I've been reading a lot about how Twitter is the latest godsend for indie musicians. I am immediately suspicious of anything coming down the pipe with these kinds of expectations. I admit I use twitter both for my store www.twitter.com/revaudio and for my own personal music www.twitter.com/jasonjohnston and love the simplicity of the communication and interactivity.Perhaps Twitter will change your life, shoot you to stardom and repair your relationships, but since everyone else is blogging about these aspects, I'm here with what I see as the top dangers of twitter for musicians.
1. Don't Lose Your Focus. This is the big one: allowing Twitter taking your focus off the main thing. Twitter is just a tool for communication and promotion. Make sure you are spending the majority of your time offline working on your music: writing, practicing, recording, & gigging. These are the tried and true methods of musical success.
2. Don't Believe the Hype. Remember how Myspace was going to shoot you to stardom a few years back? How did that work out for you? I'm not talking about virtual friends. We all have virtual friends. I'm talking about making dedicated followers who will pay for your music. It can happen, but if you remember it was not all we had hoped it to be. There are many bands with a million myspace friends and no career.
3. The Danger of Over Exposure. It is easy to overdo it on twitter. Let's say you're a new band and have some followers and so you want to tell them everything, so you tweet: "Hey, I just got a Coke." "Hey, I'm walking down the street." "Hey I'm back at my computer now." Even your close friends will get tired of the mundane and stop following. If you are going to fill up the inbox, make it count. If you don't, people will grow weary of you.
4. The Numbers Game. Again, in the early days of Myspace, musicians felt like the more virtual friends they could get, the more successful they would become. But success is certainly not measured in virtual friends. Check out some artists on myspace with a million friends. You'll see what I'm saying. Make sure your idea of success is properly placed. From an artist standpoint: music that you can stand behind. If you had time to make one album before you died, what would it be? Make it now. Allow the other successes like album sales to follow your own personal success.
5. Getting the Cart before the Horse. Unless you have a product to sell, a CD to push or a tour to promote, don't bother spending much or any time on Twitter. Sure, everyone should sign up and get their unique name before everything short of XYHUIEGFU is taken. But think about your purpose there. Remember it is just a tool, a servant to the music itself. If you are on Twitter to promote your band, but don't have a CD or gigs, get thee to the studio or practice room and off the computer!
In the end, I'm not against Twitter, but as musicians we need to keep our focus. Use twitter as a tool but always remember that it's about the music. Now stop tweeting about it and go play your guitar!
