Being good at music is not interesting. It’s boring. As a musician (or any kind of artist) you need to earn people’s attention. It’s not good enough to write good songs, practise for ages and record a good album. It’s not good enough to gig five nights a week. It’s not even good enough to get signed any more. All of these things are useful, but none guarantees you people’s attention.

When you play live, you enter into a negotiation with the audience. You start by putting in the effort to promote the gig and get them to turn up. In return for that, they arrive. And they promise you their attention for about 3 minutes.

So what do you do when the spotlight is shining in your face, when you have one chance to transform a moment of fleeting attention into a long and beautiful relationship between your art and its audience?

You have to entertain people

That’s your half of the deal. You entertain people in return for their attention. Like it or not, you’re an entertainer. All musicians like it on some level: there’s no way people would put that much effort into playing music if they didn’t want some other people to hear it. But a lot of musicians persuade themselves that they don’t like it at all. They want to hang on stage like a masterpiece on a museum wall and be appreciated.

For reference, the following are not in themselves entertaining:

• Virtuosic playing
• Baring your soul
• Beautifully poetic lyrics
• Playing in time
• Singing in tune
• Dressing cleverly
• Being loud
• Tuning up
• Having a funny band name

If you’re not convinced, remember this: people aren’t choosing which gig to go to. They are choosing how to be entertained. Your competition isn’t other bands. It’s widescreen TV, pubs, clubs, dinner with friends or a good book. I’ve seen gigs by very good bands that were less entertaining than reading a chapter of Titus Groan with a cup of tea. And those bands have now lost my attention. I know they’re good, I know I enjoy their music. But I’m not engaged any more. I don’t have time for bands that aren’t going to entertain me.

Let me be clear about what I mean by “entertain”. I’m not talking about cheese, I’m not talking about audience interaction or variety shows. And I don’t mean “funny”. You can be entertaining and moody. You can be entertaining and quiet. You can be entertaining and serious. You can be entertaining without talking. You can be entertaining without moving. But like my old friend Nick used to say, “Funny is always better than good.”

To entertain an audience is to hold their attention and give them enjoyment. The word “entertain” can also mean to receive someone as a guest, and that’s a good way of thinking about it. By making music and putting it out there, you have invited a bunch of people into your musical home. It’s now your responsibility to make it a good party. If people sit in silence listening to you tell six or seven stories then leave, it probably wasn’t a good party.

Ben’s Big Gig was all about entertainment

We made sure Ben’s Big Gig was entertaining. Whenever there was a decision to be made there was one final criterion: “Will it be entertaining?” I dropped some of my favourite songs from the set list. I put the band together. I had the Funky Llamas play an interval set instead of being a support band. I gave the audience the Twitter screen so they could heckle. I booked George Chopping to compère. I booked Tom Greeves to do a whole stand-up set in the middle of the gig. I put two shrubs on stage. I got Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to endorse the gig. All in the name of entertainment.

I knew the music would be good. But I also knew that if I just walked on stage and played sixteen songs back to back people would be bored out of their skulls.

Music has a universal appeal. Most people will enjoy most music given the right context. If you entertain the audience, they will like you and your music. They will abandon all preconceptions about your musical style and your character. They will have a favourite song. They will tell their friends about how great a time they had and how great the music was.

Steve Lawson knows this. He plays solo bass guitar. Nobody in their right mind hears the phrase “solo bass guitar” and rushes to buy tickets. It’s a hard act to sell, if that’s the way you try to sell it. Luckily, Steve doesn’t do that. He has interesting conversations with people. He talks about how great house concerts are. He tells people about the exciting stuff he does with social media. He earns their attention. Then when he mentions months later that he’s putting on a house concert tour, or playing a gig somewhere, people turn up. And they enjoy the music. A lot. Steve’s a brilliant musician, but in a way that’s a bonus. The audience turn up for him and for the event.

Sell it on the story

The bonus of having an entertaining show is that you can sell it on its entertainment factor, not on the quality of the music. When the audience arrives and hears how great the music is they will want to buy CDs, sign up to mailing lists and tell their friends about you. But that’s not what gets them in the door.

You can’t get people excited about a show by telling them how in tune the singer is, how perfectly the band replicates the sound of the album or how efficiently the band can set up and soundcheck. People get excited by the prospect of entertainment. That’s why circus posters say things like “Death-defying leaps!”, “A woman with the head of a chicken!” or “Monkeys!” instead of “A really well-rehearsed band accompanying an seemingly dangerous acrobatic performance for two hours with a short interval”.

That would be boring.

