Don't waste my life, bro!

Comrades!

  Man oh man, I hope spring has been treating everyone well!  Each year I'm reminded what a cool season it is.

Plus, the frogs and crickets are back, who are, in my opinion, the best musicians around.  #winning!

  I've been doing a lot of music marketing lately, as well as watching even more happen around  me.  It is both fascinating (on a good day), and discouraging and frustrating (on a bad day.)  There seems to be quite a bit of noise cluttering the airwaves, and I wanted to talk about that in a philosophical and practical sense today.  While this post is aimed at musicians, I think it can apply to anyone.

Here's the question:  Remember when we were little kids, thinking "Man, I can't wait to grow up, be a musician, and... harass my friends until they buy my CD or come to my show."?  No!  We wanted to be stars!  We wanted to change the world!  And yet, here we are, endlessly inviting each other to events that we don't really want to go to, and pushing merchandise.


For, indeed, there seems to be a lot of taking going on, and I think it's worth a look, both from a tactics standpoint, and a life purpose view.  (That being said, I just got some really cool wristbands.  You should buy one!)

  The advent of the Internet has created almost limitless possibilities for to connect with people.  We have this magnificent vehicle for building meaningful connections all over the world.  However, since we're humans, we have promptly turned around and used it as a means to get in people's faces more effectively.

  Perhaps we need to re-examine what we're asking for.

We're generally asking for people's time.  "Come to my show!"  "Like my Facebook page!"  "Follow me on Twitter!"  Sometimes it leads to money (you should really buy that wristband!), but most often, it's time.

  Now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with engaging an audience.  It must be done to succeed. There are fresh, creative ideas all around us, and it's nice to be told what's going on. The danger perhaps is this - maybe we don't value people's time as much as we should.  It's funny, because time is the most precious commodity in existence. Yet, any time we tweet something lame, we're wasting both ours and theirs.  If we play a show, and we don't give it our all, even if there's only one person watching, and they're the bartender, we're stealing time from people.  As the noise fills our screen, our lives are literally being taken from us bit by bit.  I resent that, and I think you probably do, too.

 So, definitely keep on engaging, tweeting, taking cool shots with Instagram, releasing EP's, and playing shows.

  Just know that your audience is giving you part of their lives.  Make it worth it.

Thank you for reading this post!

- Josh