Influencers and Bands

If you are a musician in the age of social media and technology, you have it easy, right? The ability to record yourself singing and playing guitar from the comfort of your own home for less than $200 in equipment, the millions of potential fans you can reach through social media, and being able to instantly distribute your music to every streaming platform known to man should make becoming famous easy right? I mean look at Justin Bieber, the pop superstar was discovered on YouTube and makes zillions of dollars now. Or take the yodeling Walmart kid, for example. One video later and he's touring the entire country making more money at 12 years old than I make with three jobs at 23. Hell, look at Fleetwood Mac making a comeback 40 years later and trending at #4 on Spotify artists after that one viral video trend. So it's easy to become famous right?

Wrong. The age of technology has made it immensely more difficult for artists to become famous. While it is easier to become noticed as a musician these days, the attention span of the audience is now limited to 10-30 seconds, instead of 3-5 minutes, let alone a full album's worth of material. I've asked myself on question since recording my first song, and it's this:

"Why is no one listening to my music?"

If you're a rising musician, you've asked yourself the same question. If you haven't asked that question, stop reading now. This article isn't for you. Go back to your day job in accounting or whatever. The fundamental premise of the music industry is made up of two parts. The first is making some music. Seems simple enough, but making music means everything from writing a song to recording a song. The second part of the industry is essentially a multi-billion dollar business conglomerate. Inventing the wheel is one thing. Convincing everyone their car will drive better with round wheels as opposed to square ones, and then making those wheels, selling those wheels, shipping those wheels, showcasing those wheels, and making money off the idea of round wheels is a whole new pig. As a new artist in today's industry, it's difficult to tackle all of this and still be creative.

As a new artist I learned very quickly that I had to wear multiple hats in the music industry to start. Songwriter, composer, studio engineer, producer, manager, agent, label, marketing manager, public relations specialist, and the list goes on. Unless daddy's money got you into Rick Riordan's booth, and he works for Atlantic, you're doing this shit solo, my friend. You want to play a gig at the local dive bar? You book it. You want to record a new album? You bust out your laptop and do it. You want to release that newly recorded album? You find a distributer. This industry in brutal. It will chew you up, and spit you out like a bad crab cake over and over again until you realize you're a dime a dozen, and six other people just made the exact same song and you're absolutely worthless.

How does any of this tie into social media? Doesn't technology make everything easier? Hot take: social media is the downfall of the music industry. Not because you can't use it to your advantage, but because no one does. If you Google "how to record music at home" or "how to get my music on Spotify" your social media accounts will be flooded with advertisements for digital distributers and other music industry related pyramid schemes. After diving into those a little, you'll realize there are some pretty viable options for utilizing social media to your advantage. You'll probably even fall down the rabbit whole of watching 10 second videos of other musicians sing or play guitar on those musician feature pages. If the self loathing and existential dread becomes overwhelming enough, you might even signup for TikTok to see other people get famous in 10 seconds. This is the issue I have with social media and music. Let me explain.

If you take a minute to find one of the feature pages on Instagram, you'll notice one common feature among every single video. They're all covers. Not a single original song is going viral in 10 seconds. We've evolved passed the guy playing Stairway to Heaven or Sweet Child O' Mine in Guitar Center. We've moved into a darker age in showing off. We're now seeing middle aged men sing Alicia Keys' part in Empire State of Mind and little girls sing Rage Against the Machine. Very attractive people of both genders ripping guitar solos to the melody of a popular song, or simply playing a Slash solo with absolutely no backing track. Occasionally you'll get someone who rewrites the solo to an Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix song, because I guess those guys weren't good enough musicians to write ones themselves.

To the little girl who went viral singing Killing in the Name Of, please release a part 2 with the ending. To everyone else, we get it. You play guitar. Your mom told you that you had a beautiful voice. The people trending on Instagram and TikTok and the likes are getting famous by playing a short segment of an already famous song just so people can say, "oh you're not half bad" and like their videos. Fuck those people. If 10 second cover artists had even an ounce of talent, wedding bands would cost a fortune, and there'd be a Grammy for Best Cover. Anyways, fuck the Grammy's. The Academy is the Man. Fuck the Man. Stick it to the Man. That's like rule #3 of being a musician. Melt faces, party, stick it to the man.

Probably the most depressing part of all this 10 second cover bullshit is that it is stealing good musicians from being in actual bands. Bass players and drummers no longer want to sit in the back and not get laid. They want it all to themselves now. So what do they do? They either try and blow up on TikTok playing their instrument to someone else's song, or they pull a Dave Grohl and start singing and playing guitar. Meanwhile, the rest of us who actually try and start a band are getting fucked, because there are no more bass players or drummers left in the world! Every artist thinks they're the next Travis Barker or Flea. Nobody wants to be the next Blink-182 or the next Red Hot Chili Peppers. Newsflash to the people who think like that: none of them were shit before they made a band.

(*Spoilers*) Look at the movie Whiplash. Miles Teller's character had a psychotic breakdown, and if it wasn't for him sticking it to the man at the end, his entire persona was wanting to be the best. He didn't care about his band being the best. He wanted to be the best. It nearly killed him.

Now that making a viral video is all the craze, artists like myself are struggling to find band members. I recognize that as a guitarist and vocalist, I'm replaceable until I get famous (didn't work out too poorly for Journey though). Bass players and drummers are in such high demand now a days, you do anything you can to hold on to them. My bass player friend is in 4 bands alone, and I still only know one available drummer in town. Have the years of guys like Vince Neil and Axl Rose ruined music for the rest of us? Have the front men and women of the industry hoarded all the snatch from the rest of the band for so long, that the rest of the members have finally had enough?

The greatest tragedy to happen in music history since the Spring of '94 (birth of Justin Bieber followed by the death of Kurt Cobain), is the dark path drummers take today. One of the greatest drummers I have ever played with just released his new dubstep remix on SoundCloud. Why is this a tragedy? It's tragic because there is one less drummer in the world. Can he still play? Absolutely. Will he? Probably not. It is tragic to see so many talented musicians go down the path of electronic music. It's a path that allows musicians to do everything themselves, and cut out the loose ends like a shitty bass player or cocky singer. To set one thing straight, I love electronic music. Getting blitzed at Red Rocks to Bass Nectar is a wild weekend. The tragedy is that we've pushed drummers to the point in their music careers that they no longer feel cherished and needed.

To all the drummers who stopped drumming to make EDM, on behalf of every singer/songwriter who plays guitar that isn't Ed Sheeran, we miss you. Please come back. We need you.

After reading my three or four rants in the last couple hundred words or so, you probably have a headache trying to tie it all together. Let me help with that, since it is my job. Social media creates viral trends which open the spotlight to anyone and everyone, creating a void in the musician-creativity continuum, and leaving our brains filled with 10 second snippets of knock-off, butchered art.

Is the idea of a band archaic? Is the age of bands that start with the word "The" over? Is Rock N' Roll dead? Did video kill the radio star? These questions, along with my depression and insomnia, are what keep me up at night. I hope one day we can come together as a society and work towards returning to the golden era of music where a band was a band, not a bunch of artists making TikToks.

Stay tuned for my article about how I hate Soundcloud rappers.

Coleman, out.