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Even good tunes need to be seeded. The DJ's on your soundcloud wont spread the tune because they want it for themselves. The listeners on your souncloud might show a friend or two. But they are on soundcloud and you wont get anything from it, and unless you seed to a wide initial audience the plays will trickle in at a crippling pace and you'll reach a maximum of 3-4000 people worldwide over a year from being reposted by scrubs with 30 followers who dont even look at what they do because most are just SC/twitter style followback jackers. For fuck sake you guys are so fucking lost in this magic free internet bubble where you think people make money and tunes "go viral" from a pool of a handful of soundcloud users, when the reality is, you have to create the perception of popularity for anyone to pay attention to anything and you have to seed your tunes to 10's of thousands of people to even remotely stand a chance because only a small percentage of people will agree with your song enough to pass it on. Even all these youtube channels and repost accounts are useless because no one ever follows through to the description to go support the artist, they just sit their happy they follow edm.com Let me put things into perspective for you, out all 1000 something followers I have on soundcloud, when i upload a tune I get roughly 1-2000 plays in a week, and then from sharing to groups I get a residual 2-400 plays account-wide per day for another week, and then it goes down to 50-100 plays per day until i upload again. Thats it.. sure I guess I gotta make tunes like noisia and that will be a bit easier to move forward. Ok so Im gona make tunes like noisia now. Its so simple why didnt i fucking think of that all of along, all i had to do was produce like they do and this whole thing would have been way easier. Its so simple.

SignalRecon wrote:It doesn't cost a grand to put a tune out if you dont do a PR campaign for the release, and if you don't get a studio mixdown/sum your mix on a console and do the mastering yourself with Ozone and end up with a plastic tune that sounds like it was produced in an untreated room on shit monitors that doesn't translate in a car even and basically has no dynamics / is all RMS because you just put a limiter on it to 0 DB and have no idea how to dog... IMO..but you know what you're talking about though, link us your Beatport releases, they probably dont even phase cancel themselves out to shit or sound like half the song is missing on a mono club system.

SignalRecon wrote:You know how much it costs to have your tune blogged and get radio play on a BBC show? Thats how much. Before you start talking out of your ass maybe google what a PR agency is, and how much a few of them charge to get your tunes in the hands of relevant DJ's.

How the fuck are people going to find out about your tune if you dont publish it anywhere or win a high profile remix contest? You're supposed to drop money on mixing and wait for the 37$ in Beatport revenue every quarter? No one will find your shit because your tune is buried in hundreds of weekly releases and no one will know to look you up.

SignalRecon wrote:Even good tunes need to be seeded. The DJ's on your soundcloud wont spread the tune because they want it for themselves. The listeners on your souncloud might show a friend or two. But they are on soundcloud and you wont get anything from it, and unless you seed to a wide initial audience the plays will trickle in at a crippling pace and you'll reach a maximum of 3-4000 people worldwide over a year from being reposted by scrubs with 30 followers who dont even look at what they do because most are just SC/twitter style followback jackers. For fuck sake you guys are so fucking lost in this magic free internet bubble where you think people make money and tunes "go viral" from a pool of a handful of soundcloud users, when the reality is, you have to create the perception of popularity for anyone to pay attention to anything and you have to seed your tunes to 10's of thousands of people to even remotely stand a chance because only a small percentage of people will agree with your song enough to pass it on. Even all these youtube channels and repost accounts are useless because no one ever follows through to the description to go support the artist, they just sit their happy they follow edm.com Let me put things into perspective for you, out all 1000 something followers I have on soundcloud, when i upload a tune I get roughly 1-2000 plays in a week, and then from sharing to groups I get a residual 2-400 plays account-wide per day for another week, and then it goes down to 50-100 plays per day until i upload again. Thats it.. sure I guess I gotta make tunes like noisia and that will be a bit easier to move forward. Ok so Im gona make tunes like noisia now. Its so simple why didnt i fucking think of that all of along, all i had to do was produce like they do and this whole thing would have been way easier. Its so simple.

on a sad note i had no idea electronic music prodution was so expensive if you wanted to do it right

i think a lot of the issue apart from the internet bubble mentioned above

is that more and more people still subsrcibe to the rose tinted opinion that art should be done for pleasure not profit

and that the making of music should be in itself a reward for an artist

its a shame as the signalrecon tune record lavel thread i read through i liked the tracks that were in there

but there is a hdiden cost as with all art

@signalrecon you obviously feel strongly about this

what do you think is the answer?

Money isn't the point, its a bonus, the point is the exposure, so that people can hear what you worked on and then judge you as production experts and criticize you despite them not knowing how to keymap a kontakt patch (and ideally mention to other people on forums that you "should have added a bit of chorus" in your lead)...the odd dollar here and there that comes in to offset the cost of what you had to put in to get your name out there does help to keep going until you reach that "event horizon" of public authority in your genre.

Just grinds my gears when guys like chekov/sixs talk like they know wtf is up with such arrogance when its not the case.. I literally want to punch both of them in face.

