Blog Archives

Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing Part 7 – Sick Self Love

Interesting piece in the NYT recently by Frank Bruni. Belated grasp of things, but good that the talking heads are finally starting to notice what’s been going on under their talking noses for years. In a nutshell, the piece focuses

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Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings

Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing Episode VI: That’s Lovely But…

Okay, I’m basically going to demonstrate by example here. I’ve noticed recently that a certain website has started billing my guest-with-house-trio residency as an “award-winning quartet”. It’s very flattering and no doubt rather good for business, but I do feel

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Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings

Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing Episode V: Biohazard!

Dealing with reviewers can be a trying business. The late Douglas Adams surely knew this. In Hitch Hiker, the researcher despatched to Earth knows so little about the place that he chooses the name of a car “to blend in”. Then, having “painstakingly”

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Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings

Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing Part IV: Is That So?

File this one under personal attitude, because we’re not going to be diving knee-deep into tritone-infested waters here. More of a generalised New Year type reflection, really. We’re all prey from time to time to concerns about how we’re perceived by

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Posted in c) Musicianship, d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings

Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing, Part the Third – Putting a Sock in It

It’s so tempting isn’t it? You’ve got this great band, you want the world to know about a gig you’ve done or a fantastic new album you’re releasing. So you think about creating a sock puppet (an online pseudonym) and

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Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings

Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing 2.0

Don’t Mess With Mr Inbetween. For my cynical, sarcastic and often downright rude rundown of some of the cheap flimflam tricks musicians use to promote themselves, see here. Here though, are some further observations, and this time … it’s digital.

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Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings

Flim Flam Sauce – Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing

Music has what investors would call very low “barriers to entry” – in plain English, anyone can do it. Although it takes talent and many years of perseverence to do it well, and a heavy dose of luck to get

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Posted in c) Musicianship, d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings
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