Niche songwriting: the Twitter song

Jonathan Coulton became an internet superstar by writing songs about computer games, programmers, Flickr, the internet and associated themes (mostly zombies). That’s what he cares about and that’s what his audience cares about. He’s being authentic and connecting with like minds. He doesn’t try to get the rest of the world to listen. There are always going to be enough geeks to pack out his shows.

I’ve been thinking about JoCo’s approach to online superstardom for ages, trying to figure out whether it would work for any web-savvy musician (ie. me ;o). For a while I thought it would: build a decent website where you can preview and buy songs easily, and where the audience can interact with the artist (JoCo’s fans create videos, remixes and other derivatives of his work, which he releases under a Creative Commons licence) and Bob’s your uncle.

But then I figured out the snag. Think of your target audience. If you’re like most songwriters they will be educated, tasteful young adults with cool friends who put on your music at parties and rave about you to everyone they meet. Now think of the kind of people who create fan videos. The kind of people who remix Creative Commons music and transcribe ukelele tab. The kind of people who comment on every blog post. The kind of people who even read blogs. That’s right.

h3. I’m talking about geeks.

Geeks aren’t tasteful young adults who party with their cool friends. Geeks have bizarre and obsessive tastes, bizarre and obsessive geeky friends, and they don’t have parties. If you want to be an internet superstar your audience is geeks. To some, that’s not ideal. ;o)

Lucky for me, I’m a card-carrying geek and I love writing quirky pop songs about geeky things. So I have a chance at internet superstardom. Now, if only I had a breakthrough hit song that was guaranteed to go hyperviral the second it hits the Twitterverse…

Holy cow! I just recorded a song about Twitter! I bet that would work!

h3. You’re No One If You’re Not On Twitter

It’s true. Like Twitter itself, this entire blog post has been a pathetically disguised press release for my new superviral, Twittertastic song: “You’re No One If You’re Not On Twitter”. Shame on me. It’s in the player at the top of the page – you can listen to it now, while you’re reading! Now go tweet, people. Tweet until your little beaks are sore. Then wait a few minutes and tweet again. Let’s fill the Twitterverse with glorious music. ;o)

You can tweet the link to the song page on the 50/90 Challenge website, or the link to this article. Better yet, just retweet the tweet!

Feel free to flame me or give me love in the comments.

Tagged with: promotion, social media, songwriting, Twitter

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