I've been thinking about this for a while now; should I sign up to Instagram? This sounds like a stupid thing to deliberate over so I'll explain why I'm so torn.
At a glance, Instagram looks amazing for promoting yourself. All the musicians I follow are constantly uploading photos; guitar pics, studio shots, fan photos......you get the drift. I really love the updates and finding out what's going on in the real lives of some of my idols. But real lives is pushing it slightly.....
I recently did a fill in job for a band who's singer is pretty active on Instagram. To be fair, I was blown away by her dedication to the site. There were a few updates everyday; her morning yoga session, what she ate for lunch and then a picture of her playing an acoustic guitar with the tags #singersongwriter #guitarsession #rockstar #newtunescoming. I did not know this girl very well as I'd never played with her band before and came across her Instagram account while doing my usual pre-new-band research (aka stalking). From looking at her account, I learned that she has two acoustic guitars which she plays almost everyday, she appears to be a very clean eater and works out a lot. By now, she sounds like something from a wet dream.
Well.....Instagram screwed me. Off I went to my jam session with the new band and eager to be friendly and get on good terms with this girl, I began trying to chat guitar with her. One awkward, bumbling conversation later, I had to confess I'd been Instagram stalking her and had seen her guitar pictures, to which all of the guys in the band laughed hysterically. It felt pretty embarrassing.
She quickly set me straight that the photos that had been uploaded were staged! She explained that she could not play the guitar and that the two that appeared in her daily photos were on loan from the band's guitarist, as they were spares in need of repair work.
"I'm still trying to make up my mind if the rationale behind this is stupid or sheer brilliance" - one p*ssed off Instagram Voyeur
I'm still trying to make up my mind if the rationale behind this is stupid or sheer brilliance. The band have all agreed to lie and say that their beautiful, blonde haired, blue eyed, big breasted, 20-something-year-old singer writes all the band's songs on her acoustic guitar to attract more attention to their music. She poses with the guitar in various states of undress, and regularly takes provocative shots, in order to draw men into her profile. Once she's got them, she begins hitting them with stuff about the band.
I was a little uncomfortable with this and I can't even give you a good reason why. You've only got to look at Rhianna and Miley Cyrus to see that using women as sex objects is a tried and tested currency. It just shocked me a little to see a woman going this far to do it to herself.
I was curious about how much effort she put into her Instagram and she seemed only too happy to chat about it. She taught me that it's important to have really regular updates on there, once a day will not get you anywhere. If you haven't got time to do full hair and make up, do a body shot - a guitar is a crotch level instrument and you can use this to your advantage. Don't be afraid to go over the top with the hash tags either; the more you use, the greater the chance of your photo coming up in a search somewhere. There's also a lot of "freaks" out there, so don't be afraid to hook them in - pictures of your feet with the hashtag #footfetish won't hurt you in the popularity contest.
My mind was spinning. There was no thought involved when I signed up to Facebook. All my friends were on there and it seemed like a harmless evolution of MySpace so I just signed up an starting posting.
However, this was not a pop band I was working with; these guys were a rock band and all quite credible musicians. If I felt sad for the singer, I felt ten times worse for the boys in the band. What happens when you don't have nudity and sexually suggestive photos to use as a bargaining chip? If we're honest here, photos of naked men are nowhere near as appealing to the opposite sex as photos of naked women (I'm willing to accept there are a few exceptions to this!) The boys in the band all seemed happy enough to stand behind their hot lead and let her be the face of the group, taking the credit for the collective's hard work. I wondered how far this marketing strategy would take them before cracks started to appear.
In all honesty, Instagram sounds like a lot of work. I'm still in two minds if it's a worth while investment of my time to set up an account and spend a few five minute sessions a day photographing aspects of my musical activities to try and hook in strangers. It just all sounds a little too much like something designed for the beautiful people in life.
