Bands to Record Labels: NO to twittering

[WillieLee]

I want my rock stars to be cool. I tweet. I'm not cool.

Do you want to be cool or do you not want to live with your parents when you're 45?

[PhilipClark]

I don't think the issue is that bands don't want to tweet. I think what becomes an issue is that being on a label comes with the agreement that they will take care of the bulk of your promotion. For a label to expect artists to tweet or invest themselves in web 2.0 on their own time with no financial incentive is, IMO, wrong.

Of course, any artist who is interested in building his fanbase should understand it's a web 2.0 world. But I can understand why a signed artist might put up resistance to a label that isn't willing to do their web 2.0 stuff for them as part of the promotion deal.

Understand that right now, the record labels are spinning everything internet-related as bad. "The internet is ruining music sales." "The internet is ruining record labels." "Woe is us." Horseshit.

(You guys see the tweet about my free new song?)

[michealdark]

The labels are for it. The surprising part is that bands aren't interested in doing it.

But yet many bands were willing to do myspace, many of them well before being signed. Then again, Myspace is a different beast. It's music pages are really there to put out new music and see feedback. If you communicate with fans, that's just a plus. Facebook and Twitter seem much more personal.

[Thomas Mauer]

I don't think the issue is that bands don't want to tweet. I think what becomes an issue is that being on a label comes with the agreement that they will take care of the bulk of your promotion. For a label to expect artists to tweet or invest themselves in web 2.0 on their own time with no financial incentive is, IMO, wrong.

Of course, any artist who is interested in building his fanbase should understand it's a web 2.0 world. But I can understand why a signed artist might put up resistance to a label that isn't willing to do their web 2.0 stuff for them as part of the promotion deal.

Understand that right now, the record labels are spinning everything internet-related as bad. "The internet is ruining music sales." "The internet is ruining record labels." "Woe is us." Horseshit.

(You guys see the tweet about my free new song?)

You worded that much better than I managed to.

[CapnChaos]

I could care less if they tweet or not. There's a similar thing going on with web-published comics in that most of the artists tend to do networking, but it's by no means a guarantee of success or something that's required to make it. If you don't believe me, just look at Tatsuya, the creator of Sinfest. He's got one of the most popular comics on the internet and he does about three blog posts a year. And I hate to think of a world where Calvin and Hobbes wouldn't have been signed because Watterson didn't want to use facebook. Artists have just as much of a right to privacy as anyone else and if part of their art is to let it speak for themselves instead of commenting on every little thing they do, that's their right.

If the labels are so concerned about social networking, they can surely hire someone to issue updates or maintain facebook pages on bands' behalves. As long as they don't claim that it's the artists' words, it would work fine. Weezer has a guy that does their website for them and he's nearly a celebrity in his own right.

[Akira]

Let these labels that the bands are signing contracts for get the word of mouth out. Let the bands focus on making music.

Exactly. This is just labels trying to get their artists to do the marketing dept's job for them and artists being savvy enough to see through it.

[babydave]

I suspect this is because maintaining a presence in a gazillion online forums, on Twitter, and FB is too much extra, unpaid work. So the bands want to avoid getting into a shitty situation with a contract that forces them to do more administrative work than actual music.

yeah, I'm thinking along these lines. It could just be misdirection or a combination of misdirection and avoiding distraction. I think it's not so much that they don't want to use Twitter or Facebook, but they don't want it written into a contract. "While in studio, all bandmembers must issue a tweet every 2 hours and upon leaving the studio must collaborate on a blog entry talking about the day's work." Screw that. Musicians don't need labels anymore anyway. Screw the record labels and screw the RIAA.