If you’re like me you occasionally peruse online videos for music tutorials. I don’t claim to know everything about the bass guitar so sometimes I’ll come across something and I want to know how it’s done. For me, it’s like finding out how a magic trick works. Some people are content in seeing the trick and being done with it. Me, I want to know how it’s done; I want to know how it came about it; I want to know how to master it.
There sure are a lot of online music teachers out there these days. Some teachers put up free videos on YouTube, some of them just have blogs, some are trying to sell books and DVDs, and some offer free services in an effort to get you to pay for their premium lessons. But you’ll soon see that most of them don’t actually care about teaching – they only care about getting site stats.
Let me just say that I’ve been to a couple of bass forums online that occasionally will have big name bass players weighing in on questions or responding directly to questions about their work or technique. Two guys that have always been very candid and helpful are guys like Michael Manring and Anthony Wellington. If you ask them a question on one of their bass forums they’re eventually going to answer you. And bless their hearts that we’ve got musicians like that.
However, there sure are a lot of “teachers” these days that seem to only want to get page hits. Just recently I had a question about something related to bass so I sent a direct message to several notable online bass players who offer their services in bass instruction. I’ve yet to hear back from any of them. And these are guys that offer free tutorials and make their profile as an instructor available to the general public.
Let me tell you something that annoys me, I just saw this one bass teacher post a Facebook update about the new large amount of followers they just acquired. This particular guy now has more “likes” on Facebook than Steve Bailey…a fact I that find highly unlikely.
Here’s the deal, don’t be convinced by those numbers. Don’t be swayed or impressed by someone’s Facebook likes, Twitter followers, Instagram followers, or any of that stuff. You can buy those numbers if you just want to have an impressive number on your page.
The way it works is that you can “promote” your post for as little as five dollars. For a period of time you’ll get “likes” on Facebook. But these are from profiles that will never see the content your pushing. For the most part they’re just fake profiles. I’m not sure if these sites have some type of algorithm that will allow them to momentarily highjack real accounts to generate fake “likes” or views for the people paying to promote. I don’t know if these sites create a shit load of fake profiles just for this purpose. All I know is that the “likes,” views, and followers that you can buy do not generate real traffic to the thing your promoting. I’ve looked at the actual stats and I’ve spoken with people in-the-know.
The whole point of all this is to get your content out there. As a musician you want your music heard by as many people as possible. So it serves no purpose to buy Twitter followers if none of those followers are real and none of them will end up clicking on your links. The same goes for YouTube views. You can buy a promotion campaign for your video. You pay X amount of dollars which amounts to X amount of days. They then guarantee you that your views on your video will go up. But then you go and look at the stats for the video and you’ll see that all those views were for around a second of viewing. I actually did this once. I paid to promote a video thinking that it would be pushed up higher on the recommended cue list. Nope, for all those views I got the vast majority were under 5 seconds of viewing time. Just enough to register a video view hit. And it’s not like the video was bad. Because 5 seconds didn’t even get into the music portion of it.
Yes, there is a way to get more Twitter followers and Facebook likes but it’s the hard way.
My point is, don’t take stock in these people that are boasting a high amount of page views, likes, followers, and all that stuff.
You see, this all annoys me because whenever someone sends me a message through whatever forum I always take the time to answer to the best of my ability. Because I’m always annoyed when I ask a question to someone and they act like they’re just too famous to answer it.
Look, if you’re going to market yourself as a teacher and a place for players to get information for free then don’t act like your too busy to answer a couple of questions.
What’s almost as worse than that? When you ask someone a question, they answer it, but the answer has nothing to do with any actual information.
One time I asked two bass players that were currently working and touring with an organization that I was interested in. I asked if they had any advice for auditioning. Both of the responses were very similar and they were: “hey, just keep doing what your doing.”
Fuck, thank you so much for that insightful rant. It helps me out so much.
So don’t put a lot of stock in these online music gurus and don’t be loyal to their services if they can’t bother to answer a simple question.
If you want to get some info out of people and you want to get your questions answered by a variety of knowledgeable people then check out the TalkBass forums and the Bass Player Magazine forums.
If you have a question for me – my contact is on this site. I’ll email you back!
Unless I get too famous.
