Keep your head down so the Homeland Security guys don’t get you for the ferry thing.

All the best,

Jason

I’m still glad that the discussion over the artist’s role in marketing and the audiences role in searching out our work has been raised. Please feel free to add anything else you feel is relevant to the discussion.

And I WILL find a spot for that Colbert animated gif…that thing is hilarious!

I think part of the misunderstanding is caused by the headline of your post: “…in which I get taken to task by another artist.” That then gets compounded in the lead paragraph of this post: “…wrote an unabashed critique of the project.” (Add Colbert’s wagging finger, and the impression is complete.)

Neither of those statements is at all accurate — in fact they are the opposite of what Matt wrote. They led me, and possibly the others who commented before me, to expect something completely different than the 100% support Matt was actually giving you in his post.

Good luck with the project.

All the best,

Jason

But I do think the important discussion is what exactly is the job description of the modern artist? This is where I think Matt and I might differ. I fully believe that part of my job is all of the non-musical things that I do: blogging, twitter, facebook, wacky marketing ideas, etc. It’s all part of being a working artist at this time in history. And frankly, while the technology has changed, I don’t think the actual work has changed music. I’m sure Picasso, Mozart, Homer and the like all had to market their work too in some fashion. Otherwise we wouldn’t know who they are!

I’m just trying to stay on top of the technology to make sure I’m doing everything I can to get my music heard. And I don’t see that as a burden. It’s just part of the job.

That said, I still think that even that critique is a little out of touch with reality. Just as you said, there’s far too much going on for us to expect that the general public would just catch on to our artwork.

Thanks for sharing though.

He essentially says, “Look at Jason – he is handing out his CDs for free, at his own expense! Is this what it’s come to?” I believe that yes, this is partially what it’s come to, which is what your response said. Self-supporting musicians have to find new and attention-grabbing ways to cut through the zillions of equal voices that the Internet now encourages. If we look at Twitter alone in a vacuum, your message has the same chance of being heard as someone “famous.”

And that’s pretty daunting… or exciting and energizing… depending on your perspective. It inspires me that your approach is the latter.

Keep up the fabulous work!

…I guess that counts too… Kudos (to you both!)