I was reading Ben Parr’s article, “HOW TO: Use Social Media for Sharing Music”
http://mashable.com/2009/04/18/social-sharing-music/
and I was reminded of the Bob Burg & John David Mann book, Go-Givers, notably, the authors encouraging advice that “giving is the most fulfilling and effective path to success.” In his article, Ben talks about listening becoming a “richer and more meaningful experience” because of social sites like Last.fm, Pandora and Apple.
Over the last few years, social media sites for sharing music have blossomed. With great companies such as Last.fm, Pandora and Apple iTunes revolutionizing how we consume music, listening has become a “richer and more meaningful experience” giving people the opportunity “to find, discover, share and reinvent music in new and interesting ways.” I want to pay particular attention to the word “share.”
We’ve all become resourceful and have developed an expertise for using the social media to get our tunes out to fans, friends and fellow musicians. MySpace, Twitter and Facebook have become our audio soapboxes for telling the world about our music. We continually increase the number of followers exponentially who are able to listen to our music. Social media and related software, links and widgets have made it easy for our network to give a listen to what we’ve created. Yet the one thing we want people to do, listen to our music, has become, for the most part, a one-way street. As Ben states and I agree, “You can’t just send out your favorite songs and expect people to listen if you aren’t listening yourself. Take the time to listen to some of the new bands your friends recommend, and keep an open mind…This could change an artist’s life.” Burg & Mann offer the simple yet profound suggestion to “focus on creating value for the other person.” It will definitely reverberate back to you. One of the most influential activities we can engage in is to acknowledge and motivate the creative spirit of the indie artist by listening and feeding back.
Tags: Apple, Ben Parr, Bob Burg, facebook, go-givers, John David Mann, Last.fm, MySpace, Pandora, sharing music, Social Media, twitter