The Ramblings of an Independent Artist

JANUARY 2000

Spaghetti Sauce Meets HYPE!!!
© 2000, Christina Fasano. All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission.

Making spaghetti thinking about all the things I need to ramble on about in this month's Muse's Muse....Hummm....onions, hamburger meat, tomato sauce, garlic, noodles. Yummm! Just did a taste test! Gonna be hard not to eat this at every meal! Anyway on to what I really need to ramble about and I'm not even sure where the rambling will take us...

I previously complained about not being able to keep an agenda and that problem continues. I need a time budget manager! I have managed to get some 'agenda' items done but only because of deadlines! The CA State Sales Tax Report due Jan 31 - DONE (kind of exciting to do 'cause it was my first report of CD SALES!!! Yeah!). 1099's out to 'Work For Hire' peoples - DONE. Sample tapes prepared for Namm show - not done...yet. Huge pile of printed out e-mails filled with potential Internet opportunities - getting quite dusty along with couch full of Rolling Stone, Rocker Girl, Gig, and other related music Mag's. There's nowhere to sit! Tons of Email letters on computer to and from radio and press peoples and other musicians and singers, backlogged from November! AHGGGG! 'Help me, somebody heeeeeellllllpppppp meeee!' All of this actually does not seem like a lot to try and clean up - however as I said before - the 'agenda' is shuffled around moment by moment. My friend Cindy Alexander (http://www.cindyalexander.com/), emailed me about http://www.soundclick.com/ one night and I spent hours getting myself set up on their site. As well she and several other new Internet pals including John Taglieri (see John's column here in The Muse's Muse), persuaded me to set up a page on Mp3 - despite my skepticism. Cindy told me my 'official' http://www.funkywhitegirl.com/ Website hits would increase and I wouldn't have to do anything. So I'm in the testing phase. I set up two songs over there that people can download for free. So we shall see what happens.

Yesterday (Jan 28), my Mp3 site got 26 hits all by it's lonesome. My own site, since it's launch in December has received 5000 hits and I'm not even on Yahoo yet - granted at least 1000 of those were my own hits...'Cause you know I like to look at myself! NOT! Anyway, gettin' set up on Mp3 took on an hourly life of it's own and I've decided that Mp3 does not like Macintosh nor does it like AOL! I cannot do anything using AOL! It's crazy. AOL does not translate my .jpg files, it will not recognize my Mp3 soundfiles and transfer them, and of course right in the middle of setting up somewhere it kicks me off and all data is lost! So my advice when setting up on one of these music sites is to make backups of all the data you are entering as you go. The paragraph 'blurbs' you write, etc. That is of course if you are on a browser that kicks you off. Cable is looking more and more appealing every day! Anyway let's get off this digression! So I'm up on Mp3, giving away two songs and a bunch of silly info about myself and hoping people will find it interesting enough to click onto my 'real' Website.

Personally I'm beginning to feel that music 'sales' on the web are a slow growing HYPE beast and one that we have to feed, feed, feed like any other promotional vehicle. I, like many many people think we are at the beginning of a huge revolution in music but unfortunately for those that need to make some money at this game, we is gonna have to wait until the sales catch up with the hype machine. It's very cool to sort of be in on the beginning of a brand new thing in our culture and one that is going to revolutionize everything, but unless you are a web designer or computer programmer right now, it's kind of like you're in the wrong business. My Website right now seems to be just a promotional tool for HYPE. Not for sales.

