Like It Or Not

A few short years ago, while posting music at a site where artists review each others music, I got an invitation in my in box from Facebook. The site was just beginning to grow and they invited me to come and put up an artist page. It seemed like a great way to give my music some further exposure, so I did just that.

I posted a photo and several tracks and waited to see if anything would happen. In the mean time, Facebook was continually changing the look and functionality of their site. After a time, they began to offer access to apps that made artist pages look a little more personalized. Then, at a certain point, certain features could only be accessed if you agreed to create a profile as well. I balked at first, but only because I was only interested in promoting my music. A few months went by, and those certain features started to look more than promising to me, so I created a profile and began to make friends.

Around this time the site was growing very fast and things were changing all the time. I wasn't sure if the site was something that I really wanted to be a part of so I deactivated my account. Some of the friends I had made at the site were into music and after a few weeks I began to wonder how they were doing. I reactivated my account to find that I hadn't lost a single one of them. At that point I decided to try and find some balance between what I was doing with music on my artist page and what I was doing personally on my profile. Facebook answered by allowing members to suggest their pages to their friends. Cool, huh?

That feature was short lived, as the number of members joining your page increased, the less access you had to that feature. I think at about that time the site did away with the Join button and went with the Like button. I can only guess that Facebook has gained it's nearly 900 million users by continuing to innovate and try new things. When they put Like buttons on all artist and fan pages, it's just my opinion, but I think that they may have given some members reason to think a little deeper about their choices. What I mean to say is that where members were ready and willing to join a page, clicking the word like may be making them a bit reticent when making what would seem to be an otherwise easy choice to make if you were only adding a page.

It's just my opinion, but I can imagine that more than a hand full of members have hit the Like button on a page that at first blush appeared harmless, then thought about who might see what their choices were and quickly went back and clicked Unlike. I'm not going to suggest that the site do away with the Like button. No. I propose that they give members who post pages a choice of whether they want a Like, Join, or Add button at the top of their page. This may or may not cause confusion among members, but I think that some members would hesitate less if they could choose to add a page as opposed to liking a page.

As an artist, I click Like on the pages of other artists all the time. I feel that it's just a small way to show my support for their efforts.  However, the word like may seem a little strong for having a limited knowledge of, or casual acquaintance with someone. 

Rest assured that as Facebook approaches it IPO there are probably more changes in store for the site. Of course none of those changes will be put before the site's members for their approval before they are made. Most members will barley bat an eye as they share their baby pictures or photos of the kittens or puppies that their pets just had. We all make use of the site to communicate with friends and family. And, change is a part of life, just like Facebook.....whether we like it or not.

What's In A Name

Some time ago, I was at a website that allowed artists to post their songs for review, when I read a comment from an artist who said that he went by his real name because it was the only name he had. At first I thought what he said was funny. But he also said that he wasn't able to think of anything cute or clever to call himself.

Up to this point, I had never really given much thought to what name to release music under. If a name came to me that had what I thought had a nice ring to it, then that's what I went with. Since I was always thinking that I would be part of a band, names came really easy. I got the name Nprogram while I was working at a local TV station in my area. As far as using my given name, it just never occurred to me to release music as myself, John Hughley, until recently.

What the artist above said brings up a very good point though. Some of the best music you've ever heard has been made by some of the most memorable artist with some of the most memorable names. Names like, the the Beatles, Rolling Stone, Earth Wind & Fire, Commodores, Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and the list goes on. When it comes to using their given names, artist have either used them or changed them. If you're going solo, the choice is yours. I think that what really matters as a solo artist is whether or not the music you intent to release is something that you want people to associate with you, when ever your name comes up.

For artists and bands, what you call yourself can become a brand name, if your music is memorable enough. Building a brand is something that takes a good deal of time. Many artists and bands will begin most likely by performing live. This gets your name and music in front of as many people as possible. In today's DIY world, you might think that all you would have to do is put up a website. It's true, you can reach a great deal more people at one time, but people need some way to find out that you do music online. And, while the web is a natural, it can make you appear as a little fish swimming around in a very big pool. If you choose this way to begin, be prepared to spend countless hours networking and connecting. Be sure to try and get your band posted to as many sites as possible.

If you play live, you may have the opportunity to sell merchandise which carries yours or your band's name or logo on it. This is a great way for friends and fans to remember your you. And, it's also a good way for people who've never heard of you to find out about you. Merchandise can also be sold from your website as well. Of course, friends and fans can be asked to to join your mailing list so they can stay informed about new releases or live performances.

I'm not an expert on building a brand by any means, and I'm sure that there's a lot more to it than what I've mentioned, like having a good, solid PR campaign or some means of getting information about you or your band to the media. While all of what I've said helps, the one thing to remember is that building a brand takes time. It's more likely that you could become well known for good music, and then discover that your name has be come synonymous with that, and "boom" you have name recognition.

