artsyhonker @artsyhonker@sonomu.club

I'm a choral composer; I like to release my music under free culture licences, usually CC by-SA.

I'm working on a PhD in contemporary sacred choral composition.

I'm neurodivergent, and I have multiple healthcrap issues. I'm a migrant. I'm Christian.

You can find my work at http://www.artsyhonker.net/ and fund it at http://www.artsyhonker.net/support

I also run Cecilia's List, a project to highlight Christian sacred music composed by people who are not men. That's very much on the back burner for the time being because of PhD stuff, though.

http://www.ceciliaslist.org

New rule:

You don't get to say "oh, you could sell that on Etsy/set up a Patreon/write an e-book and sell it/etc" unless you promise to buy stuff from the person you are saying it to, at a price that pays them a living wage for their time *after* material and admin costs.

I'd say "I don't make the rules" but I totally just made a rule, there, so.

Death Metal cover of John Cage 4'33":
https://youtu.be/voqCQSDAcn8

OK I think I'm done now.

Oof. Sorry to flood the local timeline so much, maybe I shoulda done unlisted toots for some of this. :-(

And there are people who don't really care about my music, personally, who do care about that project because it solves some of their problems; and they will share it, and they will share it with people who...turn out to like my music.

It's a good good thing if I can get it off the ground.

Your niche will be different, but find something to curate, and if it solves someone's problem, it will increase your exposure too.

This can basically snowball fairly sustainably.

I have not touched my side project, Cecilia's List, in literally months; and I still get people asking me questions on birbsite or @-ing me in when they want to promote related events. I know that as soon as I pick it back up, it will be pretty active again. If I maintain momentum on it I can become "the" go-to person for church music by women.

That's not a bad thing: I compose church music!

Good exposure strategies, cont'd:
IV) Don't only share your own work.

This gets kinda interesting really fast! There is so much out there online these days and lots of people make use of curators, intentionally or not.

If you become the person who always has interesting new whatever-your-genre-is to share, then you can build up a sort of following of people interested in that. You become "the" [genre, niche] person, or one of them.

Good exposure strategies, cont'd:
III) Make your work as easy to share as possible. If people like it they'll probably share it, but not if they have to shave a yak first.

In this age of the emoji, "shareable" probably also means "visually striking".

If your art has no visual element? Sucks to be you!

Just kidding. Find a picture that works and is in the public domain, and use that. Seriously!

Good exposure strategies, cont'd:
II) Collaborate with others -- they will have fans who don't know about you and vice versa, and you'll both grow as musicians/artists/whatever.

I need to do more of this, myself. When the PhD is over I have a whole buncha poets I want to work with!

Working with visual artists is harder for me, but I do have some ideas.

Good exposure strategies I) cont'd:
The timesink thing is real.

Under crapitalism, the people who have time to wade through 14 hours of socmed content in a day are not usually the people who have enough money to become patrons. (This is a vast generalisation, maybe wrong.)

But also, you need time for making music/art/etc, not to be spending all your productive time on socmed instead. It can be a support *or* a hindrance.

A few strategies I think are good for exposure:
I) Be part of several communities, especially smaller ones that are growing. Growing communities that don't have already-established "popular kids" can be a great place to meet new people. There's a lot more genuine engagement when the signal:noise ratio is good, and if people can actually catch up on their "feed" or whatever each day, they're more likely to see what you've said without huge timesink.

bad exposure strategies cont'd:
b) Only using one network/social silo. By all means find your niche, and by all means seek out spaces where the "scene" is good for that niche, but... the more niche your work, the less likely that you'll find all the fans in That One Corner Of The Internet. It's like only ever playing at one pub.
c) Hiding everything behind a paywall.

Bad strategies for increasing your exposure:
a) spamming people half to death. What that means depends strongly on context! Posting something three times in one day in a small and slow community is terrible, the same thing where the signal:noise ratio is bad is probably fine. A lot of this also depends how much else you converse.

So, what to do, then?

Options are:

1) to increase the "conversion rate" to something significantly higher than 1 in 1000 (or whatever your numbers are), or
2) reach many more thousands of people

If you know how to do 1) then let me know? I have some ideas, but none of them are magic.

2) is going to be... well, some of us are not that gregarious, right? But I think there are a few good strategies, and a few bad ones.

Yes, it matters.

There will always be someone poorer than me, someone in more immediate distress and need, someone who -- for whatever reason -- has not stocked up on tins during a good week.

If I seek to monetize my distress and need, what happens when my needs are reduced? And how can I ever be in a position to help those people?

This seems like a bad long-term strategy.