In the meantime as I wait for the dollars to roll on in, I'm going to use the Web to hype the h...ll out of my product. That, it is definitely good for. The support on the web for independent artists is incredible. It's actually quite shocking being that on the streets of the major music markets, there is no respect, no recognition. No f...n nothing. If you like to bang your head against brick walls day in and day out, be my guest. But if I were you, I'd get my rear-end in front of a computer and start networking and getting your stuff out to reviewers and potential e-zines and webcasts and web radio and music sites. Hit chat rooms and message boards with announcements, your web address, etc. Saturate everywhere you can. AND make sure your product is top notch. Think about it. You are competing with thousands of independent artists. THOUSANDS! And growing daily as we all realize that we really do have a shot in this crazy business. So there are all these Indie's AND don't forget the Major players and the big machines behind them. Don't forget about those guys....You might need them someday when grass roots marketing has taken you as far as it can and you wanna step up to some bigger territories. Believe me if you are 'selling' (notice I didn't say if you are 'good'), and your product is as professional as anything they could release, 'dem boys/girls, is gonna come knockin'. I'll say this once and I do believe I might say it again....THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR TALENT, OR WHAT YOUR LYRICS SAY, OR HOW YOU ARE GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD, OR THAT YOU ARE THE NEXT WHOEVER! Well, you say...what do they care about then? Repeat after me....'sales, sales, sales, sales, sales, money, money, money, money, money, sales, money, sales, money, sales, money. So throw out all your notions about how wonderful your product is and that if you could just get 'Mr. Blowhard' at 'Up Yours Records' to listen to it, he would sign you in a minute. The first thing out of his mouth would be, (IF the record was fairly decent) 'How many units have you moved?' Unless you appeal to his or her sexual appetite and then it would be dinner first - discussing your potentially wonderful career and all the things they can do for you, bed second, and third, 'I never made any promises to you.' And the big finale - they never call you again and won't take your calls. I never did the second thing but I got my share of the other ones.

And so my kind readers who have managed to get this far into this 'rambling' article of mine, the test question for today is: 'What is the most important word in the world for an independent artist to dwell and act on once they have a closet full of CD's all freshly pressed and ready to go?' A four letter word beginning with the letter 'H' (Jeopardy music please....) and the answer is, HYPE. And I now will shamelessly hype my current 'Hype' accomplishments. Hype is a domino effect. Hype begets hype begets hype upon hype begets more hype upon hype and so on.....

Shameless Current 'HYPE' Accomplishments:

• WEBCAST!!!! Live, streaming audio/video. NWEZ.NET I will be interviewed on Feb. 7th, 5-6pm with Billie Joe on his World Class Chat Show, followed by Femme Fatal 6-6:30pm - (who has my music in rotation on her Internet radio show). Then again Feb 9th 12-2pm with Claudia on her Singles Chat show. Tune in!!! Call in!!!
• The Muse's Muse, yes, this here cool online newsletter, is featuring me in their Songwriter Spotlight section!
• Yes it's finally official! My CD, Spiritually Wet has indeed been nominated as one of the 7 Best Albums of the Year in the R&B/Funk genre!
• Spiritually Wet was 'Album of the Day' at the Celebrity Cafe on January 18! (http://www.celebritycafe.com/).
• My song 'Sweet and Sour' from Spiritually Wet, is being included on a benefit CD for the McDowell Foundation for children with Cancer.
• Spiritually Wet is currently being wheeled and dealed at Midem 2000 in France. It already has interest from Europe and Japan.
• Lyn Ashley Music is representing me at A&R Online, by request.
• Radio Marabu out of Europe and the U.K. is planning to put my CD in heavy rotation.
• Tam at Risque Radio (http://www.risqueradio.com/) has been featuring different songs of mine on her shows and actually had a call in request for me last week!!! (happy face!)
• Susanne Millsaps at KRCL in Salt Lake City has been playing my songs and will continue to do so.
• 'Get Fancy!' Music magazine is definitely doing a review of my CD in their premier February 2000 issue!
• My music is up at http://www.amazingcds.com/ and I was featured as their 'Artist of the Week' Jan 24th - 31st!
• My song 'Reciprocate' is in the Hip Hop/R&B Internet charts at http://www.soundclick.com/!
• I'm featured as one of four rotating artists on the home page of http://www.doughboymusic.com/!
• Ben Ohmart, a crazed and wonderful reviewer who loves British humor, and has personally wished me all the 'goon show luck' in the world with my music..(Ha!!!), has done a review of my CD which will appear here in The Muse's Muse, soon.
• Got my product registered and sent off to the Global Pipeline/Phat Media, an online distribution center for audio/video products. Check it out at http://www.musicdish.com/. I also posted a press release about my Webcast here which goes out in a email newsletter.
• Upcoming review in the Renegade Newsletter.
• Upcoming feature and placement in the 'Emerging Artists' section at Amazon.com.
• Upcoming feature at FEMMUSIC.
• Upcoming review from Go Girls Music.
• Angelic Entertainment - a film company in San Diego will be considering my songs for inclusion in upcoming films as well as ask me to help write songs for the films.

And now...the spaghetti sauce is done and I'm falling asleep. In the olden days it used to be - "As you dream, so shall you become." Today it is... can you guess...yes I know you can: "As you HYPE, so shall you become!"

Until next month...this has been Christina da funkyWG comin' at ya!