Been watching this post, formulating a reply... now if I was an 'artist', this is how I might view the situation.

They all put in a lot of hours promoting their stuff, they play live, answer the same questions again and again from the fans at the shows, then they do magazine interviews, answer the same questions again and again... then, at breakfast, get stopped by more fans and answer more of the same questions.

Now after all this time put in, they come to their site and have it basically said that people would be more likely to buy their stuff if they simply talked to them more on the boards.

I'd probably be thinking, I'm doing all this work already, trying to get people to see that what I'm doing is right, and you're saying after all that the music *STILL* isn't enough to stand on its own two? There are a bunch of 'artists' out there who don't even have to put in the work I do and get bigger sales than me, and I know it's not because they are posting on their website boards, because a good proportion of them are not.

There are a lot of people out there, not famous, who aren't good at correspondence already, forget to call back, and can't be bothered e-mailing all the time, now, I'm not going to say to my friends: "Hey, you could be a lot more popular if you just called/e-mailed/met more people more often"... I'd probably be inclined to say: "Be yourself, if people can't see the good person that you are, don't go working your ass off to try and convince them otherwise, because they're not worth it."

And its the same to an extent with the music I believe: put the work in, but don't put yourself out too much, be who you are, play what you like, if people don't like it, well, they're probably not going to like it no matter how much you post at them.

Quality ought to speak for itself, because there's enough crap out there that's shouting and getting recognition already.

I think it's cool when the 'artists' respond/post, don't get me wrong, it's partly why I come here, but they're probably working hard enough for their recognition already, and on a site where most people end up because they already know about one 'artist' or the other, I'm not sure how much difference it's going to make.

Just a thoughts

Long Time Listener...


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