To kick it off, a million apologies for being so late on this, had to travel back to the District for a while on some family matters (not the fun kind unfortunately…).
Originally, as a former/current blogger (I need to get back on my game!) I had been interested in finding out how musical artists use blogs to promote themselves and express themselves personally, and of course to what extent they actually posted on their blogs themselves. After some investigation (primarily using Kanye’s blog and Kid Cudi’s blog as research), i found that it is nearly impossible to actually be able to tell if it truly IS them that is posting the material (though in some posts I do have a suspicions that it is in fact them through familiarity with their persona and lyrical content). This led me to change my objective, and look more at how artists promote use the Internet for promotion purposes, including social networks, websites, and blogs. I used a good, successful hip-hop producer friend of mine, nEmO (a.k.a IMAKEMADBEATS) as an example, after meeting with him and talking to him. He was very open about it, and really let me in to how he is promoting his upcoming album, his second release.
I found it fascinating the extent to which he was handling a lot of promotion himself as an artist, as well as how he was using publicists for different matters. This also got me to raise some questions about whether or not it was better for an artist to be able to handle the promotion of his own work on his own, or if it was better for a larger label (with more capital) to take care of it all themselves. This delves into to what extent artists actually CAN be represent themselves the way they want to and still be successful.
to be continued….VERY shortly
H.
Possibly Relevant Posts:
- IMAKEMADBEATS! PT. DEUX (1) | H-Man
- Why are record labels failing? Music and Creative Commons (4) | Elisa Verna
- The Pitchfork Effect (2) | Alison
One Comment
I think trying to figure out if someone is writing for their own blog is a really interesting topic, but I can see why it would be hard to tell either way. Do you know of any artists who use the fact that they write their own blog as a selling point – sort of like using authenticity to promote themselves?