we got a message today from a girl asking about our success via the internet/myspace and if i had any advice for her friend (singer/songwriter). I thought about all of the steps that we took to get to where we are today, and i realized that our outline for success would not work in today's cyber world.
it seems to be a lot harder these days for new bands to spread their music online to mass amounts of people (as opposed to a couple of years back). if you had time and a work ethic 2 years ago, you could get your music to thousands of people every single day without even relying on their word of mouth to kick in.
when facebook first launched, each of us would send out HUNDREDS of messages every single day from our own accounts linking people to our band's purevolume.com page. now there's a cap on how many messages you can send via facebook before they flag you and threaten to delete your account. it's also a lot harder to search people. all we had to do was pick a college and type in a similar music interest as us, and we could go to town on these people. it was an amazing outlet. i think purevolume was a lot more popular back then too. i had a facebook account deleted some time last year for sending out like 15 messages or so.
we also used to add hundreds of myspace friends per day very easily, but that has also gotten a lot more difficult. you have to type in codes every few requests and with all of the spam and porn profiles circulating, everybody has their security options on full protection.
although we put in a lot of effort over the past few years, we also got very lucky that we emerged when we did. the social networking scene has tightened its leash quite a bit. it used to be a free for all, now there's blockade after blockade. you really have to get creative and find new and more powerful ways to promote yourself...
when we had less friends on myspace and less to do, we could also respond to people's messages and comments in no time. it's a lot harder for us recently to get back to every comment and it takes months sometimes for us to clear out our inbox. eventually a band does have to write and practice and fans have to understand that... ESPECIALLY the ones that haven't even bought your music. so if your comment goes unanswered like many do or your message hasn't been responded to in over a month, we're sorry but we still love you immensely! come to a show and you can talk our ear off! we dont even bite most of the time.
sean
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