Bands Can’t Just Be Bands Anymore

We’re going to talk about another layer that I think is missed by fans sometimes, and that’s the layer that involves promotion and social media: content creation. It’s a whole other animal we’re diving into today. 

You've heard "bands can't just be bands anymore" before, and Val has some pushback to those annoyed with those venting sessions. 

Can bands "just be bands" today? Can we give artists the space to vent when they need it? Should we change the way we think about and use social media? All of this is explored.

Get more Val at https://valkleinhans.com/

Transcript

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What's up, vigorous ones? I want to start this episode off by thanking all of the bands, all of the artists that have come on the show, been vulnerable, been happy to be here, just uh making time in the middle of what is very chaotic schedules to be with me and hang out with me and take a chance on me and the show. Really? I that's what you're doing, and and I appreciate it very much. Y'all are booked and busy. I know this. So I had this thought too that I want to dive further into this episode. I understand that what looks booked and busy and pretty to us as fans completely overlooks the fact that you're humans with loved ones and a life of your own, too. And yet your priority remains the music. And we love that. We appreciate that. Somehow you make it all work in a day and age when now you have an added layer. And that added layer is the world of social media. We're gonna talk about all of that, and I because I do think sometimes it is missed by the fans. Everything that we do when it comes to promotion, everything we do when it comes to social media, content creation, it is a whole other animal. Bands can't just be bands anymore. We're gonna dive into that today. We'll say, is something that I am only beginning to understand as I talk to these artists and other people who are creative. I'm only just now starting to learn what it really looks like and just how time-consuming it really is. You've heard the comments on this from these artists in some previous episodes before. And I have a lot of empathy for this because I understand that our time is valuable. For mortal humans, life, time, none of it is infinite, and we only get so much of it. And it is becoming more and more obvious to me that artists, if they do not have a team behind them anyway, are literally having to carve out time for social media in their schedules, and it's a non-negotiable anymore. Currently, being present, engaged, and consistent on social media is a must if you want to spread the word about what you're doing anymore. And I think that you know transcends industries. I want to add this to I don't think this is just a music industry thing. I do think that this is it applies to anybody that is using this as a vehicle to get somewhere, connect, whatever, in life. So I want to look at how we got here, why there's some pushback on artists venting about this, and whether or not any of this is actually sustainable. How we got here, let's look at how we got here first. There's a couple of reasons why it can feel like artists just can't be artists anymore. You know, they can't only be artists anymore. We're dealing with two things at once. We're dealing with societal change and we're dealing with technological change. Both are moving at an insanely rapid pace, a more rapid pace than I think anybody ever anticipated. Technological advancements solved some problems and then created some others. First, we'll talk about the pros, I suppose. Firstly, they eliminated gatekeepers. Let's be real about that. There was a time when labels, radio, MTV, magazines, local scenes, all that, all of that acted as the main discovery system, we'll call it. The main way that bands could get the word out or that people could share how they felt about them. Bands could focus a little bit more because all of that was happening, but could focus a little bit more heavily, I think, on developing their identity and playing shows and refining their craft, which is being a musician. Because Discovery was more centralized. It was a lot more cut and dry, and you weren't necessarily the ones that were creating it and editing it as a band. Yes, you had to make the time to physically be there to create the thing and be present for the thing. The interview on TV will say as an example, right? We had to be present for that. We had to carve out time for making music videos, all that. And today it looks like carving out time for social media and all the promotion that's done on social media. But those productions, you're going to places like VH1, MTV, or local news or radio channels. Well, you're, you know, yes, the bands have to be part of it, the artists have to be part of it, but they weren't expected to like DIY all of it. And most artists, at least the ones that I know, mostly DIY a lot of this shit. Like they, they, unless they have a team behind them and they're at a certain point in their career where they can afford that, they're doing it on their own. And the internet has removed, excuse me, those gatekeepers. They've removed having to be on those channels and having to be on those mediums, but then that means you have to do a little bit more of the work yourself. So a bit of a catch-22 here. It you know, it did create the technological change, it did create infinite competition, oversaturation, constant invisibility pressure because that's what the algorithm wants. Anybody can upload music now, which means that everybody is fighting for the same finite resource, and that is attention, that is algorithm, real estate. They're all fighting for the same thing. And again, it's not that that wasn't happening in a different version before, but I think more of the workload to actually make it happen is falling on the individual. The societal response to some of the technological change we've just talked about has been things like streaming, changing the value of