New year and new tricks. The second of January always fills my inbox with all sort of fun stuff from all the other blogs I have subscribed to, and then you get all the usual junk... But on top of this I tend to get lot of what I would call music business junk... I know it sounds harsh of me to call it that, but it was one of the first things that got me writing this blog. You get those “get 10000 dedicated subscribers” Emails and let me just say this, under any circumstances do not pay for service like this! These are not real fans. If you don't have any connection or interaction with your fans, they are as good as no fans at all... There was a time, back in the days of Myspace when I thought that having a huge amount of followers actually accounted for something, but it does not. Even if some promoter decided to book you on the bases of your so called “ huge following”, you would only piss them off by turning up to do a gig and there was no one in the audience and I'd be pretty sure that would be very short lived relationship. Where as if you have lets say only 150 friends on your Facebook, and you even manage to bring 50 of them to your live show, then you are on to something. And I think that would be a good way to describe the importance of the numbers, it is the percentage of the fans that you have, that you can mobilize that counts for lot more. So work on your fans, collect them at gigs, keep in contact with them, have fun with them:-)
I am actually writing this blog in Warsaw. I have been on a bit of a longer holiday. I decided to spend the Christmas in Finland with my mom, brothers and sister. Sometimes it can be hard as an independent musician to find the time to take breaks, and it had been just too long since I'd been back in Finland for a break:-). Then I was off to Warsaw for another week, where I am at the moment. I've spent a quite bit of time in the past year here. I know lot of people have very mixed opinion of this city, but there is something here I like. Now I've taken on the task to find out what is going on here in the underground punk and metal scene. It can be surprisingly hard task as my Polish is crap... But I am working on it;-). Still, little things like language barriers never got on my way before. All my friends know about the punk rock show we organized in Dublin. I am starting to have a growing hunger to organize another one here in Warsaw. Obviously organizing a concert in a town where I don't live, let alone speak language, will be a crazy task. But that's the kind of challenges that helps you learn and grow. And before every punk band under the sun starts sending me Emails about getting a gig on the bill, I need to refer back to the first part of this blog. Part from being an excellent band, You need to be able to bring in a crowd in Warsaw, so more than likely I'd be looking for local bands. Now you might wonder why am I sharing this with you, well I think this could be cool to share the ins and outs of this process with you guys as well. It is a big task and I am sure I will learn lot on the way, so why not share some of this with you. Also some of you might have some contacts that you can help me with.
So as you can see, holidays just get me thinking and planning more;-) I'll be back in Dublin on Friday and gigging with Sliotar on Saturday, nothing like hitting the ground running. I hope you all had a great start to 2012 and I'll be back for more next week.
J.P.
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