I don't know if this is just for Sweden? I guess it could be applied to the whole world. Many of the older A&R:s (read old grumpy men) is blaming the social media to kill the rock star. Many of the old rockstars were assholes, but in media they were nice. I heard so many times that John Lennon was an ass. And maybe he was or not. I don't know since I never meet him and can only tell from the interviews and stuff he has done. These interviews are of course controlled so it won't give the right picture. And it's in this the people now say the social media is killing the star.
Let's assume John Lennon was a real asshole in person. Of course, you can't hide that on social media. It will shine through. Same with the star thing. So many times when you get starstruck and then spend some time with the star and you realize they are just a normal person, very talented, but still just a person the icon and the status is falling.
Is this right? I don't know but what I can see is that interviews are rarer today with artists, especially around their work. What has replaced this in the media is more writings what they say on social media. Not unusual that a whole article is about a tweet of a famous artist. Today the media get the most information from Donal Trump in form of tweets.
Most careers are in very short forms.
I spent time with an influencer last weekend. She posted a picture of her on the street and in 5 minutes she had over 5000 comments. At the same time, she is not famous, she has over a million followers ion different social media. During dinner, we were talking about one of my bands and she was really impressed and told me that this band was really big. I told her that they not even had 20 000 followers on all their social media. Yes she said but they do big things and they write interviews with them. She explained how the followers were not anything that really goes to media until you are a name. And to get the name you need to do extra good things.
I guess the social media is not killing the start it's just harder to see where the breaking point for an artist is really on.
PERSONAL:
They are playing Eurythmics on the radio. Great band and great songs. I actually worked with Dave Stewart once which was one of these strange larger than life experience I'm getting involved in.
In this case, I got involved by a supervisor on a big project that Nokia was doing. They were building a game which contained music along the clues and should have been launched to a certain phone and work with GPS. In the beginning, I was placing some of my songs in the game but the crew understood fast I had some greater knowledge around everything in licensing so they called me on consultant things now and then.
This was in the middle of the summer. I had a short vacation in the archipelago north of Stockholm. Out there the coverage is not that great, but when you where in the local grocery store you had a tiny bit of reception. That was the great thing people couldn't reach you and you could really have a vacation.
One day we where down doing some groceries and out of the blue the Nokia team contacted me and wondered if I could jump on a Skype call about a thing. I wrote back that my line was not that good but I could try.
Out in the parkinglot I got on the call. It was not easy since the reception sucked. I got introduced to a bunch of people and they had a big discussion around different ways to get the music in the game. I mainly listened. After awhile a guy adressed a question to me...so Peter I heard you had good experience of this. And yes I had, the last project I did had the same problems and I knew how we solved these. So I gave them a pretty good and safe plan solving the problem. The guy that asked was impressed and continued, that is great Peter, your line is kind of bad but I want to ask you some more. Can I call you after the call. Sure I gave him my number. The conference call went on for awhile more. I bought a ice-cream because it was hot and keept trying to keep up.
Then it was finished and Ulrika wanted to go back with the grocery. Then my phone rang. I answered and a familiar voice said, Hey its Dave Stewart really good input on the call. I have some other projects that I would like to get your opinion on.
I was not sure. Was this that Dave Stewart? The guy from Eurythmics and the guy who did all the keyboards on Ramones Too Tough to die record. Can't be?
The call went on and I explained the different ways of placements and what could work. My ice-cream melted and Ulrika was annoyed over the time it took.
Over the whole call, I was trying to figure out if this was Dave Stewart. In the end, I managed to get in a question about his music and there he mentioned Eurythmics. I was standing in the parking lot of the local grocery talking to Dave Stewart. It was totally surreal.
In the end, I got to ask around the recording of the Ramones album. He had no real memorys around it. He was mainly hired to do the electronic sounds on the single Howling at the moon. He laughed that was the question I had.
I got some more calls from him. And I just looked in my phone and I still has his number in my phone book as Dave S. I wonder if he still answers if I called?
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