I’ve been a bit quiet here since starting at Billboard. Partially because I also moved and have been traveling to see family, and partially because there hasn’t been a whole lot of the stuff I typically post about in here on my mind (see: moving + traveling for why).

However, I have been writing a bit for the business side of things here at Billboard, on Billboard.biz!

Merging my love for all things nerdy and tech and my love for the combination of electronic-type music combined with actual instruments, I caught up with Oh Land at Sony’s #catchthetablet event.

I also had the opportunity to attend a SoundCtrl event in NYC, featuring none other than Seth from Turntable.fm (as well as some of Turntable.fm’s most popular DJ’s, like DJ Wooooo – that’s 5 o’s exactly).

Also, in the most surprising news probably ever, I was recently nominated for an MTV Online Music Award (in the Hottest Music NILF category). Billboard’s doing a lot in the digital space and it’s amazing to have been included among the likes of SoundCloud, Turntable.fm, The Hype Machine, Spotify, Topspin and other awesome companies.

The winners are determined by voting and people are allowed to vote multiple times per day. You get points for voting (more for voting and sharing), and in what I think is a pretty nice move on MTV’s part, the top voters as determined by points level are entered to win a trip to the actual awards show. The categories are a mix of semi-serious, quirky and just plain fun (Too Much Ass for TV? Yeah, that’s a category), so make sure to take a look around the site and vote for the people/companies/artists/apps that you think should win.

As I expected, my life has been a bit crazy for the last few weeks. My work is fast-paced, and I work with many different groups, so there’s always a new challenge to wrap my brain around, or a new problem to help solve. I’m enjoying being back in the thick of things, social media-wise, and that includes the sometimes odd hours and late nights.

This weekend, of course, was an example of that, as news of singer Amy Winehouse’s passing started hitting the Twitterverse shortly after 1pm, and the major news outlets about 20-30 minutes after that.

I’ve seen quite a few different flavors of a community since starting at Billboard. For example, I never knew that Lil Kim fans and Nicki Minaj fans were so fanatically passionate about those artists, nor did I know that there’s a bit of a rivalry between the two fan camps. Bruno Mars fans digitally came out en masse to support him when he appeared on our cover just over a week ago, selling out the issue online within 48 hours.

I’m knee-deep in Billboard’s communities every day. Like most companies, we have slightly different audiences on each of our social outposts (Facebook and Twitter are the ones I’m involved with the most), and different stories see different reactions and different attentions paid to them depending on where they’re posted.

The news about Amy’s passing is tragic, though, as many have noted, not wholly unexpected. Within minutes of the story breaking, our Charted Artists Twitter list was full of tweets reflecting on her life, mourning her passing, and declaring that they were “hoping for a comeback”. Flipping over to my own Twitter feed, I saw much of the same thing from people I know and follow. Facebook was the same for me – people were posting videos of her songs and noting that they were really hoping she’d get better and have an amazing comeback album. Hopping over to the Billboard Facebook page, we saw comments coming in about her death (no doubt they heard about it on Twitter) and asking us for verification within minutes of the story appearing on Twitter.

We ended up posting 4 articles about her death, and the comments and reactions on both Facebook and Twitter were much the same for all of them. Many people shared their condolences for her loved ones, many expressed their sadness that there would be no comeback album, many said that her death was tragic and is an example of what drug addiction can do to a person (note: the cause of death hasn’t been determined, but many people are assuming it’s due to drugs), and some people even went as far to say that she “deserved to die” because she had problems with drugs and alcohol. We also had a few people question why we weren’t covering the news in Oslo, and sharing that they felt saddened that the singer’s death was more popular online than the news about that tragedy.

What did I learn from all of this?

• Every community member has a voice, and it’s usually a smart idea to let them use it
• Communities are very willing to self-moderate if you give them the chance
• Letting conversations develop, but also letting people know that they aren’t alone, is a hard (but necessary) balance to strike
• Most people were genuinely hoping for Amy to overcome her personal demons and let her talents shine
• Music is emotional. Death is emotional. We’re talking about a celebrity death, yes, but one who, like most musicians, genuinely touched people’s lives.

