7 Reasons

Tag: compromise

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why Social Media Is More Important Than Record Labels

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why Social Media Is More Important Than Record Labels

    7 Reasons Why Social Media Is More Important Than Record Labels

    1.  Find Likeminded Fans. Record labels can only promote your music using a scattergun approach, advertising to everyone within a certain demographic. Using social media means that word will spread among friends who know each other’s taste and may well share it so when they find an artist they like.

    2.  Get People Talking. No matter how much money a record label throws at an artist, there’s no guarantee that anyone will be interested in buying their albums or seeing them play. A buzz on social media is much more likely to draw people’s attention as they will hear about it through their friends and social contacts. Viral marketing is a powerful tool when it comes to attracting attention to your music and many bands have built their careers on the basis of a grassroots movement among fans who have discovered their music online.

    3.  Share Your Music. A record label will be concerned with getting people to buy your music, but when you use social media you can share your music and let people listen to it without having to commit to making a purchase. This allows people to follow an artist’s progress and see how their sound grows as they mature. The outlay for the musician is also minimal as there is no need to pay to have CDs pressed or spend money on marketing. They can focus on just making music.

    4.  No Compromise. If you know how you want to sound and feel passionate about your music, then you don’t want to have to change it to suit a record label’s agenda. For many artists, keeping the music at the forefront is crucial.

    5.  The Importance of Live Music. With so many studio tricks possible, live music could be a dying art if it weren’t for social media. Listening to a band or artist performing their unedited tracks online could encourage people to go to a live show where they can get an idea of how their favourite artists really sound.

    6.  Find People Where They Are. Instead of hoping that fans come to you, using social media to promote your music means that you are taking your music to them. You don’t have to worry about whether you are reaching your target market because the word will spread among their peers and reach people who might otherwise not respond to record-company advertising.

    7.  Honest Feedback. A record label will tell you how you could be marketed and what your key demographic might be. They will be interested in maximising their investment. When you promote your music through social media, however, the people listening to it will give you honest and useful feedback to help you shape your sound.

    Social Media & Web has become more important for young artists like Anassa Oneill who appreciates the value of giving her fans a taste of her music. As an independent artist, Anassa chooses to stay true to her roots and produce the music she loves in the way that she wants. She enjoys the freedom that comes with not having to conform.

  • 7 Reasons That Time Is The Enemy

    7 Reasons That Time Is The Enemy

    I’ve just realised something.  Something important.  Something life-altering.  Something that, though I was vaguely aware that it was so, I’d never really considered before.  I’ve just realised who the enemy is and it’s not even the French!  It’s that odious bastard time.  Here are seven reasons why.


    1.  Time Causes You To Sacrifice Things You Hold Dear.  Time – the scoundrel – causes you to miss many things that you dearly love to do.  Haven’t played your guitar for a while, visited that spa or baked that cake?  No?  It’s because there isn’t time.  You probably thought there was time – that you could fit it in – but time deserted you when you needed it most.   And then time forced you to make the tricky decision about what to sacrifice because of your lack of it.  Time has run out on you and made you the bad guy.  If you find yourself having to make the choice to spend more of your time doing the washing up or the hoovering rather than spending your time doing what you really want to be doing, it’s time’s fault.

    2.  Time Forces You To Compromise.  Time continually places us in compromising positions.  Because of time, everything becomes a compromise:  Should you do something quickly or do something well?  Should you diligently hone your craft and produce excellence or just botch things in a hurried manner for a quick result?  Time forces you to make compromises in every area of your life when you’d probably rather not.  Time forces you to compromise every damned…er…time.

    3.  Time Makes Your Life Needlessly Difficult.  We strive to be on time; not early nor late, because what is prized in our society is punctuality; being on time.  This means that how you are seen in the eyes of your peers – your social standing – is held in the fickle fingers of fate.  In an ideal world, it’s not difficult to be punctual, but we don’t live in an ideal world.  Every puncture, every train breakdown, every tube strike, in fact, every little incident and accident that we encounter on the way to wherever it is we’re going could potentially make us late, which will affect how we’re judged by our peers; “He’s always late”, people will whisper, “she’s a terrible timekeeper”.  Time sets you difficult to attain targets then rewards your inevitable failure with opprobrium.

    4.  It’s Never The Right Time.  No matter what age you are, it’s never the right time.  When you’re young, it’s never playtime, it’s always bathtime or bedtime or time to go to school.  When you have kids of your own, it’s never bathtime or bedtime, it’s always sodding playtime and it’s never time to go home.  Then when you’re old it’s always bloody bedtime and you’re in a home.  It’s never the right time.

    5.  Time Is Bad For Us.  Time is attacking you and I at this very moment.  It’s doing all sorts of vile things to us: It’s turning us grey; it’s making us wrinkly; it’s making some bits of us bigger and some bits of us smaller; it’s making bits of us fall out and adding extra bits where there weren’t bits before; bits that we didn’t need; bits that didn’t want; bits that we’re going to have to spend even more time removing.  Time is making the inside of your ears hairy right now for no earthly reason other than to mock you.