SignalRecon wrote:Money isn't the point, its a bonus, the point is the exposure, so that people can hear what you worked on and then judge you as production experts and criticize you despite them not knowing how to keymap a kontakt patch (and ideally mention to other people on forums that you "should have added a bit of chorus" in your lead)...the odd dollar here and there that comes in to offset the cost of what you had to put in to get your name out there does help to keep going until you reach that "event horizon" of public authority in your genre.

i once looked in dubs and tunes for feedback

even the people acting like they had a clue had no clue

SignalRecon wrote:Just grinds my gears when guys like chekov/sixs talk like they know wtf is up with such arrogance when its not the case.. I literally want to punch both of them in face.

i thought chekhov either djed or produced although maybe i am thinking of someone else



is $1000 the average cost for a release these days?

SignalRecon wrote:I literally want to punch both of them in face.

Check yourself.

SignalRecon wrote:Just grinds my gears when guys like chekov/sixs talk like they know wtf is up with such arrogance when its not the case.. I literally want to punch both of them in face.

why do you get so angry and defensive when people disagree with you?

but yea it kinda sounds like you're on about trying to get to a different level of the industry than i think i can be arsed with. i'd probably also go with what someone else said, that if your tunes are strong enough then djs will eventually pick them up regardless of how much you pay a PR team. dan shake got a release on mahogani music just by passing a cd to moodymann at dimensions so you don't necessarily need a pr blitzkrieg to get stuff out there

grrrrr signalrecon angry

signalrecon smash

@Sonorery Well you can release for a lot less, you can get blog only PR packages when like, 4-5 fake blogs a la noiseporn.com talk about you for around 200$. If your buddy works in a studio you save big time there if he likes you enough put in a few hours for free or you can do everything on your laptop you save there both on the mix and mastering side, if you're a pretty popular local DJ with a solid following you can just rely on that and if you have good connections to your local chapter of Live Nation (biggest promoter in your city before they bought him out) you can get sent out to relevant people for free. But short of those things, where you're not a promoter/manager/blogger/engineer/DJ/social media superstar, you may have to pay somewhere to get results that are better then lets say edm.com posting your tune and taking all your plays/traffic/likes/comments away from your own account because they get more plays and come up before you in searches for your tune.

chekov wrote: i'd probably also go with what someone else said, that if your tunes are strong enough then djs will eventually pick them up regardless of how much you pay a PR team.

is there a sweet spot

like a good enough tune requires no pr cost expenditure to get signed

but a poor tune can buy exposure

maybe there is a graph with a certain level of good tune vs certain level of pr cost to get it noticed

chekov wrote: dan shake got a release on mahogani music just by passing a cd to moodymann at dimensions so you don't necessarily need a pr blitzkrieg to get stuff out there

don#t know who that is but good for him

chekov wrote:

SignalRecon wrote:Just grinds my gears when guys like chekov/sixs talk like they know wtf is up with such arrogance when its not the case.. I literally want to punch both of them in face.

but yea it kinda sounds like you're on about trying to get to a different level of the industry than i think i can be arsed with. i'd probably also go with what someone else said, that if your tunes are strong enough then djs will eventually pick them up regardless of how much you pay a PR team. dan shake got a release on mahogani music just by passing a cd to moodymann at dimensions so you don't necessarily need a pr blitzkrieg to get stuff out there

This is true dude, but usually by the time your tune gets to relevant people, its by accident and it's been out for a year or two and its no longer relevant. You are constantly working against the clock in electronic music, the rate at which #EDM is consumed is staggering and nothing has shelf life anymore just like everything else, music is disposable and theres no respect for commodities. Thats why i turned to more home-listening friendly genres recently because combined with online stations like di.fm your tunes get into the hands of enthusiasts who just enjoy individual tunes and don't just clean out their download folder every two weeks to download the next dj set they need for the gym.

If you're tune is really really good the difference may be that a label may be willing to foot all those costs for you in exchange for the rights to the song and the revenue from it. But ultimately, they will do all that PR stuff unless they are a big label that can simply make your tune a hit by giving it to 5 DJ's/

chekov wrote:

SignalRecon wrote:Just grinds my gears when guys like chekov/sixs talk like they know wtf is up with such arrogance when its not the case.. I literally want to punch both of them in face.

why do you get so angry and defensive when people disagree with you?

Well its just the way its done around here, people dont disagree with people very gracefully. It always has to be that typical "LOL NO OMFG FEG KILLYOURSELF WRONG" vibe and it gets to me sometimes. If you would have started with something like "Are you sure its 500$ for PR?" or maybe even like, "here are some agencies that I have dealt with that do not charge that amount for the same results" I would have used a different tone as well.

SR you know your shit and you're in that soundcloud/blog/facebook/party organization hustle and all

but plenty of people make it off sending beats to some DJ/label. That's the only way I could ever be fucked with doing it. But you're trying to make it as a label/party straight away I guess so that's the difference.

