badlybent.ca

By Stevie Z

    I was speaking to a couple of artists last night, and as per the usual pleasantries and conversations we exchanged contact info with a look at doing some future projects together.  They both gave me MySpace info.  (Insert frustrated sigh here).

    It seems that most musicians and artists I meet are either completely oblivious to the importance of an online presence, know that ‘yeah, I knowI should do some online stuff at some point’, or just kinda dabble in ‘the usual’ IE MySpace, FaceBook, more recently Twitter, etc.

     I think that what most people miss is the fact that all the above-mentioned sites are great for connecting and promotion as well, but when you get right down to it, you control nothingwhen it comes to your image if your presence ends there.  MyBook and FaceSpace et al are all companies that could disappear tomorrow.  And if they did, so does your online world.  There have been cases where a band had a MySpace page, and MySpace decided for some reason that it violated their Terms of Service, and POOF, page is gone.  Any of those companies could shut you down for any reason they feel like, not to mention the company could just shut everything down without notice.  I know a lot of people who started building an online presence with mp3.com back in the day.  That went sideways and a lot of people were left with nothing online.

   Another thing to remember is this - all these free social media sites make money because they bring information to advertisers and other companies.  Why should you bring your fanbase to them?  Why give Facebook all your best:  songs, blog posts, photos, etc.  Same goes for YouTube.  Sure, you can post your stuff to YouTube, but then own your own domain where you can link to the video (thereby saving yourself the bandwidth) but have control over the context the videos live in.

   Also - comments.  A lot of these sites require people to be signed in to their service in order to comment on, or in some cases, sadly enough, even see your content.  What if I don’t want to be a member of Facebook - oops, can’t read your post unless I am….guess I’ll just move along….

   If you wrote it/took a photo of it/composed it/whatever, then you should own where and how it’s offered to the world.

    Bob Goyetche, podcasting and social media guru-type-guy once gave me some very sage advice over a beer at a conference called Podcasters Across Borders (check it out, it’s an amazing conference that takes place in Kingston, Ontario Canada every year in June).   I had asked him about this very type of thing - about the social media sites that everyone seems to flock to.  One of the best pieces of advice that Bob gave me was to get my own domain (hence the badlybent.ca website) because no matter what happens, as long as I pay for it, I’ll own it.  I can move it from provider to provider, from host to host, and that site, and any emails I attach TO it, will always be mine.

    So if you’re a band, or an artist, or have something to promote at all, one of the best possible things you can do for yourself or your career is to get yourself a domain.  Even www.yourname.com for example, is a great start, and then you can build from there.  That’s another great piece of advice that Bob gave me - have yourself as the ‘brand’ and then have all your projects branch out from there. 

    That’s all pretty damn good advice, and I think I should probably buy Bob a beer for it.  Of course, you can buy Bob a beer too, if you like.  I’m sure he (and his liver) would appreciate it…..

Stevie Z

   If you want some more info about getting your own domain, or host suggestions, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line at badlybentpub@yahoo.ca.