Should I Sign Up to Instagram? A place to connect or a social reject?

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.

Why Douche is the Most Appropriate Phonetic in Fiduciary Matters; the world thinks it’s ok to ask artists to work for free…. and occasionally I kind of agree.

I really can’t tell you the name of the company involved in this, but this is pretty shocking. So let’s begin…

Some time ago, my band were invited to play at a corporate event. We’d just finished a run of festival appearances, were getting a small amount of airplay on commercial radio and receiving weekly press enquiries. We were keen to keep the ball rolling, and happy to play as many shows as possible, we accepted.

The event was for a big corporation who have branches all over the country. They were planning on opening a new branch and requested only a 30 minute set – “just a little something to get the customers pumped up”. At this juncture, our store contact pointed out that they couldn’t actually pay us, but in exchange for our time, they would feature the band on the homepage of their website and on the accompanying press release about the store opening. The fatal words “It’ll be great exposure for you guys” were uttered, and with that, the transaction was considered valid.

 A week before the gig, we were informed that a performance area had been set up in the parking lot with a stage and what we were told was a “full band setup, just bring your instruments and your own guitar and bass amps”. We continued to check the company’s website for our not-so-free advertising, but nothing appeared. It’s pretty poor etiquette to announce an event before the host does, so nothing about the gig went out on our social networks either. To make matters worse, nobody from the store would respond to our enquiries about the sound system setup, so we had no idea if the venue would be able to cater for our technical specifications.

48 hours before the gig and we’d had enough. The issue was passed over to band management, who sent a rather curt email requesting the corporation hold up their end of the deal or we’d be forced to pull the plug. Problem was – there wasn’t even a plug to pull!

The response was astounding. It was put to us that as the band, we were expected to provide our own sound system and should have sorted this by now. If we were unable to provide this at this late stage, perhaps only our singer and guitarist should perform. When we tried to explain that this wasn’t possible, our booking contact just didn’t understand that a microphone actually needs to be plugged into something to get sound out of it. Shouting her way through our songs over the noise of a busy store would not be an option and we just didn’t have a street-busker style setup we could use.

So, as we were:

• 1.       Unwilling/unable to shell out a few hundred bucks for PA system hire.
• 2.       Unwilling/unable to shell out a few hundred bucks for a van to transport the PA system.
• 3.       Unwilling/unable to spend hours setting up and dismantling a PA system for a 30 minute            gig.
• 4.       Not given our advertising; no sign of any press release with our logo, images, web links on        it, no offer of reimbursement for the expense this would incur.
• 5.       Getting nothing 

We had to pull out.

It was shocking to us that a big corporation like this couldn’t flick us a few hundred bucks for our time, or even sort out the necessary setup we’d need to play some music in their store. What made it even worse was that they were a specialist audio visual entertainment company! Shocking or what?

It’s pretty frustrating that 90% of the world seems to think it’s ok to ask artists to work for free. All those years spent learning your craft and coming up with something fresh and original are suddenly worthless and at times it seems implied that anybody pulled in off the street could do it too – so just get on with it and consider yourself lucky it’s you up there.  But sometimes, I occasionally see where they have a point.

The biggest show I ever played, I played for free.

Actually, at a rough estimate, I played this show for -$800 and it was worth every cent it cost me to get organised for it. A long hot summer some time ago, the group I was with were offered to play on one of the side stages of a pretty significant music festival. Somehow, the stars aligned and we managed to land this gig alongside some big name acts. As a relatively unheard of band, we were told straight up we wouldn’t be paid for this show as we needed it more than they needed us. It would have been just as easy for the festival organisers to have had that side stage sitting empty for the 45 minute slot we were offered and they would have lost no income from taking that option. Instead, they offered us a chance and we had no other choice than to jump on that thing like Van Halen instructed.

When I look back on this, if you care enough about something, have thrown thousands of dollars into it over the years, gotten yourself into and out of debt over it multiple times – what’s another $800 to pay for your lucky break?