SignalRecon wrote:Even good tunes need to be seeded. The DJ's on your soundcloud wont spread the tune because they want it for themselves. The listeners on your souncloud might show a friend or two. But they are on soundcloud and you wont get anything from it, and unless you seed to a wide initial audience the plays will trickle in at a crippling pace and you'll reach a maximum of 3-4000 people worldwide over a year from being reposted by scrubs with 30 followers who dont even look at what they do because most are just SC/twitter style followback jackers. For fuck sake you guys are so fucking lost in this magic free internet bubble where you think people make money and tunes "go viral" from a pool of a handful of soundcloud users, when the reality is, you have to create the perception of popularity for anyone to pay attention to anything and you have to seed your tunes to 10's of thousands of people to even remotely stand a chance because only a small percentage of people will agree with your song enough to pass it on. Even all these youtube channels and repost accounts are useless because no one ever follows through to the description to go support the artist, they just sit their happy they follow edm.com Let me put things into perspective for you, out all 1000 something followers I have on soundcloud, when i upload a tune I get roughly 1-2000 plays in a week, and then from sharing to groups I get a residual 2-400 plays account-wide per day for another week, and then it goes down to 50-100 plays per day until i upload again. Thats it.. sure I guess I gotta make tunes like noisia and that will be a bit easier to move forward. Ok so Im gona make tunes like noisia now. Its so simple why didnt i fucking think of that all of along, all i had to do was produce like they do and this whole thing would have been way easier. Its so simple.

Not what I meant at all, but fair. I just meant that in the right hands the music would do the talking.

oh i was more shocked that you'd pay so much than questioning what the pr would actually cost

soronery wrote:

chekov wrote: i'd probably also go with what someone else said, that if your tunes are strong enough then djs will eventually pick them up regardless of how much you pay a PR team.

maybe there is a graph with a certain level of good tune vs certain level of pr cost to get it noticed

yeah i mean i feel a lot of it's luck/good timing as much as anything. i suppose you gotta be good at 'networking' too, try chatting to people at nights so they're more likely to reply to emails and stuff

SignalRecon wrote:This is true dude, but usually by the time your tune gets to relevant people, its by accident and it's been out for a year or two and its no longer relevant. You are constantly working against the clock in electronic music, the rate at which #EDM is consumed is staggering and nothing has shelf life anymore just like everything else, music is disposable and theres no respect for commodities. Thats why i turned to more home-listening friendly genres recently because combined with online stations like di.fm your tunes get into the hands of enthusiasts who just enjoy individual tunes and don't just clean out their download folder every two weeks to download the next dj set they need for the gym.

this is something that has actually stopped me from working on tracks as often as i ought to, can be very jading seeing lots of people jumping on bandwagons then getting a level of success they definitely don't deserve (the main example that springs to my mind definitely will have paid for their PR actually.)

i suppose the answer is either to step away from more hype-driven club stuff as you say, or to try especially hard to think consciously about how to bring a new angle to whatever music you find exciting at the time. hard to do without seeming contrived though

The best achievements come about after bare hard work.

how much to buy a career in electronic music

you would need maybe 7 or 8 'hits'

ghost produced of course

call it 500 per tune assuming this isnt going to be ground breaking stuff so 4000

marketing another 1000 per tune from what we have seen above

so 12000

you would get to a certain level then djing and 'live' performances would kick in and things would take care of themselves

Anyone want to become a duo and split the 12k

Or maybe lets find a third and it's only 4k each

Harkat wrote:SR you know your shit and you're in that soundcloud/blog/facebook/party organization hustle and all

but plenty of people make it off sending beats to some DJ/label. That's the only way I could ever be fucked with doing it. But you're trying to make it as a label/party straight away I guess so that's the difference.

rickyarbino wrote:Not what I meant at all, but fair. I just meant that in the right hands the music would do the talking.

100% agree with jesslem in Harkat up there. If your song is good, and it gets into the right hands, its settled. You are = madeit. However the percentage of people who get into this situation at the right time with the right people unfortunately is very small compared to the shear volume of people who do not, and its much more likely that you will not be heard not because you didn't send in a good tune but because you are buried in weeks worth of shite tunes.

To me, from that point of view, its better to leave my fate in my own hands and try to reach people directly and build a following for myself. Once you have that, big labels will want to work with you because they have followers/gains to be made on top of having a guarantee your tune will sell. Its like that "sell tickets to the jam for timeslots" concept between DJ's/promoters which is bs, agreed, but that's supply/demand and the more time you ignore it/argue how wack it is instead of playing it you're just losing ground on people who put their balls in a wheel-barrow and push forward.

chekov wrote: this is something that has actually stopped me from working on tracks as often as i ought to, can be very jading seeing lots of people jumping on bandwagons then getting a level of success they definitely don't deserve (the main example that springs to my mind definitely will have paid for their PR actually.)


i suppose the answer is either to step away from more hype-driven club stuff as you say, or to try especially hard to think consciously about how to bring a new angle to whatever music you find exciting at the time. hard to do without seeming contrived though

lol yea, its a complicated formula that looks something like:

Quality + Personal Image and marketability x PR connections / Power vacuum of current bandwagon (is it new and exploding, is it collapsing and saturated) = your status