So for you musicians out there who have growing fan bases, for those who are active on Twitter and Facebook, and for those who you talk to people about your music on a regular basis… don’t forget that the people in your community are actual people. I have a post coming up about how to balance “you” v. “your brand”, but I’ll say this to start – don’t be afraid to let your personality and your life shine through. I think that communities have a way of surprising the people that are in charge of guiding/moderating/managing/shepherding them – they surprise you in the very best of ways sometimes. I’ve seen it more times than I can count in my 10 years of being involved with online communities, and this weekend was no different.

Speaking personally, I do think that Amy’s life was ended too soon. I won’t remark on the cause of death since it hasn’t been verified, but I stand with the many who were hoping for a comeback album, and the many that were touched by her music. I truly believe that her raw power and talent laid the way for many stars today – she reminded the public that music could be amazing without being over-produced, and she reminded many of stars in the days gone by. She will certainly be missed, and I hope that society starts to think of addictions (of all kinds) as something other than a personal weakness.

Words cannot express how excited I am to be putting pen to virtual paper for this blog post. No really, they can’t… so I’ll save you the endless (and annoying) exclamation marks and instead just point you to the photo over to the right.

That cute little lady over there (h/t to sidkid for the awesome photo!) comes close to describing what I feel about this new role. Related: I may or may not have done the same thing when I found out I got the job.

As the title says, I’ve recently accepted a role at Billboard (yes, THAT Billboard) to be their Social Marketing Manager. This is the opportunity of a lifetime and I’m beyond stoked to see what I can jump in and accomplish.

So – what will I be doing in this beyond amazing job of a job? Here’s the highlights version!

I’ll be…

• One of the voices behind Billboard’s Twitter (@billboarddotcom) and their Facebook page (as well as the other social outposts like Instagram, YouTube, etc.)
• Working with the events marketing team to market Billboard events
• Helping to drive traffic to Billboard.com
• Doing a lot of Community Manager-type stuff, including community development and engagement, as well as outreach
• Working on a lot of the contests/sweepstakes you see on Billboard.com
• Measuring everything I do (would you expect anything else?)

I could wax poetic about how this role is made of sheer awesomeness and unicorns and I could go on practically forever with my ideas for things to do, especially as I’ve got a list already that takes up quite a few pages…

But I won’t, as that would be annoying. Instead I’ll let YOU imagine just how excited I am to be able to join the already beyond awesome team(s) at Billboard and have the unbelievable chance to do what I’m passionate about doing on my nights/weekends for a full-time job.

As far as what this means for this blog? TBD for the nitty-gritty, but I do know that this blog will be sticking around and still be talking about the same topic I currently talk about – digital marketing for musicians. That being said, from time to time I might mention something I’m working on/have worked on at Billboard, so expect some cross-pollination at points.

I’ve been a bit quiet here lately, partially due to time constraints in this thing I like to call “real life”, and partially due to the fact that my RSS feed was giving me major issues.

I’m sure you’re not surprised by either of these admissions!

In good news, the RSS feed has been fixed (thanks @norcross!).

In more good news, a spiffy new look and feel will be coming at some point soon (and if you’re visiting me on the web, welcome to the interim look and feel!).

Through all of this, it has become much easier to move away from using Feedburner for my feed and just stick with the standard feed options. OK – that takes care of the technical talk in today’s post…

What this means for you

You can use the nifty “subscribe” button to the right of this post (from the web) to subscribe to the feed I’ll be using going forward.

OR

You can click “add a subscription” or whatever the similar button is in your feed reader and add this baby: http://candidkatie.com/feed

I’ll be posting on a more regular basis soon, as I have a solid 5-7 draft posts that I’ve been dying to get out (but not wanted to due to said RSS issue).

So stay tuned, and stay subscribed!

I’m trying to expand the content of this blog a bit and talk about different topics. You’ll see this in the upcoming weeks, but I wanted to get the ball rolling now by talking about an awesome conference coming up in NYC called BlogWorldExpo.

Now, normally this awesome conference takes place in Vegas. As I’ve never been to Vegas, this obviously means that I’ve had to lustfully watch the Twitter and blog chatter about all the awesome panels (and yes, the awesome “networking events”) too from the sidelines.

