extablisment

by Kevin James Salveson

It may not be for everybody, but if you want a guranteed winning strategy for making your band famous, look no further!  Follow these 10 easy steps and it'll work everytime that it manages to work!  (It's best to start with at least $5,000 of honestly earned money but you can just adjust the figures to whatever your budget can afford).  

 

The beauty of this system is that it pays for itself!!

 

Your whole strategy, being poor and unknown, is called "fool the robots" or "dupe the algos".  See, these days popularity is determined by algos who monitor real-time click and 'attention-span' info which is duly aggregated by a few big monster companies (Check out Next Big Sound). They sell that data to record companies and media buyers and outlets.  No one wants to be left behind so now everyone subscribes to one or several of such services.

 

Because of the way things work now, viral fame and marketing is all about beating the robots at their own game. See, if the algos think your content or name is quantifiably popular because of increasing online mentions and clicks, they subsequently give your content better placement and attention (such as more spins on Spotify). These media guys can't even control it, really, it's just robots and algo software now running the whole shebang to a great degree.  Not only do those algos perhaps reflect the biases of their creators, their own methods lead to self-fulfilling prophecies.

 

Your goal is to make your content go viral by crossing the thresh-hold of the bot's perception of interest in you above the minimum it's been programmed to find notable. Once you're on the newsbot's algorithmic radar, you're on your way!  All the other bots on competing platforms eventually have to respond in kind, giving you placement in their systems.  And ever higher placement means more clicks and views from curious humans... which results in ever higher placement. 

 

Face it!  Why does no one care about your ego project on Bandcamp? It's because you don't exist until you have a ranking!  Until big data has a line in you  (such as your Alexa ranking), you're nothing and nobody to the digital economy.  But once you get a number on your back, you're in. Then their data on you beceomes part of the data they sell to others as proof of their massive data compiling capabilities.

 

To that degree, you have to make those stupid fucking machines believe that you are "hot".  All it takes is increasing click activity and the metal unfeeling brutes can be conned into think the monkeys are going wild in their cages!

 

Then, after the algos "clue-in" traditional media is also forced to cover it. They exist now to explain to the other humans exactly what the robots have claimed to find, and when that happens it again reinforces the algo's perception.  Sure, traditional big media coverage works too, but how to get them to notice you? Show up in their big data reports!

 

So if you have the money... probably the single most successful best media buy of your lifetime ever would be to pay some hackers or Russians $50K to generate fake clicks for you.  You will be a 'breakout' star and your career will be on its way the next day, promise.

 

I've never done that because I'm too cheap to pay for it, it but one day I might because it's a game and we can't let the robots take over! Thus, jamming their signal with fake signals is rightous anti-Skynet civil disobedience, right?  Rock and Roll!

 

I mean, today there are basically only three mega corporations running almost all the radio stations in the country.  And they are run by robot programmers.  And that is how we get "Wanted Dead or Alive" by Bon Jovi on the radio for the rest of our sorry lives. For  pity's sake, robots, we give up already, stop it!  

 

But nope-- they can't be reasoned with because Soundscan said it got massive radio play in the ' 90s.  And so now it will get more massive radio play ever after.  Which means, dear God, that song will continue to play over and over again on the radio until the day you die.  Until you are so fucking sick of that song you want to stab that fucking silver horse with a shiv made of melted down belt buckles.

 

Yes, you lived through the bad music of the 80s once.  You were glad when it was over.  But, now listen to it for the rest of your life, the algo knows you want it.  Well, you don't, sure, but some of your less tasteful peers really did buy a lot of John Francis Bongiovi, Jr's hoary old single entendres way back then.

 

Heck, now even K-Earth (which used to play classic '50s rock and roll) now plays '80s music as nostalgia!  Feel old?  So now you'll be carried to your grave with the song Bad Medicine playing in the background courtesy of your casket enabled with Wifi!  Yessir, the algos are never wrong! They know what boys like.

 

We can't let them win and settle for an ever more narrow selection of top hits absent any personality or insight or eclectic taste from a human being on radio and streaming sites for the most part.  (Except for Jonesys JukeBox in LA for example, or college radio like KSPC and KXLU, or 100.3 The Sound).  Can we?

 

 So... dick the algo robots... that's your only hope of low-cost success in the modern age.  But how to do that?  You may be asking.  They're made of metal, won't doing that cause bruising?  Well, now there's an easier way!

 

Here's Extab's step-by step guide on how to do it!

#1: use Wix to make a website with a store that sells t-shirts with your logo and cheaply thrown together Youtube vids with revenue enabled to get some music on the net. Cost: under $500.  Doesn't matter how bad it is.  In fact, the worse the better.

 

#2: Take $4000 and go to CA or OR or CO (if you don't live there) and buy 40 units of the highest grade pot you can find. You should be able to get a price of about $200 an OZ for that. That means, to you, a cost of about $25 an eighth.

 

#3: Brand your weed with the logo of your band or label on everything you will sell. Cost: $500 for those little plastic bottles people seem to now feel they can litter the highway with like they do their empty Thunderbird bottles and Budlight cans.

 

#4: Go to the college town area of your city and sell 8ths to college kids at $45 an 8th until you get arrested.

 

#5: If you don't get arrested, keep trying with your profits! That's a fine price to charge for weed so you'll probably sell out twice before you get caught. The important thing is to get caught!

 

#6: After you get caught, have your friends or attorney contact the media and claim a drug seller with a very unique story has been arrested. They'll bite, trust me. That's their job-- to find and exploit outrageous stories that show up in the police blotter.

 

#7: Since this is your first offense you'll do minimum in terms of fines and penalties. You'll be able to afford a good lawyer if you didn't blow all that cash on a video with hookers in it.

 

#8: You will probably catapult to national stardom overnight in terms of one day coverage on TV, print and the net so make sure you have at least a few products ready to sell.

 

You think I'm being funny?  Now who's being naive?  Prison cells, prison sells!  I always say.

https://www.yahoo.com/tv/hot-mug-shot-guy-jeremy-meeks-leaves-prison-235143223.html#comments

 

At this point if your video doesn't get two million "curiosity" hits and some decent revenue then google is cheating you.  And if you can get youtube footage of you saying something stupid about it that gets Autotunes, you're golden!

 

#9: Take the rest of the money and hire a PR manager.

 

#10. Now the algos which can't distinguish between the infamy of a negative mention vs a positive one will have to consider you too important to not place highly in its rankings and coverage!

 

#11: Profit.

 

#12:  Get ready for your introduction to the world of fine things.

 

Now, after you pull it off be sure to give me credit for it in every media interview.... because it'll save me from having to do it myself!

I mean, I don't want a criminal record to inferfere with my future political career or make my mom sad she raised such a son. 

 

But that doesn't mean you can't disappoint my mom!  You're welcome, internets.