And speaking of funny…

I just finished editing the video of Dressing Up from the Big Gig. Nothing makes me happier than the sound of 200 people singing “on a t-shirt, yeah, yeah”. ;)

Why are you spending time trying to get reviews from local hacks? In this article I look at how you can use social media and real life people skills to create your own reviews from casual audience responses.

“Did you see his name in the local paper?”¹

You write great songs. You practise over and over. You play your heart out on stage. And all for what? So you can open the local music magazine three weeks later and see your picture alongside a glowing hyphen-heavy description of how your gig was quite good. A good review validates all your hard work. Doesn’t it?

Yes and no. Mostly no. For a modern-day musician who is interacting with people around the world using all kinds of new and exciting internet technologies, a review in the local rag is almost worthless. Which is lucky, because if you’re a modern-day musician doing lots of exciting stuff on the internet your local music press won’t have a clue who you are or what you do.

val(localReview) = ?

Gig reviews in the local press just aren’t relevant any more. Think about why they were useful in the first place:

• they describe the live experience in (hopefully) an interesting and colourful way so you can decide if it’s the kind of thing you would like;
• they compare the band to other local bands, establishing a spectrum of local music with a particular pecking order so you can decide which bands you like;
• they act as a filter and a recommendation system, reducing the thousands of bands and gigs in your area down to a manageable few so you don’t get overwhelmed when you’re deciding who to like.

Maybe it’s just me, but none of that seems relevant or necessary given that even the most technophobic bands have at least a Myspace page these days. We don’t need a description of the gig because we can look up live videos on YouTube. We don’t need to know the pecking order of local bands because our appreciation of music isn’t limited to our local area, and we can compare bands from around the world in a few clicks. And as for filtering and recommendation systems: I trust recommendations from people I actually know, and I get them from people sharing their favourite tracks and bands on Last.fm, Spotify, Blip.fm, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

So stop worrying about getting the local review. Start thinking about whether your friends and fans will share their experience, and whether you’re giving them the opportunity and tools to do so. I know most audiences won’t be as geeky as mine. They won’t all bring their own cameras and upload photos and videos as soon as they get home. So do it yourself. Get a friend to video a few songs at each gig, and post them on YouTube. Then tell the audience at the gig that they can see themselves on YouTube and share it with their friends. Easy.

How do people know who to trust without reviews?

Why do reviews have to be written? Why do they need to be published in magazines? Why do they need to take effort and time to write? Why do they need to be so formal?

Vox pops (one-sentence interviews of people in the street, from ‘vox populis’ – the voice of the people) have been a mainstay of television news for decades. People implicitly trust the random statements of the “man in the street”. Unlike the smoothly rehearsed newsreaders and the clever, slimy politicians, the man in the street isn’t trying to trick you. He has no agenda. We probably (although we don’t admit it) think he’s too stupid to think of doing anything except blurting out the truth when faced with a shiny video camera.

Use responses instead of reviews

So make your own vox pops. I’ve used 12seconds.tv, but almost any online video service will work. Or just film them on your phone then edit and post them later. Put them on your website, or your Myspace page. How could people not like you when they see good, normal people saying how cool you are, or how much fun they just had watching your gig.

And you can extend the vox pops idea in all kinds of ways. At its core, it’s just a casual review. And casual reviews can come in many forms. If your fans are on Twitter, check what they tweet during your gig, and feature the tweets on your website. If they upload photos, that’s a great testimonial in itself – they enjoyed your gig enough to take photos, edit, upload and tag them. Stick them on your website too. And how about the friends and acquaintances who email you the next day to say what a great time they had? Use it all!

People want to connect with you

If people really enjoy what you do, they will want to let you know. The medium of congratulation will vary with the audience: teenagers like to loiter at the side of the stage while you coil leads then grunt something unintelligible but positive; students tend towards a handshake and “That was so good. Really.”; and the oldies prefer an email or maybe a floral card with their address printed on a little gold sticker on the back. All of these can be captured with a little confidence and ingenuity.

At the very least, prepare a quickfire question to catch them off guard. Something like this:

Teenager: “Uh, thx dude. ’s rul gud. Yeah.” You: “No problem. How would you describe the band in three adjectives?” Teenager: “Wha? Uh, dunno, like… Uh, maybe ‘indie-prog-folk’, uh, ‘intense’ and, uh, ‘beautiful’?” You: “Perfect. Thanks. That’s actually really insightful. Come and get a photo.” Teenager: “Uh, ok.” You: (putting your arm round them) “Ok. Smile. Ready? 3…2…1… Brilliant. Good to meet you, man. What’s your name?” Teenager: “Gary.” You: “Hi Gary. Hey, listen. Write down your email address and I’ll send you a link to the photo.” Teenager: “Oh. Sure.” You: “Cool. See ya.”

