I am pretty sure that one of my weakest point as a Dj and also in life is that I am not very sociable, it is just the way I am. Lately I ve been improving that side a lot but still need to keep working. Cyberspace does not make me more sociable either but I know that I need to break some of my barriers in order to make more contacts and promote my self. For example I don´t have Facebook because I used to have an account but I hated seeing pictures and comments of my personal life so exposed, or having people I just thought I would never see again (hopefuly lol) appearing just because I was friend of a friend … you know Networking… or with the chance of being exposed, I am not ashame of anything I do. I just feel that I have the right to keep my life as personal as I want. So what do you feel should be the approach as a DJ with respect social online networks?
Should I create a new account in facebook with my Dj name and just keep it on the Dj side? Would that work or would it end being the same as my personal account? As I start adding friends etc.
Have anybody feel this apprehension to online networks ? Or have anybody felt that their personal life is getting a bit too exposed as a consequence of trying to promote yourself as a dj?
I know is a strange post.. but comments and thoughts are welcomed.
I hate social networks. I hate them. That being said, I have a facebook, a myspace, a soundcloud (which, in the end, is a form of social networking) and a livejournal. They are a necessary evil today, no questions asked.
Now, you can have all of these based around music. You can have a music MySpace, where none of the information references you personally. You can create a business oriented Facebook and not provide ANY personal information if you don’t want.
You can add people, and not add people at will. And you can provide as much or as little information as you want. Seeing people post pictures of your gigs, or forward on information to their friends, can be really satisfying, and if you only want it to be used re your creative endeavors than have it do that.
Just because you CAN provide the information doesn’t mean you have to.
I am very aware of how the lack of a sense of privacy can be used against you in very evil ways. I am a web programmer. I know what I can do with data aggregation.
Talk about your sport injury and be surprised how your insurance company knows about it when they tell you they are not going to pay for that bill, since you forgot to report that injury way back then. Thats just one example.
Anyways, I have given up. I am out there for everybody to see. I guess I am lucky since I am generally well behaved .. I dont drink etc .. so there are not many nasty pictures of me that could turn off a potential employer and I dont talk about my sport injuries on the web
I have come to enjoy how I am finding out new things in my “network”. Like when I started DJing, I found that a lot of my (old) friends have also dabbled in DJing and had useful tipps for me. This is really the power of this all.
However we seriously need more services that filter out all the duplicate crap where people post their twitter posts to every social network under the sun. Or you just gotta keep it to one social network and make sure you get all the key people onboard.
And dont obsess about reading everything daily, hourly or whatever. Use the network when you need it and ignore it when you dont.
yeah the privacy issues with facebook are a little disconcerting, so I’ve disabled public photos and I don’t post photos of myself or use one for my profile pic. The first time I saw a pic of myself at party passed out posted online was when I had to shut it down, it just looks trashy and immature.
The other thing about facebook is that it’s really weak for artist profile pages compared to myspace, so I haven’t bothered creating an artist fanpage for fb. Honestly the only reason I join the fanpages on facebook is to be nice and show support to friends who invite me, I rarely check facebook for the soul purpose of discovering new music or information about artists- I basically join the fanpage and never check it again. Not to mention it feels very intrusive and more bothersome than anything getting my private message inbox spammed by all the groups/fanpages I joined, so it doesn’t make sense to me to promote myself through a system that comes across as more annoying than anything else.
But I do value facebook for it’s event posting/promoting system. It’s an awesome way to keep up to date on events as well as promote your own events and it doesn’t feel quite so intrusive like inbox spam, and not as forgettable as the fanpages.
As far as soundcloud and myspace go, they’re designed for artists to market themselves and feel much more inviting and useful than facebook fanpages/groups. I use both myspace and soundcloud and can’t say enough good things about them. Privacy isn’t a concern with these options either as you’re using a band name or artist moniker rather than your real identity with non-business contacts attached to your social network.