This year, however, they announced that the conference was coming to New York City. Three cheers for local conferences!

Unfortunately, due to work obligations, I’ll still be lustfully watching from the sidelines (though undoubtedly going to the events at night to catch up with people/do the networking thing).

Lucky for you, on top of some awesome panels planned around social media, content creation, legal issues surrounding all of this stuff, analytics, and other industry-type panels, there are a few music marketing panels planned!

If you’re around, I’d suggest checking any/all of them out. Even if they’re not directly related to what you’re doing right now, they’ll likely provide some good food-for-thought. If I’ve learned anything from attending conferences throughout the years it’s that you’ll never know when you need to use what you’ve learned, and you’ll also never stop being surprised by who you meet.

Without further ado, here are the music-related panels:

SXSW4Japan: A Case Study in Real Time, Iterative Development, Crisis Response, Crowd Sourcing and Social Good.

Why should you care? Because if you ever have wanted to support a charity, figure out how to motivate a group of people, understand how to organize people over long distances, or gather ideas from an audience, this case study is for you. I can think of a million ways a growing band could use these techniques to gain popularity and sell their music, but why don’t you attend and tell me what you think instead?

What Goes Into Growing a Music Blog

One would probably argue that I should attend this panel, but this blog is more of a marketing blog as opposed to a music review blog (OK, so it IS a marketing blog and ISN’T a music review blog – let’s make that clear). Nevertheless, I’ve learned that chatting with other bloggers is a great way to learn how to be a better blogger myself, so I’d suggest this panel for anyone that wants to learn about blogging.

College Music BlogWorld

Show of hands for who wants people to listen to their music? Oh, every one of you dear readers? That’s what I thought! This panel is all about how numerous acts have made it big by attracting attention from the college markets before the indies or the majors, and it’s a good lesson in how to start spreading your music far and wide. Go forth and… learn?

What if I can’t go?

Even if you can’t attend, the great people at Social Fresh (as well as numerous other blogs and Twitter folk) will be covering the content, so I suggest following along by using the Twitter hashtag #bweny (click on the link to see a Twitter search I set up for the hashtag) and paying attention to your favorite marketing and social media blogs for their takes on their talks or the sessions they attended.

It seems like most of the news about the big music business companies lately has been nothing but doom and gloom.  By and large, it’s been the startups like TuneCore, TopSpin, BandCamp, SoundCloud, last.fm, iLike, Rdio and others that have been pushing the envelope and taking advantage of the new opportunities within the marketplace.

However, things seem to have taken a bit of a shift recently.

Facebook, which has long been admonished for not providing tools for musicians (among other things), launched Music on Facebook. With it, they provide a pretty decent step-by-step best practices guide for getting the most of out Facebook, not only for musicians, but for fans and venues.

Along with that, Billboard Pro has caught my attention. The service is $99/year, and even though you have to have a MySpace Music page to participate (more on that later), it’s by no means limited to MySpace.

The team behind this kindly provided an answer to the question that popped into my mind when I read the part about having to have a MySpace Music profile a bit later on in the FAQ section:

Why do you require that artists use Myspace Music to be on Uncharted or to join Billboard Pro?

Billboard is synonymous in the world of music with its charts, and in order to create a platform for exposing the efforts of new and developing artists, we created Uncharted. Our charts have historically been based on comprehensive sales and airplay data. To have as comprehensive a view of the online music landscape as possible, we formed a data partnership with the largest artist community on the internet, from the perspective of both the number of artists and fans participating: Myspace Music.

Billboard Pro subscribers can track fan engagement from many different sources, including YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and more recently launched music-specific services like ReverbNation and Soundcloud. We plan to add additional relevant data sources as the digital music landscape evolves. If there’s a source that you’d like to see included, please share it with us.

I know, I’m harping on the MySpace thing quite a bit. It’s nothing personal against Billboard Pro, and I actually caught myself nodding my head after I read their reasoning for requiring the MySpace Music account. After all, we know that Facebook wasn’t really an option. Instead of forcing artists to create something new, choosing to tie in with an existing presence – one with a righ data history – is a strategically smart move.