Gary’s gamble has paid off, and he has a story to tell his mates. You have a photo, a response and an email address. Everyone’s happy.

When someone goes to your website to see if you’re the kind of band they will like, they will find all this evidence of other people, real people, who enjoy being your fans. And that’s better than any 5-star review from the local music mag.

Geeks respond publicly

Geeks like all kinds of music. But they tend to like other geeks more than non-geeks. So it doesn’t matter what style of music you write or what scene you’re into. When you start publishing stuff on the internet and using social media to communicate your ideas and news (which you absolutely should if you want to survive), you’re going to get some geek fans. And you’ll quickly find that there’s nothing better than having geek fans.

Geeks respond publicly. They respond quickly. They tell other geeks about what they are doing and thinking in an intelligent and efficient way, and their responses are searchable and shareable. Let me give you a few examples.

Ben Werdmuller: the quickest reviewer in town

It was the day after Ben’s Big Gig, and I was lying in the park trying to make inroads into the Guardian Saturday cryptic crossword with Xander and our ladies. I thought I had at least 24 hours of quiet before the storm of responses, emails, phone calls, blogging and video editing started.

So I was shocked, and indeed stunned, when Xander noticed that Ben Werdmuller had already reviewed the gig. And not just in a casual way. This was a serious, intelligent, eloquent review packed with hyperlinks and references. It even had the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall photo at the top, and the live video stream embedded at the bottom. Go and check it out now. This is gold: Ben Werdmuller’s review of Ben’s Big Gig.

Garrett and Adrian’s videos

Later in the week Garrett mentioned that he had taken a few videos at the gig on his Flip. Although I had heard good things about Flip cameras I assumed the sound quality wouldn’t be up to much, so I was planning to use some little bits of Flip video edited in with the main Bambuser stream from the gig.

I was wrong. The Flip video captured the audio and the atmosphere of the gig amazingly well, and gave me a whole new perspective on the event. Like Xander said, “It looks even better from the front ;)”. I posted the video of Turn It Off And Turn It On Again later that evening, and there are more to come.

As if that wasn’t enough (and this is where Twitter comes into its own), Adrian noticed me posting the video and casually dropped this bombshell:

“Wondering if I should upload some of the 3GB of video I took at #BensBigGig”

Once I get hold of Adrian’s video, and Garrett’s, and mine, and the Bambuser stream, and the 12seconds audience responses, and the Flickr photos, I’ll be able to knock up a brilliant highlight reel of the Big Gig, and even edit together some multi-camera live versions of some of the songs. God bless the geeks.

Phil Campbell is a one man video streaming army

There’s a whole other post about Phil and his video streaming magic in the pipeline, but I couldn’t miss him out of this little geekfest. Because he didn’t just sort out all the live video streaming and the Rezpondr page. He recorded no less than 10 AudioBoos about it on the day and followed up with a review of the tech the next morning, providing a perfect talking point for the post-gig tech conversation.

Conclusion: “Get the net”²

It’s not difficult to draw a conclusion from all of this. But in case you’ve skimmed the rest, here are the take-home points:

• Stop caring about the local music press. Waste of time.
• Turn casual responses into usable reviews.
• Embrace the geeks. But not physically. They aren’t used to that. ;)

Footnotes

1. The Kinks: Did You See His Name? (from The Kink Kronikles, 1972)
2. Wayne’s World, 1992

The Twitter song I wrote last week has been getting some serious and much appreciated Twitter love and even a blog mention. And within a couple of days I got a message from the BBC (delivered by a mustachioed messenger on horseback) asking if I would give them an interview for the Pods and Blogs show on Radio Five Live.

Despite having a tyre explode on my Volvo I managed to dash home greasy-handed just in time to answer a Skype call from the BBC studio (I was only kidding about the horse earlier – the Beeb is pretty hi-tech these days ;o). If any of you happen to be listening to Five Live at 2am tonight, I’ll be there. I will undoubtedly be tucked up in bed, but I’m assured it will be on the podcast (and I assume the iPlayer) afterwards.

If you found my site from the radio show, hi. Be sure to subscribe to the feed or the email list, or follow me on Twitter!

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.

The latest redesign of ihatemornings.com incorporated some fundamental changes under the hood, most obviously a switch from “Textpattern”:http://www.textpattern.com (a trusted friend) to “Wordpress”:http://www.wordpress.com (the popular kid in the class). Wordpress is fast becoming the standard blogging platform for music types (and many others), so the switch had to be made. I have built a dozen sites on Textpattern over the last 5 years and it’s a beautifully versatile piece of software (once you get to know it), so it’s with a heavy heart that I let it go.

