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Add9, since we're on dubstep forum I'll give you an easy name, Burial.

rickyarbino wrote:Add9, since we're on dubstep forum I'll give you an easy name, Burial.

You think that Burial could get big in today's industry without promoting his music? I highly doubt it (not to say that his music isn't amazing, just that the scene is much more saturated now than it was when Burial first got going.)

Yeah, he literally did the opposite iirc.

I'll be honest I didn't know that about Burial... but I think advising a current dubstep producer who wishes to gain an audience to follow that kind of passive business plan is a recipe for frustration.

That was the thing with Burial though...he was never about gaining an audience. All the interviews you read, he just wanted to make music. It just so happened that his music was unlike anything else up until to that point (or since, to a certain extent) and he got early radio play off Kode9 etc...things just accelerated for him without his actual trying that much to 'force' himself upon an audience.

I said burial because he was obvious, but really dubstep is more of a grassroots thing, good promotion really just amounts to whether or not your music is good, so with this being 'dubstep forum' it makes perfect sense to tell someone that making better music will get them where they're going in life. But really it's a statement of good form; even from your point of view it wouldn't stand to reason to insist that someone who is not good at what they do should expect to become successful at it.

Guess it opens up the debate of

good music vs some promotion
great music vs no promotion
sub par music vs lots of promotion

All of which provide valuable points for discussion.

Well, I wouldn't suggest that someone should expect success without first becoming good at his or her craft. But I also wouldn't try to argue that it is advisable to withhold your product from the target consumer once you feel it is of a high enough quality. Now... maybe it is high quality and maybe it isn't, but you certainly won't know until you put it out there.

Add9 wrote:Well, I wouldn't suggest that someone should expect success without first becoming good at his or her craft. But I also wouldn't try to argue that it is advisable to withhold your product from the target consumer once you feel it is of a high enough quality. Now... maybe it is high quality and maybe it isn't, but you certainly won't know until you put it out there.

That's an issue with today's electronic musicians though...a lot of them expect instant gratification for output that is inferior. Like when producers mention how little time they've been producing or their age as though to say "look how good I've got so quickly!" when in fact they might be better suited to just knuckling down a few years and getting the output up to a level that is sufficient before putting their material out there.

Some of my early tracks (and especially some of my earlier DJ mixes) should NOT have been for public consumption at all, in hindsight. But I was young and impetuous instead of old and cynical like I am now

Specially now with the internet tbh, shit goes on like a scar.

rickyarbino wrote:Specially now with the internet tbh, shit goes on like a scar.

Yeah...one of my veeeeeeeeery early breaks ( ) mixes turned up on a Russian forum somehow. Fuck knows how many copies of it are out there

Yeah I hear what you're saying... it is a common misconception that producing electronic music is easy, so people expect instant results and are disappointed when they realize it's years, maybe even decades of work before you can be good at it. There are a lot of people, probably too many, who ask why they aren't gaining a huge audience when they probably should be focusing more on improving their music - that's a fair point. But in the end, that gets back to the debate you mentioned earlier wub... about the relationship between quality of music and the value of promotion. I'm not sure where I stand on that... I still think that without trying to promote your music you're going to have a hard time no matter how good you are... and it's hard to know exactly where you stand at any given time. But on the other hand I see how one might be reluctant to recommend aggressive promotion considering how many producers try to promote music that probably doesn't deserve it.

jrkhnds wrote: you know what I'm getting at ultimately. all about that artistic integrity. should be valued over success imho (big up Pete for sticking to what you were doing from day 1 on that note). and if things don't end up working out, maybe it's down to your music being shit in the first place, maybe it's down to being at the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe there just isn't a market for your music, which is certainly sad, but what can you do...
try. fail. try again. fail better...

Cheers g!

Add9 wrote:Yeah I hear what you're saying... it is a common misconception that producing electronic music is easy, so people expect instant results and are disappointed when they realize it's years, maybe even decades of work before you can be good at it. There are a lot of people, probably too many, who ask why they aren't gaining a huge audience when they probably should be focusing more on improving their music - that's a fair point. But in the end, that gets back to the debate you mentioned earlier wub... about the relationship between quality of music and the value of promotion. I'm not sure where I stand on that... I still think that without trying to promote your music you're going to have a hard time no matter how good you are... and it's hard to know exactly where you stand at any given time. But on the other hand I see how one might be reluctant to recommend aggressive promotion considering how many producers try to promote music that probably doesn't deserve it.

its all a balancing act, when burial got going the internet wasnt what it is today, and the cultural shift to the onlinr world was still in its infancy (arguably still is, we find new capabilities for the net every day, but thats a discussion for another thread). I think these days some kind of promotion is healthy provided that firstly your music isnt a bunch of wank (technically as opposed to subjectively, to me skrillex is a bunch of wank but thats a subjective opinion rather than a technical one) and secondly your method of promotion is well thought out and planned. I've always felt that your music in the hands of a few carefully selected relevant people will have more impact than a thousand people with a scattergun approach.

The whole platform has changed but many of the ways people need to get heard have not,

Facebook, twitter etc are full of noise its hard to stand out, the oldschool method of putting on an event or getting a physical following and talking to the people that do similar things in your area help. getting a local reputation and being known for what you do certainly makes a difference, then the promotion will do its own work via the people you know.

Dystinkt is spot on about Music actually being good in the first place that helps , but on top of that if your not doing something that is true to you then the journey is even harder. im not an expert by any means, although I have produced for 18 years.

All of the successful people I know stood for their own thing, they were not trying to sound like anyone else and even when times were bad they did not change there true musical selves and after many years it paid off for many of them.

The moral of it is its a slow game and there is no such thing as overnight success for anyone, people that may seem to have come from no where and sell XXXXX tunes have no doubt worked for many many years doing what they do before they even got noticed.