music, really. I mean, physical music once required commitment, it required money, and it required intentionality. You had to, again, money was also not something that was never-ending. It was or or infinite in any way. It was you had to be careful, you still have to be careful. So you would shop for music, you would choose a record with intention. And now music is instant, it's infinite, it's disposable. We cycle through these songs and these albums with much quicker attention spans and much less thought, I'd argue, than ever. Playlists have sort of replaced album culture, passive listening habits are now taking over, and music becoming content consumed alongside everything else is sort of what we're seeing now. I mean, when listeners can skip a song in five seconds, artists have to design what they're doing, their promotion, yada yada yada, with that in mind. Because that's what we're dealing with today. And that changes the art itself physiologically, it changes the makeup of what we're doing. Like we didn't just digitize music, we trained audiences to consume it differently just because certain things were no longer available. You know, the way we do all of this is different. And let's be honest about this. Social media does reward constant presence. Early internet culture still had a little bit of separation. I'm old enough, you know, I'm 36 years old right now, and I'm old enough to remember the first day we got dial-up in my house and and you know, watch this evolution happen in real time. I know what life was like before, I know what life has been like since. I remember going and buying CDs for real and burning mixes for friends, and we all did it. You know, if you're anywhere near my age, you remember doing that. And it looks different today. You know, early internet culture, bands had like their own websites, maybe they had their MySpace pages, they had their own forums. All of that involved into algorithm feeds, engagement economies, non-stop visibility contests. Like, who is constantly out there showing up more times than anybody else, yada yada yada. Like it, it's a lot. The shift, you could argue, became if you disappear online, you disappear culturally. Because that's where anybody is, or most people anyway, are getting their information anymore, which is a whole episode unto itself. But I, you know, I I digress. This is this is where we're at. So artists adapted in the meantime, not necessarily because they wanted to, I'm sure, but because survival started depending on it. The way we use phones, I hinted at this, but we'll get more specific. That has changed human attention spans, and that has been a huge societal piece to this whole equation. The smartphone allowed constant stimulation, shorter attention windows, dopamine-driven scrolling habits, all the things that we're well aware of today. And now what that means is artists are gonna have to compete against memes, against news, against influencers, against politics, against viral drama, against every other form of entertainment simultaneously. Whether they're like, you know, competing within their own wheelhouse or not. They're not just competing with other bands or even bands, only bands within their own genres anymore. They're competing with the entire internet. That fundamentally changes how music gets marketed. Because what it means is, or at least what it looks like today, we'll say, audiences now expect participation and not necessarily observation. Older fandom, what I still do and what I grew up doing, admiration from a distance. You could read a magazine with an interview, you know, with one of your favorite uh members of a band or the band, the entire band itself, and you could still walk away from reading that feeling like, hmm, that was fun, but there's still some mystery there. You didn't know everything, right? Admiration from a distance, you know, reading all things like that, getting those little windows into who they are as people, that only happened occasionally. Attending shows, yeah, you gotta go. Okay, that's older fandom, that's just what we did. You want to see him well, period. That's what you do. But now you can see him every day online if you really want to. So I I before I think you kind of just took what you were given and then made your own assumptions. For the better or worse, that's when ended up happening. And like I was alluding to today, for a fan, I think all of this looks like interaction, it looks like replies, it looks like updates, it looks like behind-the-scenes access, emotional transparency. Fans have access to things they did not have before, things I don't think they even knew they wanted before, and have only had somewhat recently. Arguments can be made that what fans want is connection, personality, narrative, constant presence, and this is because the internet normalized accessibility and made everything accessible, so the artist then is no longer viewed as distant, but they're expected to be constantly available and in your face, and and that's encouraged. Then there's the capitalism of it all. Oh, we could do a whole episode just on this, and maybe someday we will. But personal branding, that whole culture, that accelerated everything. Everyone online is now encouraged to think and present themselves as though they are a brand. We're talking consistent color palettes, we're talking consistent messaging, polish it. Depending on the platform, this is encouraged. In some ways, I think Instagram still encourages this. TikTok, not as much, but I would say that Instagram still kind of does. But that's also what Instagram was founded on. Aesthetic, everything looking pretty in a photo. That's literally what it began. And I don't know that uh I don't know that I would want that to change because I mean that's what it does, and I'd rather know what it does. You ever know why this is up? Let me break it down for you this way. You know why people always go to McDonald's or always go to Burger King and order the same thing or something similar, right? They