Interacting With Every Fan May Not Make A Difference

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Look at every “music promotion” and “how to gain a following” article written and they’ll all include the following advice: “interact with every fan every time“. Well it may not make a difference. Surprisingly, it may serve to make you look less professional and less established than the artists and musicians you’re trying to aspire to.

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How Many Of Your Initial “Fans” Are Regular Music Fans?

Look at the typical person who follows or interacts with new music artists and groups; they’re the same kinds of people also creating “music” (I use that word lightly). All desperate for exposure, especially in the electronica community. The entire point of “respond to every fan!!” is just that; responding to fans. But the majority of interactions will be from, technically, your musical peers.

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The Unoffical Rules Regarding Remix Naming

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There’s a few unspoken rules that have developed on how to name remixes. Let’s start with Nice and Soft and Smooth as an example.

I feel it’s important to give remixes interesting, catchy names when you’re doing the remixing yourself. Normally, remixing takes on the name of the person doing it. So if this song was remixed by Daft Punk, it’d be called “Mixer Jaëxx – Nice and Soft and Smooth (Daft Punk Remix)“. You don’t need, or want, to name the remix individually since the title’s already long enough with the remixer taking credits.

Now, if Daft Punk did mutiple remixes of the same song, then that’s when you’d see need to specifically call out the remixes with their own name or at least description. The first one would likely be called “Mixer Jaëxx – Nice and Soft and Smooth (Daft Punk Remix)“, but then the second one would need to be called either “Mixer Jaëxx – Nice and Soft and Smooth (Daft Punk’s Happy Remix)” or “Mixer Jaëxx – Nice and Soft and Smooth (Daft Punk Club Remix)“. Either giving a remix a name or simply calling out the type of remix (club).

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Why Electronica SoundCloud Creators Aren’t Genuine

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I’ve learned that a lot of electronica music creators (genres like downtempo, drum & bass, techno, etc) are “plastic people” compared to acoustic music creators (such as acoustic guitar signers). When you look at engagement on places like SoundCloud, it becomes obvious.

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Fiction Scenario

Take two songs; one is a chillout song, the other is an acoustic guitar vocal song. Both will have the same “professional” production value and creativity. They mostly submit their songs to general genre groups and they both interact and leave comments for tracks with the same style. Both songs have 1,000 plays, 3 months old. Both artists have 1,500 followers.

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The Meaning of Iron Butterfly

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So, what do the lyrics mean of Iron Butterfly? When my music has a story or meaning, I want it to be hard to decipher on your first listen through, but after your second, third or fourth time through, I hope the story or meaning becomes clear. That said, I purposely design ambiguity into my music to always leave a little mystery and to create something for our imagination (yours and mine).

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Consider this section a cheat sheet; a spoiler section. I’d prefer you not read this until you’ve given yourself a chance to figure it out. I’m going to present the meaning and story, not how I’ve thought it up, but from the way the lyrics and clues would lead us, the listener, to understand.

Meaning

The male starts talking about a female he’s involved with. At “I will not let her go”, we understand they had some kinda’ breakup. From it, we can surmise that he was the one who broke up with her.

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Recording artist & producer.