Social media and your music career
This is such a different time for being a professional musician. When I first started my career back in 1984 when I was 18 there wasn't internet and blogs and facebook etc. There was the old fashioned telephone and not cell phone but home phone. Promoting yourself was hard and putting out a recording independently was almost impossible.
We now live in a time where everybody is on some sort of social media site. MySpace was the first big social networking site and was great for musicians because you could have a band site which had a music player and it was super easy to make and update yourself. The DYI web site. Facebook came along and for a while MySpace still offered a great alternative to having to have a web site but it eventually became really hard to update because they were always changing it and it is now basically obsolete. Facebook has band pages which now also have music players and it works well. Reverbnation is the new DYI web site for musicians and is pretty good but it seems more about being popular than being good. Actually that pretty well sums up social media for that matter. How many friends do you have? Really, are they friends?
Having a presence on social media sites I think is very important for a professional musician. Why? Everybody is on it. You get seen and it keeps your name out there. Do I like facebook etc? No. I think it is very superficial for the most part but as a musician I feel I am missing out on the exposure and the social hang if I'm not on it. I have a Sean Bray's Peach Trio facebook page and it's great for updating my "likes" or "followers" or whatever they are called, as to what the band is up to. We'll call them music fans.
I have a new website www.guitaristseanbray.com so please pay a visit. Tracey Dey designed it. I will have information on the soon-to-be released Sean Bray's Peach Trio - Live. This will be a double CD and also available on i-Tunes and the like. Trio is made up of Mark Dunn on bass and Dave MacDougall on drums. The recording turned out really well. I can't wait for everyone to hear it.
I've been listening to:
Wes Montgomery's So Much Guitar on Riverside. (1961)
I love this record and Wes plays so beautifully and with such lyricism. Ron Carter is also on the record and plays bass like no one else. Two notes from either Wes or Ron and I instantly know it's them. The great Hank Jones is on piano as well as Lex Humphries on drums and Ray Barretto on congas. Burning version of CottonTail on this record. Great record!!
That's all for now.
We now live in a time where everybody is on some sort of social media site. MySpace was the first big social networking site and was great for musicians because you could have a band site which had a music player and it was super easy to make and update yourself. The DYI web site. Facebook came along and for a while MySpace still offered a great alternative to having to have a web site but it eventually became really hard to update because they were always changing it and it is now basically obsolete. Facebook has band pages which now also have music players and it works well. Reverbnation is the new DYI web site for musicians and is pretty good but it seems more about being popular than being good. Actually that pretty well sums up social media for that matter. How many friends do you have? Really, are they friends?
Having a presence on social media sites I think is very important for a professional musician. Why? Everybody is on it. You get seen and it keeps your name out there. Do I like facebook etc? No. I think it is very superficial for the most part but as a musician I feel I am missing out on the exposure and the social hang if I'm not on it. I have a Sean Bray's Peach Trio facebook page and it's great for updating my "likes" or "followers" or whatever they are called, as to what the band is up to. We'll call them music fans.
I have a new website www.guitaristseanbray.com so please pay a visit. Tracey Dey designed it. I will have information on the soon-to-be released Sean Bray's Peach Trio - Live. This will be a double CD and also available on i-Tunes and the like. Trio is made up of Mark Dunn on bass and Dave MacDougall on drums. The recording turned out really well. I can't wait for everyone to hear it.
I've been listening to:
Wes Montgomery's So Much Guitar on Riverside. (1961)
I love this record and Wes plays so beautifully and with such lyricism. Ron Carter is also on the record and plays bass like no one else. Two notes from either Wes or Ron and I instantly know it's them. The great Hank Jones is on piano as well as Lex Humphries on drums and Ray Barretto on congas. Burning version of CottonTail on this record. Great record!!
That's all for now.
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