I also really like how Billboard Pro is open to including other music services into their analytics tool, and already includes quite a few, like “YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, iLike and Wikipedia, among others.” Their blog is also chock-full of good information – everything from industry news to how-to’s and tips and arguably a great resource for a musician, even if they’re not subscribed to the Pro service.

Final Verdict

I’m a fan of these two moves. Facebook is finally realizing that people want to connect with musicians on their site (no doubt they’ll figure out how to monetize Music on Facebook in the coming months), and Billboard is taking their industry prowess and turning their attention to the people who are fueling the growth in the industry – up-and-coming artists.

What have your experiences with Facebook been like? Have you noticed the recent changes? Have you signed up for Billboard Pro? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Coachella was high-tech this year. The wristbands had RFID chips in them to record attendees comings and goings, the iPhone app had the lineup and a GPS-based friend-finder (that if you were on Verizon, worked… AT&T… not so much). You could pick your bands on Coachooser and shoot them out to your social networks, and keep everything handy on your phone while you were there.

BUT – one big thing that Coachella was missing was mobile payments for food + merch. They had numerous ATM’s on-site, and I saw lines at them all day every day. Why couldn’t they set up a wireless network (NOT using AT&T’s service) and hook their vendors and merch people up with Squareor something similar? Not having to take cash out would have been awesome, and I know that I was much more hesitant to spend money on food & drinks knowing that I didn’t want to have to take a trip to the ATM at the end of the night.

Aside from DJ Shadow, has anyone else moved to using mobile payment platforms like Square for merch? Is it still “too high-tech”, or do people just assume that cash is the way to go?

We’ve all seen this happen before. You buy tickets to an event, and the artist gets sick (or the venue loses it’s license, or the tour manager quits, or the date is re-scheduled because Venus is in Saturn’s path and their stars aren’t aligned).

If this was 1990, you would call the ticketing company or stop by the venue and get a re-issued ticket.

If this was 1999, you’d likely get an email about the change with notes on how to claim your ticket for the rescheduled event.

In 2011, you might find out about the show from a Facebook status update from your friend who is going with you, an email, or a Tweet from the artist or venue.

Either way, you’re likely going to re-post to share with other people that are also going to the show, and the communication chain unfolds online.

The Point?

People have the expectation of to-the-minute communication in today’s world. If I’m going to a concert (in this case, a festival), it’s all well and good that I can choose which artists I want to keep an eye on months ahead of time…. but if I’m still wondering about set times 3 days before the event starts, I’m going to wonder why and want someone, somewhere, to say something!

Coachella is all over the social web – kudos to them! But, if you’re not actively participating and monitoring the conversations and key questions from people reaching out to you, you’re only halfway there.

Part of being present on the social web in this case is using it as Q&A tool (as one example). What are people talking about? What are they asking questions about? How can I help get them answered? It’s online customer service… nothing too fancy or groundbreaking!

Right now, I don’t so much care about H&M’s thing at Coachella… what I want to know is who I’m going to see play and when!

I also don’t care about (what’s likely a virus), clicking on some girl’s photo to help her win a trip or something or other. Coachella – use the moderation tools available to you and pay attention!

So perhaps this is a bit of a selfish plea for Coachella to either release the set times, or tell people why they’re taking so long.

But perhaps it’s also a lesson about making sure you have the resources and time to dedicate to both the posting and the responding to content online, especially if social media is a part of your marketing mix.

I’ve recently started to get more involved with a few music networking/tech groups around the NYC area – namely, NY Music Tech and Noteworking meetups.  This past Monday saw a NY Music Tech event take place at The Knitting Factory in Brooklyn, and I helped work the door for the event.

The duties were basic.  Look at the online RSVP list and cross people off, collecting their money as they entered.  The venue is large and held the group comfortably, but as the only bar that was open was in another room, a lot of people wanted to “leave” (to go to the bar) and come back in.

Enter, the stamp.

Now, I’m personally not a big fan of stamps.  I understand their value, but I don’t like them.  For some reason they still remind me of the large X’s I used to have to get on my hands when going to see bands before I was 21, and they’re darn hard to wash off (the stamps and the X’s).