If you have a good logo, though you don't have to, you may want to have it registered as a trademark so you can have the exclusive right to use it to represent all things created that relate to you or your bands music. That way everyone will be able to distinguish you from brand X

YouTube

Some time last year, I read a blog that advised musicians to get their music on YouTube. At that time, I hadn't spent much time at YouTube. The most that I'd watched is an occasional vlog. I figured that a really good video for a song would cost a lot or it would also be time intensive. That was until I started searching for some of the indie artists that I had been listening to on Myspace. That was about the time I discovered that there was everything but the kitchen sink on YouTube.

The only problem I had with this, is that what I was looking for was often not available. Of course, if an artist or musician was with a major label, most likely there was something up there, even if it was a homemade live version of a song. I don't have a problem with this, but it took a long while to understand why so many bloggers were making such a big deal about getting your music on YouTube. In fact, I found that a lot of indie artists were only posting vlogs or small samples of their work, with maybe an occasional full track. Most likely if a song was there it was a live version. I also found that artists were more likely to post demonstrations or interviews as opposed to songs.

Then I heard that it was possible for videos to be downloaded and the music separated from from the video. Of course that had copyright violation written all over it, not mention the loss of a sale to someone who was able to do that. But, even so, the possibility of reaching millions is still enough to get many artists to post a video, even if there are only photos or a slide used.

For an artist who is primarily a songwriter and doesn't do a lot of live performing, YouTube is still the way to go. I've posted my own attempts at video making for several of the songs from the Work The Program album and they can be seen on the
Nprogram Video Channel.

American Top 40

Music and TV entrepreneur, Dick Clark passed away last week. He was 82 years old. I would imagine that just about everybody and his/her dog, has or will at one point or another write or report on his passing. I'd like to add my two cents.

Clark's role in popular music history, in my opinion, is firmly cemented. Most of us know of him from his annual salute to the end of each year, held in Times Square on New Year's Eve. But, Clark had a great love of music, and in 1956 he became the host of a local TV show in Philadelphia called Bandstand. On the show, Clark played records while a group of local teens danced. He asked about favorite songs, watched for the latest fashions and the latest dances. After two years, the show went national and became American Bandstand, airing on ABC.

Clark was always on the look out for all things new as they related to music. This often meant bringing on artists that may have been offensive to parents. In a compromise move, he would have those artists dress in suits and ties. In this way, the artists were listened to with less judgement and less resistance. In a way, even though he was criticized for it, he bridged the gap between teen viewers and their parents, by making these artist more palatable.

Clark was always in favor of and defended artistic freedom. He would present both the famous and the not so well know. He had an ear for talent. He was the first to allow Black artist on the show to perform the original versions of their songs, and he was the first to break the color barrier by integrating his dance crew. In a way, in my opinion, the case could be made that if it weren't for Dick Clark, there would not have a been a Don Cornelius and Soul Train.

In 1973,after the Grammys moved to CBS, Clark created, The American Music Awards. Award winners were chosen by a poll of 20,000 record buyers, as opposed to members of the Recording Academy. Music fans would often choose without regard for whether they had purchased the music and often went with their sentimental favorites. In the early 1990's, after complaints from some artists whose records had sold millions but were not nominated, the use of Sound Scan was instituted. This would be so until 2007, when falling ratings and declining record sales lead to allowing fans to once again choose their favorites.

Dick Clark's legacy lead to his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Today, at a time when there will soon be only three major record companies, in control of all of the major labels, on the face of the Earth, I don't see another Dick Clark or anyone like him coming along in the near future. While the Indie scene looks promising, and the internet offers many opportunities for getting the word out about whats new in music, it may not be as easy as you might think.

Who Needs Reality?

I have a degree in Mass Media Communications, often, things that relate to other media are on my mind. I majored in production and I learned a lot about how things are put together before they go out over the air. Most of my real world experience has come from the time that I spent in local broadcast TV.

Since the TV writer's strike of 07 and several month after the strike of 2011, I've noticed that Reality TV is continuing to proliferate. Cable networks are coming onto the air with lineups that feature nothing but reality TV shows. And, some networks that once featured some of the most informative and information filled programming such as TLC which used to be The Learning Channel and Court TV, which became TruTV, now show reality based programming almost exclusively.

I'm not a snob or a TV critic, but the deepening of the reality TV rut is a little more than disappointing. While it is true that watching fewer hours of television is preferred, what do you do when you have free time and none of your 200 channels is showing very much that's entertaining.

I talked about reality before in another post when I was discussing the lack of videos on MTV. Speaking of, it was MTV's The Real World that started the current state of affairs.
The show was supposed to be a take off on the soap opera format, but when there was very little budget it was decided to use real people instead of actors, directors, or scripts. The shows success lead to a variety of spinoffs including, Survivor, Big Brother, The Amazing Race, and while you wouldn't think of it as being one, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? The latter is classified as a game show, but if you look a little closer you'll see why I include it.

The list of shows goes on, but I don't really want to name them all. There are just too many. The networks used to employ quality writing, expert direction, and superb acting to get people to watch their programming. But, with increased competition from cable, they've given up and resorted to whatever will get viewers' attention. And, reality fits the bill. There's low production cost because there are no actors, directors, or scripts. But where is the entertainment value in what is turning out to be nothing more than a lot of conflict and bad language?

