“its like boot camp for songwriters. If you can say it in 140 characters and pare it down to be succinct and somewhat poetic, that’s good.” Rosanne Cash
This quote is Roseanne Cash saying why she likes twitter in an interview with Jim Roberts.
Why your numbers may matter
There was an interesting article in the Observer newspaper.
A journalist got permission to be present at
Radio One playlists committee meeting.
The committee meets to choose the 40 tunes are played in heavy rotation on the station across the majority of daytime shows.
People talk about radio being dead but Radio One still has 12 million listeners.
It has always been notoriously difficult to bag one of these spots
Which is why bands and labels pay pluggers fat fees to promote tunes directly to the big stations, but that is not what we are talking about here.
What was irrelevant and interesting to the majority of us was how much of the decision was influenced by social media numbers.
With bands being judged not just for the quality or commercial appeal of their music but also on how many twitter followers, facebook likes, plays on you tube they have.
With 15,000 you tube hits on a video being considered very low.
Quote from the article .. someone mentions Peace whose “video is doing alright with 300,000 views and 45,000 followers on twitter, which is good at this point”
While obviously most of us aren’t being considered for high rotation play on daytime Radio 1,
It does mean that it is becoming normal for promoters, radio stations, bloggers, labels, potential managers to check on your social presence and fan base before investing their time in considering you for their label, putting you on their bill or featuring you on their radio show or even writing about you.
It is a no brainer..
Why wouldn’t they want to get an instant snapshot of how many people are following you.
So if your local promoter has to choose between booking a band with 5 followers on twitter and 500 and they want to not risk an empty room ..
Maybe you have a great live following and it is just not reflected online – but if that is so, that is even more reason to get on it.
Twitter is a great way of getting closer to the lovely people who come to your shows.
Its not all about the numbers – you may have a lively vibrant conversation going on with a few hundred real people.
You really don’t need to be boring on twitter
Back to Rosanne Cash – what i think is really good about what she is saying is that you can actually be using twitter etc. as a piece of your artistic practice.
Several authors are playing round with the idea of publishing books on twitter 140 characters at a time
Or if writing is not your bag you can publish your photostream or videos directly to your twitter.
What do you do with your twitter stream? I would love to know.
some famous songs about twitter
Like a tweet out of hell – meatloaf
Why Am I Tweeted So Bad? – The Staple Singers
Tweet Dreams (are Made Of This)’ – Eurythmics.
Tweet life – Randy Crawford
Tweet others how you would want to be Tweeted – ancient zen saying |
