CHRIS BESTWICK

It's almost a year now since I set up this website and started taking online promotion semi-seriously. I thought I'd set out a few thoughts about how I think it's gone, to see if my experiences chime with anyone else's, and also in case it's useful to musicians just starting out on the same path.

There's a huge amount of advice of varying quality for musicians who want to promote themselves online, and I followed a lot of it, for better or worse. I put my music in as many online places as I could think of; I blogged; I commented on other people's blogs and engaged in discussions; I tweeted; I got tracks included on podcasts.

As I'm not a born self-promoter, some of these activities felt more uncomfortable than others. Plastering your music (not to mention face) all over the internet takes a certain thickness of skin that not all of us naturally possess.

I enjoyed blogging, but only when I actually had something to say. A lot of people tell you that providing a constant stream of new content is vital, but I'm not convinced. I think that writing fewer, interesting, posts is better than writing obvious filler, which seems to exist on many sites just to keep the weekly blog coming. (I'm not making any great claims to interestingness, just claiming an attempt at it..)

I also enjoyed commenting on other people's blogs, and had some really stimulating online conversations with Steve Lawson, Andrew Dubber and others. I did, though, get to a point where I felt that everything that needs to be said about the "meta" topics like "whither the record industry?" (or should that be "wither?") has pretty much been said, and doesn't need constantly restating. Those of us who make the kind of music I do know that the record industry's largely irrelevant to our musical lives. Let's just note it and move on.

I flirted briefly with twitter, but my enthusiasm waned. (It may wax again at some point.) The problem I had with it was that I was either using it to talk to friends, whom I could communicate better with on facebook, or to talk to a group largely consisting of other musicians. For that reason it started to feel a little like the myspace experience; musicians promoting themselves to other musicians. It's nice of course to get positive feedback from, and to interact with, your peers but it felt a little insular after a while. (I'm aware that this may largely be down to me not using twitter effectively, but honestly I just found I preferred other ways of communicating.)

For me, the best way of communicating with non-musicians turned out to be Last.fm. I was scathing about them in an earlier blog post when they switched to a paid service where I live (I don't object to paying, but the change was handled really badly) but to give credit where it's due, their model of a musical social network seems to work really well. I haven't had a large number of plays by any means, but my music seems to have connected with some people quite strongly, and those people have then promoted it themselves to their friends. It's been hugely gratifying, and a big thanks to those people who've done that!

So, what now? My plan this year is to get more creative, and use this site to communicate that. I hope to post more music, more videos, some photos, some writing, not necessarily all music-related. Basically I'm going to go all Renaissance man on yo ass.

Finally, the best aspect of setting up this website has been the interaction, either via emails or comments, with some of the people who've stumbled across it. It's been good to help some people out, to make some new friends and equally good to hear from some long-lost old ones. If you are visiting, give me a shout - I'd love to check out your site, your music, whatever it is you're up to!

If I don't hear from you, (and even if I do), have a good 2010!

Right, I'm off to chisel some marble and work on my oratorio.

Cheers,

Chris da Helsinki