Maybe what's needed is a redefining of what is considered to be entertainment with regard to TV programming. I think that it's a little more than troubling when reality shows resort to using celebrities to get people to watch. What does that tell you? Where is the reality in that? Where is the reality in a show that has to resort to staging events because the actual lives being filmed become boring at times? That sounds more like unreality to me. And if that's supposed to be real, then, who needs reality?

What The Flac.....?

I've been buying downloads for quite some time. I even remember when the best bit rate you could get was 128kbps. Those were the days, right?. But, with the rise of the online digital music stores has come the quest for better fidelity of Mp3s.

Most music downloads are encoded at at least 320kbps which yields a much better sound quality. I know that to many, Mp3s appear to sound just as good as CD or WAV files, but the compression process used to convert WAV files into Mp3s, does so by extracting or removing a portion of the audio in order to shrink the file's size. The result is, that some of the sound is then missing. While it is true the the missing sound is mostly in the higher frequencies, the discerning ear can still tell. This is what is known as a lossy conversion. What has been coming onto the digital music download scene in the past several years is the lossless conversion process. File formats include, Monkey's Audio or Ape, Wavepack, ATRAC, TTA, Apple Lossless, Windows Media Lossless and the one I think is the odds on favorite, FLAC.

FLAC stands for free lossless audio codec. I think that I like it because it works just like a Zip file, except that it is designed for audio. With FLAC, a WAV file can be reduced by 50 to 60% of it's original size, and when it's decoded, it yields the the exact amount of data that went into it. The bonus with FLAC is, that the file can also be played back just as it is. And, the sound is the same as the sound of the file it was made from.

I've talked about FLAC before, but technology is always moving forward, and since FLAC is an open source technology, more and more emusic stores and music software developers are sure to be adopting it, especially as word begins to spread about FLAC's attributes and demand for better sound quality continues to increase.

While losseless file technology may not be very sexy or exciting, it will mean some great changes that are good for music consumers. At some point, you'll be able to get the exact music files that the artist always intended to sell. You'll also be able to play your download immediately, or have the ability to convert it to the original while keeping the compressed file for your archives. Think of it, all of the great music that's been hard to find, not only discovered online, but downloaded and played back in your car or living room with the quality that was always intended.

Whatever Happened To R&B

I guess everyone's first reaction to that question would be, nothing. Personally, I beg to differ. I wrote about this topic before and felt I needed to revisit it. Sure, there are many new artists who release music under the banner of R&B, but if you give a listen, much of that music will usually belong in a genre or maybe a sub-genre all it's own.

Rap and Hip Hop artist actually prefer the name Rap or Hip Hop to describe what they do. So, why is it that when you search for R&B that you keep coming up with Neo Soul, Rap, Hip Hop, and even Nu Jazz? Who can say, right?

I figure that what's been going on for at least the past 20 years or so, is a redefining of the R&B genre, in an effort to put and then keep Rap and Hip Hop at the for front of popular music. I say this because it is my contention that the need of Rap and Hip Hop to constantly present new faces, bares a need for that style of music to stretch from it's boundaries on occasion, in order to maintain it's lofty profile.

Not to mention the fact that some artists who sing, and like the beats and rhymes, may want to incorporate that into what they're doing. This has given rise to a change in what is considered as R&B. Known for it's uptempo grooves and earthy singing styles, R&B is now more a ballad genre.

In the early 1990s,The vocal group Boys II Men became the prototype for what an R&B band should be. At first some of their music featured what was known as New Jack Swing, which was uptempo music with a Rap style groove, and singing with possibly a Rap in the middle eight instead of an instrument solo. But, that quickly changed as they became known for their vocal prowess on songs such as Hard To Say Goodbye and End Of The Road. In fact, it's my opinion that, that same success was the inspiration for the Boy Band/Girl Band phenomenon.

Toward the end of the 90s, the tempo began to slow and a jazzy feel soon appeared. Vocals were being sung to what I like to think of as quasi melodies. The result was a combination of Hip Hop and 70s instrumentation. The style has been successful for artist like Anthony Hamilton, DeAngelo, Ericka Badyu, and Jaheim. While they are all very talented artists, what they are doing should be thought of more as Neo Soul rather than as true R&B.

What is true R&B? I could name a few artists whose names would be instantly familiar. But, so many people are capable of doing the music, even as I write this. I think that giving a list of past artists who were successful would only be giving weight to nostalgia. If that is true, then maybe R&B is an old sound that needs to be left behind. But, I know that isn't true or the artists whose names I mentioned above wouldn't be using so much of the sound within their own music.

What I think has actually been going on is an attempt to get R&B lovers to listen to and maybe embrace Rap and Hip Hop. For, after thirty years of being on the scene and then being prominent within the market place, older music listening and buying audiences, especially older Black audiences still refuse to accept or embrace the sound. To many older Black audiences, even Neo Soul may be viewed as a commercial half step. But, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. But, the truth may remain and may always be, that ain't nothing like the real thing.