This blog post showcases my first ever podcast where I discuss the rise of ‘online crowdfunding’ and compare it to the past music industry.
The making of
In this blog post you’ll find the first podcast ever created by me, a challenge for my technical and creative abilities. Set over a smooth blues background complete with accentuated guitar chords straight from the soul, I discuss the fairly recent appearance of ‘online crowdfunding’, a fascinating method of self-promoting and fundraising for many independent inventors and innovators. The type of creators I focus on are musicians seeking assistance from online crowdfunding platforms to help them accomplish tasks such as successful album promotion, online store establishment and even for recording resources. I outline the benefits and harms of the internet’s incorporation into the music industry along with the way crowdfunding has fundamentally changed the strategies for success. This then segues into the second part of my podcast where I ask myself whether the challenge of crowdfunding a music project has now become more viable and necessary than the traditional method of convincing label representatives.
In the second part of my podcast I discuss the above mentioned question and then continue on to make a parallel between artists who have already established themselves and those just beginning their career. It is here that I demonstrate how the parallel of maintaining success and engaging in self-promotion exists between small and large artists due to the rise of an intertwined necessity for artists to use social media and crowdfunding tactics together if they wish to stand a chance in the present day. From this intriguing new dynamic, I then discern how valuable the lessons of crowdfunding actually are for artists beginning their career in music. To conclude and essentially provide an answer both to myself and the listener, I end my podcast by explaining how the only perceivable downside to crowdfunding; the monumental task of independently establishing yourself as a musician, can be seen as a vital lesson. The skills from this lesson are ones which were traditionally not acquired by artists when labels would give the opportunity for all promotion to be done for them. This finally results in my closing statement that successful crowdfunding is now the equivalent of success on the whole for every artist out there.
Throughout my podcast I make a few mentions of an article which uses MegaTotal as its example for discussing crowdfunding. While I wish I’d searched for MegaTotal first to find out about it’s now nonexistence, the article gave me valuable insight as to the way a site like MegaTotal aids artists. Only then from my understanding of the usage of a site like this did I essentially have a moment of realization that every artist out there employs crowdfunding strategies for themselves and crowdfunding is more than an initiative to raise funds. It is an initiative to learn how to be successful in today’s music industry.
The Music
Upon searching through SoundCloud for music of an upbeat techno/dubstep variety, like the kind some youtubers use, I decided that I hate that kind of music and needed to do something completely different. I then searched for blues and what came up was some tracks from a Norwegian man playing blues chord progressions over a simple beat. The perfect backing and transitioning for my podcast had been found!
The Challenges
Every challenge is a learning experience it seems (just like crowdfunding) and I had many learning experiences to deal with when creating a podcast. Some of the most valuable include learning how to record in a proper studio, how to prepare your voice and also how to put together a recording that doesn’t sound like it was done in a bathroom. Most importantly however, I learnt that the only way to spice up almost five minutes of your own voice talking is to add music that complements your vocals and speak as if you’re voicing a character.