and I’m positive you will find some places that you will be putting into your daily online routine.
Knowledge. Is. Power.
This is big. Thanks Jabari! Also check http://www.audiblehype.com and http://makingthemogul.com
Not a prob man. Yea man those are both good ones, I was writing this post very fast and might have forgotten some lol
I know the feeling. Just wanted to share some of my favorites with your readers. I like what http://www.creativedeconstruction.com is doing as well.
Hey Jabari
I was just chatting with Danny Dee about you, decided to check the site and saw this. Good looks man. Questo is right about the blogging thing, however I think its all kinds of content – from blogs, to videos to everything in between. Content controls the internet and if you aren’t producing it, you are not existent.
Looking forward to chatting one day dude.
Hey Greg, we def have to connect man. Love what your doing!