According to Mauri Sanchis, streaming concerts are already a reality. "We need a good product and we need people to know about it." "Build a community of people who follow us, and to get there we have to take it very slowly; we may need to collaborate with other channels, create Facebook groups to build anticipation, join sales websites as affiliates so we can monetize, do live streams, post stories, etc…"
Opinion
Not long ago a cartoon reached my smartphone that I think any musician will find very funny. I did, which is why I want to describe it to you. One musician says to another, "Dude, look how many people signed up for our online concert. It's crazy, we've never played to such a big audience! If we keep this up, we'll double our income!" to which the other musician replies: "Yeah, dude, I've got butterflies in my stomach… (Laughter)".
OK, I agree with the second musician that playing in your house while, supposedly, hundreds (or thousands, or millions) of followers watch you online won't give you the feeling of happiness and adrenaline (butterflies) that a live show in a club, theater or stadium does. But rather than refuting this by siding more with the first musician, I'd prefer to dig a little deeper into the subject by throwing out a few questions.
How many of us have seen Michael Jackson play live? Or the Beatles? How many of us were at Woodstock?
I'm sure you've already caught my drift, but here's the rhetorical question for the absent-minded: haven't we (or our parents or grandparents) enjoyed those live shows first through the radio, then on TV, later on VHS, DVD and every video format all the way to online?
And I'll go further: doesn't a soccer fan, or a fan of any other sport, feel the tension in their own dining room? Do only the people in the stadium feel it?
I believe they do feel it. But even if they didn't, is there any stadium or concert hall capable of holding the entire world? Well, I'll tell you there is: it's called the Internet.
Thanks to the revolution that is under way, streaming concerts are already a reality. Big artists already hold live concerts for however many people X the venue can hold (although for now with capacity restrictions due to Covid), while hundreds of thousands more can watch that same concert online from home. Very soon, you'll see, also from bars, which will broadcast the concert LIVE just as they now broadcast a soccer game. Concerts will be the excuse to draw in their customers. Before long, we'll meet friends at 8:00 p.m. for a few beers while watching, for free, a U2 concert being played in Russia, whose rights the bar owner will have paid for.
As I said: a revolution.
And in this revolution, saying today that every musician must know the tools the Internet offers is as obvious as saying 30 years ago that every musician needs to know about business to be in the music business. I think anyone who doesn't realize that has chosen the wrong profession.
Tools
The new normal is all about face masks, social distancing and hand sanitizer. But there is a technological reality that has been taking over for years and that some of us didn't want to see: there will be no music without social media.
It took me a few years to accept that reality, which, as always, hit us artists in the face before any other sector of society. We've been in this whirlwind of gossip, promotion, political manipulation and information overload that is social media for years. The point is to face it, to analyze exactly what possibilities each platform offers us and to accept that no record label or manager is going to do for us what we're not willing to do ourselves.
We are at a moment in history when we can have more control over our careers than ever, and we have to take advantage of it. But by planning as much as possible before starting, so we don't end up posting news or videos like "a chicken with its head cut off."
As I said, I have been very reluctant to get into social media, so my number of fans and my activity today aren't very noteworthy. But I've had my own website since 2000 (yes, 2000, you read that right) and a YouTube channel since 2006, and I've also made plenty of mistakes with social media, so I'm going to try to contribute something from an analytical point of view, based on 20 years of online experience and all the blogs and videos I've been checking out in my attempt to gradually get into this world.
If this era has anything in common with earlier ones, it's two things: we need a good product and we need people to know about it.
1. PRODUCT. Whether it's a video, a song or simply content we're going to post, it has to be something that draws attention through its quality, something that creates interest in people. Today's supply of music is almost as big as the demand itself. In fact, most people follow more profiles than they can keep up with day to day. So we have to make something good and take care of every last detail. If we get along with computers, we're going to have to learn video and photo editing tools. And if not, we'll have to hire someone to help us, because it's going to be key.
2. KNOWING HOW TO DO IT IS AS IMPORTANT AS LETTING PEOPLE KNOW. We can have a great product, but we have to show it to people. Social media is key to getting ourselves known. We can start with the social network we like best or with several at once, but we have to be clear that each has its own idiosyncrasies and we need to study them carefully. Everything matters; even YouTube video thumbnails are hugely important—we can't underestimate this kind of detail. And, for the first time for many of us, it's worth investing not only time but money. Yes, paying for our own ads! We can't throw up our hands or feel ashamed of promoting ourselves. Every artist makes sacrifices to promote themselves, and I think it's much better to pay for your own ad than to sign away all your rights and be in other people's hands, as has happened to so many great artists.
Facebook Ads, for example, helps you reach a specific audience segment and lets you invest as much as you want in advertising. But like Facebook, any platform lets you run ads. We need to know how they work.
From all the videos I've been watching and the experts I've been consulting, I've come to the conclusion that we need a plan. That is, take time to figure out where we want to go and, once that's clear, draw up a posting schedule so we don't oversaturate. I already fell into that trap when I joined Facebook. I also think it's extremely important that we be clear that EVERYTHING done on the Internet can be measured, so we need to keep track of the analytics for everything we do in order to stop and catch our breath when we need to and, perhaps, take one step back to move two forward.
Let's not forget that the goal, above all, is to build a community of people who follow us, and to get there we have to take it very slowly; we may need to collaborate with other channels, create Facebook groups to build anticipation, join sales websites as affiliates so we can monetize, do live streams, post stories, etc…
Folks, we have an adventure ahead of us. An adventure that involves studying the new environment and learning from it while being aware of something very important: everything can change from one day to the next, because the Internet moves that fast. Today Instagram is everything and tomorrow it may be nothing. If you don't believe me, remember the rise and fall of Myspace. We have to be ready for whatever comes.