choose those spots because they know that they're gonna get the same thing every time. People like that. I like that. I like knowing that, oh, if I make this purchase at this location, I can expect X. I like that. So I hope that Instagram doesn't stray too far from the encouragement of making things pretty because I like making things pretty, but it's evolved too. It's evolved. We don't use Instagram the same way that we did even 10 years ago. Certainly not. Certainly not. It is change. Change is good, but you gotta keep up with it. And that's really the point of this whole episode. I mean because every artist, every person that has a specific goal, like, and if it involves social media and using that as a messenger, well, you're encouraged to think like a brand in that space. So you're not just a musician, you're a writer, you're a journalist, you're a filmmaker, you're a photographer, you're in a way normalizing yourself for other people. But this is also why we say bands can't just be bands anymore. They literally have to, they have what equates to multiple full-time jobs, all wrapped into one, if you really think about it. Because the internet economy rewards visibility, it rewards self-promotion, it rewards monetizable identity. So musicians become absorbed into this content creator culture, again, whether they wanted to or not. They they I mean they aren't entering hustle culture. But you know, I I hinted at this too. Uh after some thought, I realized that technological and societal changes are not all doom and gloom. Some of this is for the better. The system created opportunities too. I mean, without social media, many independent bands would just never be discovered. Niche genres couldn't find global audiences, artists wouldn't have direct fan access, labels would still control most visibility, and have more of a say in what that looks like. Now, a deathcore band from a small town could possibly go viral globally, build a fan base independently, and solidify a fan base internationally much more easily and quickly than they could before. You could say technology ruined music, but you would be missing something. Because I think the actual issue is this the modern system rewards constant attention maintenance in ways human beings were not properly psychologically built for. That's the deeper conversation. And this this right here is what I specifically empathize with. I feel for the artists who are now ripped from their loved ones and those strong relationships because they're spending so much time connecting with fans who, let's be real, and I'm including myself in this, I call myself a fan. Some can be fickle. Some fans can be fickle. So that begs the question you know, is my time invested in content creation and social media the most healthy or sustainable way for me to exist as a human if I'm investing so much into something that isn't as solid as maybe my real life over here is. And this is why paying attention to burnout and boundaries and limits are gonna help anybody answer that question for themselves. I can't answer that for you, but you can answer it for yourself. And we have to set those precedents in a world that doesn't do it for us. We don't do it anymore, it looks different, like I just said. So, in response, we have to be the ones to say, look, I've got a limit to all of this. I will do what I can because I understand that it's, you know, part of the way things are right now, and I don't even have to like it. But I can do it and put a limit on it. I can still show up in my own way and still be relevant and still be part of the conversation and still be fulfilling my responsibility of getting the word out. I think you can do it. You can do it with boundaries and limits, but it's very hard, and this is what I empathize with. And this is why I don't really like it when it comes to the pushback I've seen that artists get when they vent about this sort of thing. Like I said, I empathize with any band that said, man, I just can't be a band anymore. Like I can't just be a band anymore. Like that, yeah, that's not the only thing I do anymore. I empathize because I'm a creative person branding and paying attention to those things myself with this podcast. And I understand that time and money invested in this is uh is is not infinite, and sometimes even I get burnt out, and I go, you know what? Today, social media just is not the most important thing, and I'm gonna be okay with that. We all prioritize that way, and we all should, as life happens, we should really. I have to, I I've I've had this conversation with a bunch of other people lately, especially with these last two episodes and what some of the content of them has been. People don't see I think some of this is kind of clouding the realization that there's real stuff happening. And that real stuff is, you know. I am a working class person. Most of us are. And I do not have a team around me to take care of things for me while I go out and go, let me entertain you today. I don't have anything. I don't have anybody taking care of most of us of a certain class. Do not have anybody else saying, let me get those dishes and mow that lawn and or whatever, you know, while you go entertain everybody and you create content. And we don't have that. We don't have it, you know, endless income. No, there's a point where there's limits on that too. So yeah, it might be a week before I get the laptop up and running again, or next paycheck until I get the laptop up and running again, and you guys see me again. And that's not something people think about. It's not something that the algorithm forgives, which is even more unfortunate. But they don't know. They don't know any better. They would rather push for the opposite because that makes money for them. Let's just be real about it. What I see are the humans behind the music and the humans that are behind all the creative fun stuff that we see online. I'm like, you know what? Most of them, most of them, unless they're in a very specific class, run