The Gripe List
After the tremendous response, both good and bad, to my I Will Not Listen to Your MP3s blog post a number of people, specifically artists, have hit me up to ask my feelings on a few other things. Mostly, they wanted to know what else irks me. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s amusing to folks, but regardless of the reason I’ve decided to answer that call and give you a short list of some of the things that get on my nerves. Enjoy!
This week one of my artist buddies hit me with an email correspondence he had where someone claimed they wanted to feature him in their magazine, but they wanted to get paid for it… BY THE ARTIST. This is an epidemic in Hip-Hop and I’m here to tell you, artists, you should NEVER have to pay to perform or be in a magazine. These scams have been going on since the dawn of time… or at least even since shady promoters and “editors” found a way to take advantage of the starving nature of starving artists. There are so many issues with these things. First of all, if you’re a performer you should be getting paid for your services, not the other way around. Second, if you’re a fan these showcases and publications are terrible because talent has nothing to do with how the artists are selected, just cash flow. There is zero quality control when it’s 100% monetary controlled. In the case of magazines an editor’s credibility is diminished to nothing if he’s featuring artists based on who’s paying him (or her) and, once again, the product they’ll end up creating is going to be fairly worthless. If someone wants you to pay, or sell tickets, to perform, or be in their publication, they’re not worth your time. Same goes for any editor that says they want to feature you IF you buy an ad. Scamming artists gets me HEATED!
Here’s a little rule I go by; if someone is sending out tweets at a rate of more than half a dozen an hour I stop following them on Twitter, even if they're friends. I’m not really interested in hearing from people who can take the time to tweet every movement that they do. Tell me something relevant or funny, or if you’ve been silent all day just make a noise so everyone knows that you’re still alive. Seriously folks, that’s enough. Look up from your phone for a minute and realize the moment you’re taking to tweet that you “just had a kickin bologna sandwich” is a moment of life that you just missed. Perhaps Marisa Miller just walked by, but you’ll never know cuz you needed to get that ultra-important sandwich news out!
Side Note – “Look up from your phone for a minute” applies to much more than just this and is simply a really good general rule to have in life.
I understand that people are excited about their projects, but when people IM me with just a link, or a link and a note that says “check this out,” I can’t help but be on some Stephanie Tanner ish and think “how rude.” (Yeah, that’s right, Full House is gangster!) An IM of a link says a lot of things, not the least of which is that the person in question feels you, the receiver of the IM, have absolutely nothing better to do in your life than drop everything and look at what they want to show you RIGHT NOW. You know, there’s this funky little thing called e-mail and if you send me the link that way I’m a lot more likely to look at it. When you IM me the link I’m just going to delete it because it’s a nuisance on my screen. The internet is still a relatively new animal, and while there hasn’t been an etiquette book written about how to properly use it, maybe there should be. Who’s up for writing it?
BTW - As I was writing this I received a Facebook IM that was just a link to an event invite… and the event wasn’t even in my part of the country! Sheesh!
OK, those are three things that have been on my mind for a while. Anyone else have a gripe they’d like to shout about? Leave a comment and let me know what’s bothering you.
Comments
Red - Absolutely not. A buddy of mine was approached by a magazine earlier this week that said they wanted to feature him, but would require payment for it. That got us into a long conversation about the whole "pay to play" concept.
And if anyone's wondering, I practice what I preach. The last time I threw a show I took zero money from the door so all the performers could get paid. That's just how I do things.