Music Strategy Guru of the Day :: Bruce Warila
I’ve been devouring the “unsprung wisdom” of newly discovered (by me) Bruce Warila this morning. I was impressed by his comments on the following post by Andrew Dubber, and happy was I to find that he has his own blog. He seems to know his shit and provides some good counter-insights to those of Andrew, who also seems to know his shit in these areas, so the plot has just thickened. The fact that they both make excellent arguments while disagreeing on several points is a great thing. I’m really thinking now. I’m reminded anew to stay on my toes and keep questioning when in comes to all these theories going around about the direction of music and the music industry.
It’s important that we as artists pay close attention to this stuff (that’s why I’m excited about this Bruce guy and passing it on to you), but also that, above all else, we trust our own instincts and rely on our own creativity. Nomatter how informed or expert someone may be in these areas, they don’t know it all, and there are other pieces to the puzzle.
But, that said, I’ve been “tumblr-quoting” the hell out of Bruce’s stuff, my non-bullshit detector (the oppposite of my bullshit detector) going off like crazy, and that’s a good sign that he’s onto some important things. He’s certainly sparking a lot of creative thought for me, even getting me re-excited about business strategies (a wave I need to ride when it’s high, so I’m going to wrap this up with some quotes now). Most significant to me is what he’s getting at in this post:
“A MySpace page dotted with fancy graphics, YouTube videos, slide shows and images, and a shitty music player was great in 2005, but this is 2007! A page of stuff is no longer compelling. We need something that really blows the socks off people.”
“Advice: Time to pick up the pace people. You need to learn how to be entertaining on the Internet. You may want to go out and buy the TV (yourband.tv) domain for your band. You need to start looking at your band like a television network. Have a filmmaker and a writer join your band, choose a theme, write a story, lash in your music, create episodes, write notes about your story on your blog, engage fans, develop characters, have a storyline, create a soundtrack, etc. Stop using your Internet presence to be INFORMATIVE, use it to be ENTERTAINING!”
“Nobody is going to make money selling $.99 cent downloads. Sell your music to some and give it away to everyone else that refuses to pay for music. Use your music as the bait that brings people into your shows and onto your new ENTERTAINING website/blog. If you make great music and you are entertaining, you will make money. By the time you learn how to incorporate story, basic film making, blogging, and how to be episodic - into your repertoire, the industry will have the tools you need to profit from all of your efforts - and your registered fans.”
comments
Leave A Comment