Music Blogs, Websites, Twitter, Facebook...

[Compact Diss]

It seems to me like there is a huge overload of what a concert photographer needs in order to be successful, even on a minimum scale.

When I began doing concert work, I had a flickr account, and a myspace page.

Eventually I went to Smug Mug, kept up with the myspace, facebook emerged to be more popular, faster, and easier. Twitter has now become another ingredient in the mix....I have every one of these, and where does it end???

I'm getting lost in the mix, it seems that in order to keep people aware of your work you need to have all of these, and to be active with them.

Blogs...I have a blog. I have one follower, my daughter! I have started blogs, only to drop out on them a couple of weeks later, it is just more work, and it seems a lot harder to find people to follow your blog. Updating it became painful each time I started, I would look at it, read it, and think to myself, "who cares?".

Just wondering your thoughts on all of this.

Another big question I have is about music blogs, is there really any money in owning a music blog? A blog with reviews, interviews. I would like to know where the money is made on one of these? Does anyone have one that I can use as an example? I'm sure you get tons of free CD's to review, but I don't think the ads really bring in enough money to justify the time and effort it must take to continue with it.

Anyone else understand what I am trying to get at here? I'm curious as a person who actively shoots shows, if I am missing out on a greater income by not keeping a 24hour marketing machine moving.

Thoughts?

[narlus]

i think to go solo takes a ton of effort and time...to create a following that generates any decent amount of traffic, you need constantly updated content, and that's typically a tall order for someone to go it alone.

i use facebook, twitter, etc basically to generate traffic to the sites i contribute to, so hopefully it builds awareness and people get hooked on that way. i personally don't benefit from it, but i'm not in it for the cash anyway. sure, if i could make some additional coin i wouldn't say no, but generating revenue via adsense seems pretty futile to me.

[90c4]

I agree with narlus. I use twitter so that publicists can follow me and just to get people to check out my gallery. I chase down my own credentials and occasionally have one of 3 sites reach out to publicists on my behalf, but rarely. If I thought in any way that my shots were the reason that people went to the sites I shoot for, I'd have a talk with the editors.... but for now I'm happy just making a few bucks here and there licensing images to artists and venues.

[narlus]

just curious as to what venues you've had luck licensing images to.

[Compact Diss]

Haha Tim, I knew you were going to jump on that licensing one!

"but generating revenue via adsense seems pretty futile to me"

Right, so where do the music blogs profit? Conducting interviews may bring hits, but it's not bringing in money. What am I missing, are these people just doing this all for fun? Like you said above, doing it alone has got to take some serious time, and effort! I can't see people dedicating their entire free moments to something that isn't giving something in return.

Don't get me wrong, I spend countless hours doing what I do, and it's minimal, but if I were to have a blog, like some of them I see, I can easily imagine that my time would be multiplied like crazy. At this point I can't see myself dedicating that much of my life to providing something for people to look at, then click onto the next site. There has got to be profit involved somewhere, and I'm looking for that answer...

[narlus]

see if you can get a sense of what Mary/TheyWillRockYou handles, in terms of traffic, revenue, etc. i think she's the main driving force behind that site.

i think some of the big music-oriented 'blogs' (like pitchfork, stereogum, prefixmag, brooklynvegan, dusted) probably do bring in enough $ via ads to support one or two principals (ie, the founders), but as you know contributors get very little if anything.

for the smaller, individual blogs, i would suspect that they are labor of loves, w/ more time and effort spent relative to actual cash stream coming in.


yeah, i can't imagine any venues 'round these parts licensing images, esp given Live Nation's chunk of the pie (i did talk to one of the owners of the Middle East a couple of years ago about that sort of thing and he had zero interest), but you never know.

[90c4]

just curious as to what venues you've had luck licensing images to.

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts

[KnOzz]

i work with cornershopstudios.com , its a webzine about music show and review , i think the only way to make cash is from selling prints .. or if the band need a photographer for website pictures or posters or something like that .. i think its hard to make cash in this photography area if you don't work for a newspaper or directly for the band ..

sorry my english is very bad hehe

[blackshadow]

I have a blog (main page), smugmug for my archives, flickr, facebook personal and professional pages and myspace. I don't have twitter and can't be arsed getting it either.

With my blog I can put stuff on facebook and myspace easily. I don't post my photos on either though.