Welcome to Pariah Carey 💃
This newsletter reckons with the pains of sharing and promoting music in an Instagram-colored world — or, summed up in oversimplified wordplay: How to be a Mariah, not a pariah.
Ok what’s that mean?
Digital self-promotion is a necessary evil. It’s expected that musicians build rented audiences on myriad social platforms where music has to compete against every other kind of content. It takes a lot of time and energy to construct an image that stands out from the crowd. And it takes a lot of mental and emotional fortitude to achieve some kind of digital authenticity and then deal with constant external feedback from all kinds of people: music folks and otherwise, assholes and otherwise.
It all can feel forced and inauthentic, and there’s been plenty of noise made about the dangers of the social dilemma. And hey how depressing are the prospects of organic, non-paid promotion. And how much does it suck that even if you do successfully build a fanbase, you have to migrate all of those people somewhere else to actually consume paid-for music (at four one hundredths of a cent per stream).
For all of the above, I haven’t been able to get myself to participate, but I’ve realized that my aversion to it is what’s preventing me from sharing my music in the first place, which feels even worse. If this is the world we’ve got, might as well live in it until we build a better one. Here’s to you, Mariah 🥂.
This newsletter is about wading into the waters of self-promotion and sharing that journey, transparently.
My purpose is threefold:
First, I want to be vulnerable with my distaste for self-promotion and hold myself accountable in order to actually put music out into the world.
Along the way I’ll share stories and music of some badass musicians that deserve to be heard.
And my hope is to provide a community platform for those that have experienced similar discomforts around self-promotion.
Cool how’s this take shape?
I’m a musician so that’s what I’ll be focusing on, but I think this applies to any kind of art. Along the way I’ll highlight other artists who have reckoned with these promotional pains alongside lessons learned. I’ll also share my (and others’) music.
Learning to play an instrument and the songwriting process are clearly important facets of music promotion, but I’m going to focus on the points of friction that come after that — namely the processes in place to help get the music to the people:
Songwriting —> .mp3 — how do I turn this song I play on my guitar into a finished digital product that I can share?
Choosing the right digital platform and right creative vehicle for you — every social platform requires significant time investment for success (they’re designed to be that way), so which one is worthy of your time? And the music is just one piece of the multimedia pie; how should I package myself? And what’s an NFT anyways? 👀
Third party support — Do I need a manager? A publicist? A label? A distributor? A Bandcamp page? Linkfire? Bandzoogle? Zandboogle??
My goal is to answer questions like these. If any of these struggles resonate and/or you’d like to learn from my inevitable mistakes as I learn how to internet better and/or you like Mariah Carey wordplay (will probably be a lot of it), I hope you’ll consider subscribing.
Why’s it called Pariah Carey?
Most musicians you’ve never heard of aren’t pariahs, but they might as well be because social algorithms treat them as such. Don’t wanna play the game, they ask? Then don’t expect to get any attention, they say.
And did you know ‘pariah’ is actually derived from the Tamil word ‘parai,’ which means ‘a drum’? Right on.
Last but not least, I believe in goals, and given that internet success is largely measured in social capital and attention, let’s use that as our metric. If Mariah Carey ever engages with anything related to this project, I’ll consider it a triumph.
Who are you? Why should I pay attention?
I’m a Brooklyn transplant by way of small-town Minnesota. I studied music in school, focusing on vocal performance and composition. I also play guitar and piano.
Professionally I’m a bit of a mixed bag. I’ve worked as a freelance music journalist for several years, mostly for Vice’s music verticals and Nerdist. I’ve also spent time recruiting for tech startups and helping them build out diversity and inclusion platforms, wellness strategies, and immigration support systems. Currently my primary role is that of Co-Founder of Grey Matter, a social music app with expressive ways to share, discover, and support the music you love.
To the second part of the question…
The reason I’m reckoning with self-promotion is because I do want to share my music with people. I also want to create opportunities to collaborate with people I admire in the music space, and to help other creators do the same.
There are thousands of how-to guides for things like this, I know, but I’ve found most to be written through rose-colored lenses with unrealistic expectations/outcomes. The best insights come from doing and being honest about it. I’m probably going to mess up a bunch but I’ll share that too, because mistakes are helpful, and sometimes even funny.
Hopefully I can provide a lens into this process and it’s helpful to other people. And I hope in time it can amplify the communal discourse around our attachment to influencer culture.
No sweat though if you still have no interest in this, thanks for even making it this far. ❤️