It does seem that I’m in the minority on that front, though.  The group was manageable in size (about 40-50 people this month) and I’m darn good at remembering faces.  So, when people stepped to the front room to grab a drink before the presentations began, I said “no problem, see you soon!” and let them go.  What started as one or two people asking to be stamped on their way “out” quickly turned into almost every person that left to grab a drink checking that they could come back in and double-checking that no, I really didn’t have a stamp.

I was puzzled, but The Knitting Factory graciously provided a stamp for me to use (mainly to stop the questions from being asked about said stamp) and I started sarcastically stamping away, asking every person that asked for a stamp if they wanted one or just thought they needed one before they went to grab a drink.

The overwhelming majority insisted that they wanted to be stamped, and I quickly found a lot of enjoyment out of making large, dark “100″ marks on the top of everyone’s hands, whether they were planning on grabbing a drink from the bar or not.

It appears that people just really like to collect stamps!

On top of me still trying to wrap my mind around why (can anyone help enlighten me?) anyone would want a stamp, my mind quickly wandered to the marketing application of the stamps.  We know that people like them, and many people commented that they knew people who proudly wore theirs as badges of honor “I did this, I was there!” after a weekend at shows.

Why, if that is the case, do bands not make more customized stamps? Typically the venues provide the stamps and they’re usually pretty meaningless to the bands – they’re either a random shape or symbol, or the venue logo.

Why not instead provide your OWN stamp at the door, and allow people to show off YOUR logo after the show? Doesn’t that make more sense?

You could take it a step further and provide something that people could do after the event with their stamp (perhaps a photo submission contest of some sort, making sure that the stamp is visible in the photo) to keep the engagement going after the event.

The ideas are plentiful! The lesson? Don’t overlook a seemingly “normal” part of a concert-going experience. Instead, see if you can capitalize on that “normal” experience and turn “just something that happens” into working for you as something novel.

What say you on the stamp v. no stamp debate? Are you pro-stamp or anti-stamp? Why?

Facebook SPAM.  It’s awfully pervasive for such a closed network! I mean, everyone expected MySpace SPAM – that’s what you get when you add people you don’t know and the social norm is self-promotion. But Facebook? I don’t think that a lot of people saw that one coming!  Nevertheless, it’s there, and it’s annoying.  Here are some of my personal top tips to avoid it!

1. Don’t friend people you don’t know. If you’re an artist and want to use Facebook for marketing purposes, build yourself a Fan Page!  There is no doubt that there will be some overlap between your personal Facebook account and your Fan Page, sure, but if you put some measure of separation between the two you’ll receive a heck of a lot less SPAM on your personal Wall and personal Inbox.  Remember folks, Twitter is for people you want to know and Facebook is for people you already know (at least, for your personal account).
2. Use Friend Lists liberally. I know, there may not be any way to avoid adding people who you’re related to business-wise to your personal account.  That’s fine – as very few people have a 100% separation between their professional and personal lives anyway, no matter what industry they’re in.  This is where Friend Lists come in handy.  Add your business people (and/or fans) to a list and limit access to the items that you want to remain publicly available.  Don’t want them seeing your Las Vegas escapades with your bros from college? Limit their access so they can’t see your tagged photos!
3. Adjust your privacy settings. Facebook, for better or worse, has a bevvy of privacy options for you to adjust.  These settings are for the network-wide parts of your profile or actions that you want to show/hide.  Don’t want people knowing where you are? Block other people from checking you in via Facebook Places! Don’t want to be found by would-be stalkers? Make sure that only the very basic information about yourself is available to people that aren’t your friends (or in your 2nd- or 3rd-degree network, whatever you choose).  Learn them, love them!
4. Block the annoying ones. Once you’ve adjusted and updated everything, go through your activities and see if anyone else still has the power to SPAM.  Chances are, you’ll have more than a few rogue promoters who invite everyone and everyone to their events (even when you live 2000 miles away!) that will need to be taken care of.  Enter, block lists! You can block annoying apps (Farmville, anyone?), people, or just event invitations from certain individuals.
5. Ask to be removed. When all else fails, respond to their message or event invite with a request to be removed from their lists.  Some people will, some people won’t, but every little bit helps!

