The Musician’s Cure to Social Media Madness

THE SCENARIO

This last week, I spent a lot of time online, doing my research, keeping up with  social media, new (to me)  sites like Pinterest.com and Chill.com.

(does this sound familiar?)

Sites like Facebook, twitter and Youtube are helping me reach fans and book gigs…so I wanted to see “what I’ve been missing”  and how I could ramp things up, career wise.

Oh boy…all I did was make myself nuts!

Like many musicians, or managers or “labels”  I’m scratching my (bald) head wondering what’s next, and will the sites I’m signing onto even last?

Some sites will be here to – stay (for a while)  while others will bite the dust like Myspace.

My head started to hurt.

Questions like this plagued me this week (don’t worry – this post will end happy…)

Some of my personal issues:

• How can anyone hope to compete with a Youtube channel with millions of subscribers?
• To get more hits & views, must I simply play every crappy cover song I can think of, in incredible voluminous amounts?
• Will Youtube yank my videos / channel, since I still am doing covers?

then…my personal hell….since I get asked for tabs of my covers constantly…

• How the hell can so many guitar instructors out there sell tabs with ZERO licenses in place, and I choose to go the high road and get licenses, am I an idiot?
• Will social media change, because right now I don’t want to know about someone’s cat barfing…so I “shut off” and others do too.
• Where is it all going?  And am I wasting time trying to figure it out?

The irony is…(drum roll please)

By asking these questions I was simply “creating my world”  and seeing the world as “I am”  not the way it is.

BUSTED. 

What appeared to be “out there”  was “in here.”

This is kind of heavyweight information  when you think about it.

I create my world and you create your world, minute by minute, whether we complain and worry, or whether we rejoice and give thanks!

THE CURE

I picked up the guitar.

I decided to start  learning a new tune….”IMAGINE”  by John Lennon.  It was time to be a musician and not a social media manager for a few hours.

After hours of ironing out an arrangement, I uploaded it to Youtube:

[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dELdAQ25kT0″]

This video was done with NO end result in mind….only “love”  in mind, honest to God.  I wanted my fans to have something nice and soothe them.

I fell completely into the song, the lyrics, the tone of the instrument, Lennon’s voice, intention, and so on.

THE AFTERMATH

As I walked out into the street in NYC after uploading the video and  I felt “all my troubles seem so far away” 🙂

The pain, headache, uncertainty and frustration I was feeling were GONE.

What?

I found myself in a “bliss”  state.

Immersion into music, with no thought of “what I’d get out of it”  is what got me there.

I saw after this that I have the personal power to choose one state or the other.

THAT’S BIG!   Do you get this?

What I previously thought “the world was doing”  was MY creation.

My NEW (forgotten) mantra “I am responsible for 100% of my life.”

THE IRONY

Once I dropped the video onto Youtube, Facebook and Twitter – it was something useful that people wanted to share.

That’s the way to use social media!  (I.E.  that’s the horse before the cart…)

THE MEDIUM IS NOT THE MESSAGE

Social media is a pipeline.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Good meaningful stuff in, good meaningful stuff out.

The lesson….offer something good….really good and everyone wins.