You might be wondering why I want to adopt the same technology everyone else is using. Doesn’t that make me a sheep? Where’s my character, my backbone? Don’t worry. As I’ll explain, I am infusing this blog design with just as much hand-drawn character as the old, brown Playschool version. But I want to lead by example. I want to build the ultimate musician’s blog. I want to figure out how to integrate social media widgets, music players, links, archives and videos in the best possible way. And I reckon that once I’ve managed that it will be something that musicians can copy. The copies won’t look the same because part of the ultimate musician’s blog is a very personal surface design. It doesn’t matter if the structure is similar to somebody else’s blog. Blogs are all the same anyway…

h3. The redesign that never ends

I see this as the beginning of a research process that may well last a year or so. I am getting involved with new services (“ReverbNation”:http://www.reverbnation.com/benwalker, “Last.fm”:http://last.fm/music/JB+Walker) that take a while to build up. I also plan to build an audience from almost scratch. So this is no overnight success scheme. That’s the point. I want to show how best to build an online presence as a musician over time and with plenty of hard work. A one-click template isn’t going to do you any good.

Along the way I’m going to use and evaluate all sorts of advice from “blogging”:http://www.problogger.com “gurus”:http://www.skelliewag.org, “music”:http://www.stevelawson.net “gurus”:http://www.soulofsongwriting.com/, “web”:http://www.happycog.com/ “gurus”:http://webtypography.net/ and any other “gurus”:http://www.netblogsrocknroll.com I can get my hands on. I’m also going to harness as much of the power of Social Media as is possible without spending 24 hours a day with a webcam strapped to my head talking in hyperlinks while playing the guitar.

h3. What am I doing right now?

Wordpress. Importing all my old articles and comments from Textpattern was super-simple, and I’m up and running on my new favourite blogging platform.

Template. My old site template was built from scratch, and it showed. I’m no designer… For this one, I’ve kept the style (hand-drawn doodles), but used the popular Grid Focus template to make the content much more attractive and readable.

ReverbNation. The old site used embedded Flash MP3 players to play each song. They were great, but didn’t do anything but play. The ReverbNation player is just a small part of a huge web backend that encompasses mailing lists, community, reporting, tactical marketing and all sorts of fun stuff. So far I’ve used none of it, so this will be a big learning curve for me. If it works out, I will end up using ReverbNation to host and play (and maybe even sell ;o) all of my tracks.

Twitter. It was on the old site and it’s here too, with a sexier plugin. I use Twitter a lot, and it’s central to my conversations with the Social Media crowd (and lately more musicians).

RSS. It’s amazing, and I love it. But very few people I know use it. I’m going to create a perfect RSS feed, with exactly the right amount of functionality, then I’m going to convert everyone on my mailing list to news feeds. It may take some time…

Integration. I’m going to try, as far as possible, to integrate my blog, Myspace, Facebook, Reverbnation, Twitter, Last.fm and the rest so I don’t have to spend my life updating 16 profiles and uploading every new song to 4 different servers. I want to streamline all of that so I can spend my time creating and communicating.

Interaction. I want people to be able to interact with me through my website. The comments on the new Wordpress install are vastly easier and sexier than the old ones, so that should encourage some more conversation. Twitter should help. I’m also working on a “Suggest a song title” feature to give me some good ideas for the 50/90 Challenge.

Content. I’m going to carry on with the “Ben Walker updates” style of content, and commenting on relevant blog posts. I’m also going to post a couple of article series on songwriting technique as I write the chapters for my songwriting eBook. And my medium-term plan is to guest post on some good blogs, both songwriting-specific and more general lifestyle sites.

Songs. I’ll be writing pretty much one a day until October for the 50/90 Challenge, so I needn’t worry about pumping out the material! I’m keeping the 50/90 songs separate from the rest for the moment. When it’s over I’ll pick out the favourites and rewrite them until they are ready to join the canon of JB Walker classics. ;o)

Gigs. The old site pulled a gig feed from Eventful, which was quite handy. It didn’t help with updating listings on Reverbnation, Facebook, Myspace etc. I’ll hopefully figure out the simplest way of keeping the gigs lists up to date by the time I start playing some more gigs…

So have a look around, enjoy the new design and why not “leave me a comment”:http://www.ihatemornings.com/2008/08/10/the-ultimate-musicians-blog/#respond to get us started? ;o)