Wow!  That was intense.  I watched all of the clever, short movies at commoncraft.com – very cool.  I read the article about Twitter.   I did my best to follow all of the steps outlined in this chapter.  It felt a little bit like I was “falling down rabbit holes” every where I went – but I think I managed to navigate back to the surface.  My head is swimming with all of this stuff – but it is definitely all making sense to me.

I have debated about getting a SmartPhone or an iphone – but have not gotten either yet.  I am almost due for an upgrade and am deciding which way I’ll go.  When I do decide, I’ll start tweeting from my phone. For now, I’m going to tweet from my computer.

Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, iLike, mevio – I was everywhere today.  I dug deeply into “reading / following” a large number of people on Twitter and I’ve gotten many responses back already – to be “followed” back.   I feel like I’m learning as I go – and that, somehow, this challenge to dive in will make sense to me – over time.

On another note, I read an article this week – on the last page of the current Tape Op magazine (if you have it) – by Larry Crane.   I’ll quote some of it here.

Larry was emailing with a friend and peer in recording engineering.   He said, “It was a really crushing realization to look back, after eight years of being booked solid – three to four months in advance, that most of the records I loved the most were completely dead.   Bands had broken up;  people stopped making music.   And worse, in some ways, they were all fine with it – but I felt really sad.   Those projects, that no matter how great you thought they were, and how much promise the artists had (in part because of [my] work), when they grind to a halt that’s it.  They aren’t coming back, and apart from the lessons learned, the character building, and friendship building, it kind of doesn’t matter whether they ever happened or not.   That’s tough to swallow.   For me that’s almost my whole discography!”

The article goes on to say, “More music is produced each year than there is room to write about in magazines, play on the radio, use in films or (certainly) sell in stores and online. Look at the statistics from last year:  98,000 albums were released in 2009 in the US.  Only 2.1 percent of these albums sold over 5,000 copies – but all the records that sold over 5,000 account for 91% of the total sales of music.   373.9 million albums were sold in 2009.”

“In most cases, the artists I know who sell over 5,000 copies of an album (or at least most of the 1000 in their pressing), are doing a hell of a lot of touring, making friends and connections, and running concerted web and press campaigns to keep their faces visible.” “… how frustrating it [is] to work on projects, believe in them, and try to do [my] best, only to find the artists decided not to tour, or that they never even did have any album release plans in the first place.”

“But still, one part of my own recording career that buoys me up is all the artists, with whom I’ve worked, [who] have kept going in their careers (or carved out a solid spot with unique work), and gained a long-term audience and respect in the music world.”

My friends – I think we can count ourselves among those artists who are daring to “carve out a solid spot.” Keep carving.