    6.  Time Will Kill You.  Humans are fragile creatures and there are many dangerous things that we might encounter during the course of our lives: War, famine, pestilence, irate husbands, startled horses, out of control dirigibles, rogue hippopotami, a landslide, a flood, a furious baboon; there are all manner of things that can kill us.  But one thing is certain, if, against all the odds, we survive all of those things then time will kill us.  Time kills more people than all of the armies of the world combined.  Time kills more people than every monstrous dictator that’s ever committed an act of genocide.  Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, Leopold of Belgium and Adolf Hitler were lightweights when compared with time.  Time is a mass murderer.  Time should be in a cell in The Hague.  For the rest of time.

    7.  Time Is Addictive.  Time, in the manner of an opiate, has us hooked.  For after it’s turned us grey, caused us to sacrifice many of the things that we hold dear, turned our lives into a frustrating series of compromises, punished us for every little mishap that was outside our control, it still holds us in its thrall.  Like irresolute crack whores we go running back to it, because we’re compelled to; we’re addicted to time.  We can’t get enough of it.  We can never have enough time.  What every last one of us wants is more time.  Time is our enemy, yet we can’t live without it.

    As you can plainly see, time is an insidious and diabolically cruel outrage that humankind should wage war against.  I’d lead the charge myself, but sadly, I don’t have the time.

  • 7 Reasons That Love is Important

    7 Reasons That Love is Important

    It’s Valentine’s Day!!!  On Monday.  Apologies for any panic we may have caused there, but the 7 Reasons team have decided to jump the gun and celebrate St Valentine’s Day prematurely.  Because we’re lovesick.  Well, one of us is in love and that just makes the other one feel sick, but that’s near enough.  So, in honour of the patron saint of pink stuff everywhere, here are seven reasons that love is important.

    A pink heart

    1.  Make Love Not War. It’s a tired expression, but – short of a nuclear missile – love really is the one thing that can end conflict. For good. We are not interested in truces. Like a dirty weekend in a Travelodge outside of Leeds, it won’t last. Real love means complete acceptance of what others believe and how they choose to live. A marriage of acceptance if you like. Not that I’m suggesting we should accept or indeed make love to radical extremists. That would be extreme. And quite dangerous if their grenades are dangling above your head. If you do find yourself in this situation we suggest you wear a helmet. Just in case.

    2.  Passion. That’s what love is really. Whether it’s passion for your partner or passion for your team or passion for passion fruit, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that you feel something for something. Because it’s those feelings that keep us alive. Without emotion we’d be robots. And if you read yesterday’s post you’d realise that’s not a good thing.

    3.  Compromise. I guess I got lucky. The person I fell in love with also loves what I love. No, not myself. Sport. Which means we don’t have to do the, ‘You can watch Eastenders all week so long as I can watch the rugby all weekend,’ thing. Claire gets to watch Eastenders and the rugby and I get to do the ironing and watch the rugby. But we know we are in the minority. Other people really do have to compromise. And while it may mean missing England beat Wales, you do it because you’re in love. And I admire that. I admire it because I couldn’t do it. Which is why I told Claire before we even started dating that watching England play cricket or rugby comes before anything else in my life. A year later I still haven’t missed a game. And that just makes me love her even more.

    4.  Inspiration.  Throughout human history, love has acted as a spur, a stimulus, a motivational factor in many of mankind’s greatest accomplishments.  The life’s work of Thomas Aquinas; Shelley’s One Word is Too Often Profaned; Shah Jahan’s construction of the Taj Mahal, the historical examples of great works inspired by, and created out of love are almost boundless.  Essentially, if we didn’t have love, we’d still be slimy-fish creatures or animal-bothering Neanderthals living in caves or swamps or our own poo or something.  But thanks to love, most of us aren’t.

    5.  Tennis. I don’t think anything in the world explains love better than a tennis match. As I am sure you are aware, ‘love’ in tennis is the equivalent of zero. Zilch. Nothing. In other words, it is valueless. And that is what love outside of tennis is too. You can’t put a value on love. Unless you are in Amsterdam. Though between you and me I don’t think ten minutes* with a Dutch girl called Helga really counts. Love is the most valuable commodity in life and yet it is free. I have always thought that is a rather wonderful intricacy. We pay our taxes so that the NHS and the Police are there for us when we need them, but the people who are there for us when we don’t need them are free.

    6.  Popular Song.  If it weren’t for the eternally prevalent theme of love, pop music would be wholly different.  There’d be no Renée and Renato’s Save Your Love, there’d be no Yummy Yummy Yummy I Got Love in my Tummy by Ohio Express, and there’d be no When We Collide by Matt Cardle.  This might initially seem like a spectacularly good anti-love argument, but it’s quite the reverse, because when repugnant, saccharine dross like this is being played, you might just find that across a crowded room, someone else is also covering their ears with their hands and bellowing, “What is this shit!?”  And at that moment, your eyes may meet, and that’s when you’ll find true love.  And all because of love songs, which really do begat love.  However circuitously.

    7.  Emotional Intensity.  Love – and this is important in these straitened economic times – is free.  Your other half loves you because you’re you, not because of what you can give them.  Love – true love – transcends the baser human tendency toward being fiscally and materially acquisitive in favour of devotion to and acceptance of another person; no matter what their circumstances or their idiosyncrasies.  When you have found your true soul-mate you will have found unconditional acceptance.  Which is why my other half is going to love her Valentine’s Day card this year, no matter how much it cost.

    A Valentine budget card from Tesco
    She's gonna love this.

    *Okay, two and a half.**

    **This never happened.***

    ***Well, it probably did to someone exciting.