Bands & artists around this area seem to have this problem of agreeing with everything. In other words, they feel the need to play the “yes man” and try to take every opportunity that is thrown at them ’cause they mistakenly believe that is a way to have a successful and positive career. Wrong. You have to be realistic and negative about some things. You can’t play the nice guy all of the time… you gotta do what’s right for your music and for yourself.

So here is a list of things that I WOULDN’T do in my own music world and maybe you should take the same suggestions. You may have seen me saying these things on these blogs before but I have no problem talking about them again…

Lets get right to it shall we???

Several things I would never do in local music are…

• Pay to play gigs – You really need to watch out for these things. Pay to play venues are on the rise in this area… there are more of them now. If you have a Reverb Nation account or any other social networking site for musicians, chances are you’re going to get scammers trying to book you a gig at Red Square and such by a company called AftonLive, and you’ve probably heard of it before. AftonLive is a huge problem. There are other pay to play scams around here like GorillaMusic which is associated to certain venues around this area. I would NEVER do pay to play. Bands & musicians fall for these things too easily. I am smart and careful enough to know what these things are. You don’t need to do pay to play gigs just to get your foot in the door of some crap venue. You’re only harming yourself if you go through these pay to play things. Don’t do it. This is one thing I avoid like the plague.
• Crowd funding for your albums and tours – This also seem to be a popular thing around local and unsigned musicians. Taking money from people to fund for your albums like through sites like PledgeMusic or Kickstarter. I’m sure those sites are legit and they work successfully but I would never do it. Nothing against other musicians doing it but I wouldn’t take money from fans just so they can enjoy your music. I understand that people have a tight budget financially which is why a lot of musicians do it but there are other ways of getting money to get your projects done besides taking money from your fanbase. Are you that greedy? I would like to make my own album someday sure but I would never do crowd funding stuff, ever.
• Make music videos – It’s understandable why bands/artists make MTV/VH1 styled professional videos but I would never do one. You would probably never see me doing one. The closest you’ll ever see me do music videos are those homemade videos that I have on youtube. That’s good enough. You’ll never see me do a video where I walk down the street moving my mouth to some song, dancing or snapping my fingers or whatever. I don’t see myself as a rock star like most do around here.
• Sign a record label – I’m happy being unsigned. I don’t really care for a big career in music. I just wanna play. Have fun and enjoy myself. I would like to be big and get recognized with my music but I don’t care whether I get there or not. I’m not that desperate.
• Pay a lot of money for studio time – I think it’s a bit ridiculous how bands spend thousands and thousands of dollars on studio time when you don’t need to. Like I always say you can make a decent sounding album right at your own home. Get some decent sounding home recording equipment, learn your DAW software, and off you go! At home you can record anytime and at low cost.
• Battle of the Bands and other ridiculous competitions – I would avoid these like the plague too! I just don’t agree with putting your music out there like this. You don’t have to do these things to go places with your music. I still say they are like a small version of those reality shows on TV like the Voice, Idol, America’s Got Talent, etc. Since those reality shows got popular… bars & clubs in different cities will start creating similar competitions for local talent. i don’t think you’ll ever see me doing these things at all. I saw one Battle of the Bands show once and I hated what I saw (I just went that one year to support this certain band that I was going to vote for, you know who that band is). Not hating that one band that I speak of but the rest of the show I hated.
• Over promote myself – I don’t need to promote myself too much. All I need for self-promotion of my musical projects are this blog, my twitter or facebook. Musicians seem to do it everywhere as much as possible and I don’t need to do that. I like to let people find me on their own. I don’t shove my music in everyone’s faces like so many bands do these days.

That’s about all I can think of for now but if I can think of more… I might do a part 2 of this post. I’ve tried to think of more but these ones above are the only ones I can think of.

Enjoy!

Kev