Do you have any other tips or tricks you’ve found useful? Share them in the comments!

This is a story about a little festival that could.

They could produce a stellar lineup. They could sell out within a week. They could promise to be one of the best festivals of the year, if not the past few combined.

This little festival that could did put together a stellar lineup, did sell out within a week, and does promise to be one of the best festivals of the year – if not the past few combined.

This not-so-little festival can also be rude, as seen above.

If you haven’t been paying attention, there’s been a lot of chatter about Coachella over the past few weeks. First, there was the excitement over the lineup (summary: “HOLY COW IT’S AMAZING!”), then there was the chatter about tickets going on sale (summary: “YAY! I HAVE MY TICKET AND I’M SO EXCITED!). Then tickets sold out, Coachella posted their “kthxbye” Tweet was posted and we saw the following:

I get being sassy. I understand that a music festival (or an artist, or a producer, or a disc jockey) may have a bit more leeway than your standard corporate account on Twitter. I even get that humor (in this case, trying to use lolcat humor) can be witty and funny.  However, in this instance, the tweet was just plain rude.

Tickets were going for $1,000+ at the point that the tweet was posted, and the festival and the 75,000 tickets offered sold out within 6 days.  6 days!  Many people were waiting on paychecks to come in, or waiting to get vacation time approved at work.  I know quite a few people myself that had booked accommodation and airfare, but were waiting on buying tickets until they got paid again (just like they did in years before).

Knowing that people are spending a lot of money to go to this festival, and knowing that tickets sold out much more quickly than in years previous, the least that @Coachella could do was show a bit of sympathy, or even thank the people who purchased tickets, when they ran out.

A few examples of tweets that would have worked better than their rude tweet:

“Overwhelming response to ticket sales! We’re sold out already!”

“Thanks to all that bought tickets for this years festival – we just sold out in record time!”

No, it wouldn’t have solved all of the complaints. But, what tweets like the one above would have done was remove the sassy and rude aspect of their current tweet, as well as show appreciation for people that bought the tickets.

Sometimes using humor goes a bit too far, and the fact that people are still talking about that tweet 2 days later shows that this time, it did indeed cross that line.

Coachella – in the future, put yourself in the shoes of the people you’re talking to and ask yourself how they would feel before you tweet. Humor doesn’t always translate well online, especially on Twitter.

At first blush, yoga and music don’t have a ton in common – aside from the fact that music is usually playing during a yoga class, of course.

I was willingly having my ass kicked by a great yoga instructor at my gym last night when the strikingly simple analogy hit me – yoga is just like practicing a musical instrument. Bear with me here…

The basics of practicing seem simple – you play a piece over and over and over until you get it right.  But look deeper, and you notice the nuances.  Are your fingers correctly placed on the violin so that your notes come out on pitch, as opposed to sharp or flat? Are you moving them at the right time for the runs? When you’re drumming, how is the tension in your arms and wrist affecting how you strike the drum? Where are you holding the tension? Where should you be relaxing?

The most simple of techniques, rudiments, fundamentals or poses can take on a completely different light when you analyze them and pay attention to the action of doing them, not just the getting through them to the next phrase or pose.

Enter – the mountain pose.  It’s literally what you see above – standing with your feet together and arms at your side, palms facing forward.  How deceptively simple! “Standing up, I do that all day!”

Right – but how often do you pay attention to how you’re standing? How often do you pay attention to if your toes are spread or together – to how your feet are grounded on the floor? How often do you think of where your hips are in relation to your shoulders, or how your neck is aligned with everything else?

You don’t. Just like you might not pay attention to how you’re striking the drum or if your fingers are placed in exactly the right place on your violin at exactly the right moment.  These little details escape us as we rush through our lives and through our practice… we often get through them just to get to the next point.

The lesson I took away from yoga last night was this – before you move onto the advanced stuff (running a Twitter contest for tickets, or developing a strategy for increasing the engagement on your Facebook Fan Page), make sure you have the basics down (like Tweeting things that people are interested in, or getting fans on your Fan Page).  Start from the beginning and apply thought and a good dose of awareness to everything you do before moving forward.

