More On The Jazz Internet And Its Discontents

I'm not sure what in particular inspired Peter Hum to go for broke here, but he did, and the ongoing conversation is better for it. Basically, in a somewhat scattershot but thorough post at the newly-rebranded Jazzblog.ca, he muses on the many different Internet promotional strategies of jazz musicians these days.

Myself, I find this graf to address the real crux of this new Internet business model that's unfolding in front of us (and make sure to read the article hyperlinked within too):

Rather than speak of "digital publicity," it may be more succinct and accurate to use the social-media buzzword: "relationships." This article contends that musicians must above all develop relationships with their fans, and it does seem that Marsalis, who has nearly 60,000 Facebook fans and who hosts regular online Q&As with his most fervent admirers, is in agreement.

There's a lot of sense to this.

 

The approaches taken by many of the buzzed-about success stories of the Jazz Internet — Darcy James Argue, Maria Schneider, Dave Douglas (there he is again, on this blog!), etc. — have been built on communication with fans. That doesn't mean necessarily trading e-mails back and forth about, say, chord substitutions or whatever, though that could happen too; it's really just giving people more avenues into one's musical mind. And fans, to be mercilessly capitalist about it, represent potential funding sources.

This is especially relevant to jazz musicians. As record labels continue to struggle, and self-promotion becomes ever easier on the Web, full independence becomes increasingly attractive for the average jazz bandleader, who — let's face it — already directs his or her appeal primarily toward a small niche market. He or she may still hire a publicist or manager or booker, but as for making and distributing records, and reaching out to an audience, today's jazz musicians have both the economic incentive and the means at hand to go more DIY than ever before. Blogs, Twitter updates, embeddable videos, Facebook, ArtistShare, MySpace, free mp3s and hell, personal Web sites with sound samples: these are the press conferences of today.

All of the foregoing raises an interesting situation. Musicians are no longer just selling their recordings and gigs: the public display of their approaches, thought processes, tastes and personal imprimaturs have become valuable/verging on essential advertising tools too. The process is becoming part of the product, so to speak.

Of course, this demands that artists dedicate more of their time — which I imagine is already at a premium — to doing Not-Art for free. In the brief but fruitful time I actually produced radio for NPR, I cut this report on the online struggles of a representative indie artist — in this case, a fellow named Dallas Green. You can read a similarly discretionary tale, at much greater length, in this 2007 New York Times Magazine article. And the curious case of Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails fame) shows that one can develop a debilitating social media fatigue. (UPDATE: He has since rejoined the Twitterverse. OMG guyz.)

One might read all this in a pessimistic and reactionary way. I would understand if you preferred the older business model, where one could more fully dedicate himself to woodshedding and farm out all the business agreements to a record label marketing apparatus. Furthermore, it also implies that the divide between transacting commerce and making art is becoming even more blurry.

Or is that divide just becoming more transparently illusory? At least stateside, we live in a society where markets largely determine the value of music; nearly every jazz musician who seeks to support him or herself through music has always necessarily also been a self-marketer. Meanwhile, major record labels have continually less funding for jazz, and the Web isn't going anywhere either. In fact, it's putting glorified fans like me in charge of blogs for major journalism organizations.

Speaking as a "journalist," I'm still going to listen to recordings that get sent my way without consideration of whether the bandleader has a blog or not. But speaking as a fan, I like getting to know as much as I can about why my favorite artists make the music they do. And it's becoming increasingly less surprising that the artists who do concentrate on making themselves visible are getting more good press.

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As a coda of sorts, I should qualify all this. Much of the jazz business still operates away from the public spotlight, where musicians network and make valuable connections. You can still make a fine living without a MySpace page — especially if you don't intend to lead a group or make a record anytime soon. And if you've made it to the stage of being considered a veteran player, you've probably already built enough industry relationships over time such that you needn't use the Web to get yourself a summer festival tour or your annual week at the Village Vanguard.

But to be a young, creative musician in search of buzz for your latest project as a bandleader, the paradigm of being really good and expecting someone to notice seems woefully outdated. (Unless you're Esperanza Spalding, though it would seem she has other things going for her well-suited to more traditional marketing.) Given the choice between using a free service to throw potential fans a bone every once in a while and, you know, not, the choice seems simple.