My First Naysayer

The band and I decided to take our marketing efforts up a notch over the last few weeks. We shot a few songs on a regular camera and put them up on YouTube for the world to watch and listen. I spent a good part of last week trying out some rudimentary blues guitar scales and putting up those videos. While I shall be the first to admit that they are not particularly great, but one has got to start somewhere.

I spammed the mailboxes of most of the friends I know with the video…well, marketing 101, and cost of acquiring a new customer is higher than the cost of existing friends. And I’ll be damned if I don’t put those marketing classes to real use. While the number of views on YouTube match the number of friends to whom I sent the video to (thank you all for at least clicking the link), one of the videos seemed to have found their way into the search results of this unknown-to-me guy who simply hated my work.

Keeping in line with the great tradition of ‘giving friendly (and free) advice although nobody asked you for it’, I have been told to practice more. And that I clearly have no clue on how to play the scale or pick a guitar, and until I learn to do so, I should NOT upload videos on YouTube. And apparently somewhere I claimed I am an expert.

Now the contents of the feedback are secondary. I am just so thrilled that there is one person in the world, whose mailbox I did not spam and whom I don’t know, who found my video and sat through it and took time out of his busy ‘YouTube trolling’ schedule to give me some free advice. Not only that, despite hating the first video, the guy went on to see a second video and was equally disappointed enough to leave a second comment. What’s more, he even hit the dislike button. That’s definitely a point in the bag for my marketing and social media skills. Maybe this will snowball into an epic ‘gangnam’ style rage.

The content of the comments are equally inspiring. This guy is giving me good feedback on what he believes is pathetic and that’s fair enough. I do need more practice, but that does not mean I am not going to stop putting up videos on YouTube. All artists go through the phase before they can mature and make good sounding videos. And it is really a big deal to have someone hate your work so much that they go through another video of yours to leave discouraging messages. Lucky for me, I’m not easily discouraged in such matters. Dear friend, I WILL NOT STOP PUTTING VIDEOS on YouTube. 

It would be prudent for me to draw inspiration from folks like Justin Bieber and Vennu Mallesh whose music and videos everyone hates (some claim it makes their ears bleed), but they still do their own thing. I see no reason I should wait until I sound like John Petrucci to upload videos. As long as it is free, I will not stop.  I’ll sign off on this post before I start sounding like an inspirational speech from Rocky. Allow me to quote the artist who would have beaten Rebecca Black had it not been for ‘Oppa gangnam style’ – It’s my life, whaaateva I wanna do it.

PS: This Vennu Mallesh guy not only has a video on YouTube with about 1,500,000 views, he has a Facebook page, and his song can be downloaded off iTunes. Also autographed copies of his picture are available off eBay. That’s inspiring.  

                                  

PPS: I thank Google.com for the images. Don't sue please, no money. Will have to make other type of videos and play guitar in public then. At least you can ignore me now.