their shit the same way. And most of them do not have teams behind them, housekeepers, all the, you know, accountants, people doing all of that stuff, admin type stuff. Like it most of them don't have people like that doing it for them. A lot of them, it's a DIY situation. We have to consider that. Crime your river, you're still doing what you want to do. It's just how things are. Artists did the same thing as before, it just looked like radio and TV promotion then. No one's forcing them to be present online. And here's my pushback to the pushback. Okay. First off, if you're saying too bad you chose this life, okay. Yeah. Yeah, we did. Yeah, they did. But they're not allowed to vent the same as you and I can. We all bitch about our jobs. We all do. An artist's job might look a little bit more glamorous, but you know, and might look more fun. But challenges are universal in every industry. This is just their version of it. So they're not allowed to vent about what's hard for them. You can vet about what's hard for you, but they can't vet about what's hard for them. That's the question I have. Why is it different? For anybody saying, crime your river, you're still doing what you want to do. Yeah, again, it looks fun and glamorous, but pretty things are allowed to be complicated too. Your life is, and so is theirs. If you're saying this because you secretly wish you were doing what they're doing, go do it. Like I said, the one of the pros to all this technological advancement is that, yeah, you can pick up just your phone. Most and mostly do all of this too. What's stopping you? Here's my pushback to the it's just how things are comment. I hate this in corporate America, and I hate it here in this context. Because we might accept current conditions, but it's not okay to totally eliminate room for a conversation about changing things, especially when valid concerns are raised. And what this comment does is shut down that conversation. I don't like that. This expedient and rapid pace that we're keeping in life and on social media is tiring. It does, at the very least, have potential to impact our wellness. Have potential. Fact. So it's okay to talk about changing it. And I think we need to keep that line of communication open. So don't say things like that and close it, okay? Artists did the same thing before, it just looked like radio and TV promotion then. Yeah, I've heard that comment, okay? And that is true. But they're not allowed to complain about the same concept just because the medium used is different. You know, artists had a hard time fitting radio and TV appearances into their schedules too, and guess what? If you're not wanting to hear them vent at that moment, you can scroll by. You can change the channel the same way we did then too. Okay. That's what I get to say about that right there. How about this one? No one is forcing them to be as present online. No. No one's holding a gun to their head, but I somewhat disagree with this one because you can't deny that a consistent presence online isn't rewarded by the algorithm that has been proven. So if you want to gain momentum or at least maintain the momentum you had, you gotta show up. You gotta show up. Like anything in life, really, but you gotta show up. So every time you post, you're either maintaining momentum or gaining it, maybe even losing momentum if that post doesn't go over well. So what must be acknowledged is that the algorithm does punish users not posting consistently. That has been proven. You're either down followers because they've lost interest, or the algorithm decides that you're not a priority because you are not consistent. So it will not push your stuff through. So no one sees what you're doing. And take your pick of which one, but that's a consequence, however, you slice it. A guaranteed way to see hurt to your progress is to not post it all for an extended period of time, especially. All of this is even more important to consider and felt even more deeply by an artist doing anything independently. And I get how frustrating it is to pour a lot of time, effort, and money into something only to see little ROI in return. I understand that social media might be all you have if you're in a situation where resources are limited. And sometimes this is why it is taken as seriously as it is. This is your lifeline. Yes, it's a lot of work, but it is your lifeline and your affordable connection to the rest of the world. So if that opportunity is presented to you, aren't you gonna take it? I think you would. Here's my final thoughts on this whole matter because I'm gonna get heated if we keep going on, and we need to regulate that nervous system today. So we're gonna we're gonna limit this. But my final thoughts are we no, we don't have to take this as seriously. Uh we let me put it this way: we don't have to take as seriously our response to any artists venting about this subject. Let them vent if they need to. We as fans, however, can marry simply scroll away, change the channel, or just plain ignore anything that we don't like in life or online. We can do that. I really don't understand why we forget that. I wish more of us understood that we as individuals are the ones that hold that key to unlock those chains for ourselves. We don't have to it does not have to be that deep. It really doesn't. But I do want to know what you think. Are we taking all of this too seriously? Is it okay or not okay for an artist to vent about this? You let me know because this is apparently a hot take, I'm learning, and I don't think it should be, but I'm learning that it is. So these are just my general thoughts and general pushback to at the very least, anybody that shuts down the conversation. Because I think conversation is important. I'm a podcaster, duh, that's what I do. And I think we need the opportunity to vent, and I think we need the opportunity to talk. So let's do that in the comments. Anywhere you find this, let me know what you think. Thanks so much for joining me for another week. Bye.