Doesn’t the saying go “Perfect practice makes perfect”? Start small, get the basics right, then move forward.

Oh – and the soundtrack to this post? The Facebook soundtrack – fitting, eh?

It’s funny.  In certain circles, weird looks cross faces when I mention speaking to people for years without ever meeting them.  In other circles, it’s completely normal. It’s been this way for about 10 years now, at least as I remember it.

Ever since my teenage years, I’ve seen the Internet as a tool to connect with people.  At first it was old friends – people that had moved or that I’d lost contact with for one way other other.  Later, I got into WGI (the link is an MP3 to the last show I played, the Overture to Candide played from finish to start, then from start to finish – in case you’re wondering).  I also joined LiveJournal around the same time and started to see things changing.  All of a sudden, the Internet became a place for me to chat with people about upcoming shows, connect with members of other drumlines before we ran into them at a competition, capture my thoughts and feelings as I had them, and ultimately meet new people.

All in all, this seemed pretty natural.  I’d be meeting these people in person a short time later – and many of them I’d already met in passing – we just didn’t have the luxury of time to talk.  In that social circle, connecting online was normal.  Mention this to people I went to school with though and I got a completely different reaction – it clearly wasn’t normal to them and in fact, was really, really strange.

Jump forward a decade and these days, I’m hard-pressed to count friends and acquaintances that I haven’t met online on two hands – part of this is work-related (I work in marketing/social media as a job), and part of this is lifestyle related, seeing as I’m into music with a really strong online presence and community (drum and bass, dubstep, WGI/DCI, etc).

I spent Thanksgiving in the UK and got to thinking about it on the plane ride back.

The friend who let me crash at their place? I met them in person, but through someone I met online.  We’ve kept in contact for 5ish years exclusively online, and kept up online by and large even when I lived in the UK.

The offices I visited when I arrived, to catch up with people I’ve previously worked with? I met them at an event in NYC, but only because I saw a Tweet that they’d be in town and arranged to meet up.  I knew them online first and have kept in contact online ever since (over a year and a half now).

The old friend I caught drinks/dinner with and my old flatmate who came into town to see me? I met one online and one through well, living together, but we’ve all kept in contact online for the past year and a half and 5+ (respectively).

These are just a few examples, but in each one, the relationship wouldn’t have happened or be maintained without the use of the Internet.  Nowadays I find it normal to keep in contact with people all over the world and feel like I actually know what’s going on in their lives – even if we haven’t seen each other in person for years.

What’s this mean for you? It means that you shouldn’t overlook the power of the Internet as a medium – not only to promote your own stuff, but to discover new people and new opportunities, as well as maintain the ones you have.

Pretty simple. huh?

I’ll admit it, I like bass. I like crispy, crunchy basslines – full of rhythm and groove.  I dig the sub bass that is so prominently featured in dubstep, and as an overall preference, I like rich music, full of sound, nuances and flavor.

I suppose it’s only natural, seeing as I grew up playing violin first, then percussion – all for a grand total of about 15 years combined.  I tried my hand at DJ’ing briefly in college (and have lately been debating taking that back up, but that’s another matter), but I ultimately decided that I wanted to focus on my career (marketing) and keep music as a hobby to be enjoyed, not worked for.

Nevertheless, I’ve stayed connected to the electronic music scene throughout my years – the list of DJ’s I’ve seen is quite lengthy and I still go to shows on a pretty regular basis – as long as they’re not obnoxiously late on a weeknight (which, regrettably, some are!).

In a bit of a departure for me, I’m sharing a mix with just a teenie marketing lesson… never underestimate the memory of your consumers. I downloaded this mix purely based on my past memories of Aquasky and was blown away – this mix has totally brought Aquasky to the forefront of my mind and you can bet that I’ll be looking to see if there are any upcoming gigs in my area.

There – business over.  Go download this ridiculously rude mix.  Rude being said in the very best of contexts, of course.  I have a feeling that you’ll love it as much as I do if you’re into bass-heavy, upbeat electronic music.  It’s all over the place genre-wise, from drum n bass to dubstep, nuskool and some electroish stuff, to name a few.

*download* Aquasky Nov. 2010 mixtape by Dave Aquasky