How not to social media

The social media consultants

Two girls dropped off a leaflet for social media. Only problem it showed they were clueless on social media.

How not to social media https://t.co/VNLe7b5TYA #Guildford #socialmedia pic.twitter.com/LHeGwwXtJ2

— Keith Parkins (@keithpp) August 9, 2018

Some fliers they had not even bothered to cut out straight, showing lack of care, leaflet lacked web address, twitter account, contact number.

In the bottom right hand corner what appeared to be a carton of McFries.  Of what relevance? What was this trying to say, they supply a McShit service?

First impressions count.

Needless to say those who received a flier were singularly unimpressed.

Classic example of how not to social media.

I decided to do a little digging.

Their website dreadful. I would not say the worst I have every seen but down there with the worst.

It has irritating popups that keep popping up every few seconds.  They were a bit like the targets that pop up on a firing range, in your peripheral vision, then they are gone.

Their writing is awful gushing style like a tui flight magazine guaranteed to annoy.

One of the worst examples a blog on what it is like to work for  company.

An example of crass advice. Need pictures of people. We know we exist in the Narcissist world of selfies, but why do we need pictures of people? A dating site, yes, a profile, yes, otherwise no.

If I wish to know about people I wish to see and chat with them face to face, to interact. I will visit visit a coffee shop or roastery to taste the coffee, but chat with the people too.

• How not to social media: The coffee shop

How not to social media

A classic example of how not to by Canopy Coffee.

How not to use social media. Pictures posted to twitter via instagram are not visible on twitter. Always post pictures direct to twitter, assuming that is the reason for posting pictures to social media is wish pictures to be seen. #twitter #instagram #socialmedia #fail pic.twitter.com/Bm6CqYRejA

— Keith Parkins (@keithpp) July 24, 2018

Pictures posted to twitter via Instagram are not visible on twitter.

Always post pictures direct to twitter, assuming that is the reason for posting pictures to social media is wish pictures to be seen.

Scroll down the Canopy Coffee twitter feed and all that is seen is er, nothing.

It is a reasonable assumption that in posting pictures Canopy Coffee did wish the pictures to be seen, otherwise why go to the trouble of posting.

How not to use social media. Pictures posted to twitter via instagram are not visible on twitter. Always post pictures direct to twitter, assuming that is the reason for posting pictures to social media is wish pictures to be seen.

Brands pay Twitter to falsely appear in your following list

A Twitter advertising technique is perturbing people. Promoted brands like MasterCard and IFC are appearing in the list of accounts some users follow, even if they don’t actually follow them.

Sources familiar with the company’s advertising strategy tell me this has been occurring since early 2013, but the public has only just now cottoned onto it thanks to actor William Shatner (of Star Trek fame). Shatner brought attention to it after he saw that “MasterCard” appeared in his following list despite the fact that he didn’t follow it. He did a little investigation and discovered that the same promoted account appeared on Dwayne Johnson’s follower list, looking a little out of place given “The Rock” only followed one other account.

Twitter has long been a proponent of native advertising, making its money off promotions that look like a regular part of the Twitter landscape (instead of, say, a banner ad). People are accustomed to promoted accounts appearing in their regular feed and promoted hashtags in the trending topics section. But sticking brands in the list of who a user actually follows is a departure from the above examples.

By making it look like someone follows an account that they don’t, it sends a false signal that said user cares about that brand. Although the brands are marked as “promoted,” it’s not necessarily clear that the user in question doesn’t actually follow the brand.

There’s ethical considerations to be had. Hypothetical examples: What if you’re vegan and don’t want people to think you’re following Burger King? Or you’re the CEO of Visa and don’t want people thinking you’re following MasterCard? Or you’re a pro-life activist and don’t want people thinking you’re following Planned Parenthood?

Once again, it appears Twitter’s product managersfundamentally don’t understand the way people use its application.

— Carmel DeAmicis

Reposted from Gigaom.

No, I do not want crap ads in my twitter feed. And is it my imagination there are more and  more of them?

And no, I do not want it faked to make it look as though I follow accounts I do not. This borders on fraud.

I usually ignore, or report as spam and block.

But occasionally I hijack.

Starbucks had a promoted hashtag in the lead up up Christmas. I simply used to highlight their tax dodging.

Three network had the gall to impose dumb tweets. Each time they did, I responsed with how crap their network was.

Guess what, these tweets dried up.

What it shows is a fundamental lack of understanding how users use twitter. We do not want to receive this shit, if we did we would follow you.

And if you have to promote your tweets, it shows you have nothing worthwhile to say.

Shardcore on guerilla epistemology

Hell is other people. — Jean Paul Sartre

Art is the proper task of life. — Nietzsche

If you seek authenticity for authenticity’s sake you are no longer authentic. — Jean Paul Sartre

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. — Marcus Aurelius

Shardcore at Silicon Beach 2014 discussing guerilla epistemology.

We devour, share, retweet everything we find on social media. But how do we know what is true, what is fake, what is a con or a hoax?

• Cut Up Magazine (2012)
• Alex (@bffbot1) is your New Best Friend

ICYMI: today i unleashed a new social media virus, called @algobola – read about it here: http://t.co/4KDFztqE14

— ⓢⓗⓐⓡⓓⓒⓞⓡⓔ (@erocdrahs) October 28, 2014

Three days ago, Shardcore released Algobola, a social media virus.

Steve Lawson: Advice to musicians on using social media

Steve Lawson at Digital Music for Musicians

There are few people who know how to make effective use of social media. Steve Lawson is one, Paulo Coelho another.

An example of how not to, was a discussion on The Bottom Line by people clueless on social media.

Another example Guildford Book Festival, who persist in sending out puerile, drooling, sycophantic tweets promoting boring celebrities.

Too many who use social media fail to understand or grasp the fundamentals of social networks.

• social —> interaction
• network —> many to many

If you engage PR or marketing people to handle your social media accounts, you have lost the plot.

If you are paying to promote what you have to say, then it is not worth saying.

I could not agree more with what Steve Lawson has to say on musicians using bandcamp.

Steve Lawson was a guest speaker at a Digital Music for Musicians seminar held in Leeds at the Belgrave Music Hall. A three hours talk on how jazz artists can use social media to their best advantage.

• Using internet and social media
• Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman talking about social media
• Ethan Diamond on bandcamp at XOXO Festival 2014

Lauren Weinstein’s Guide to Trolls

1) Trolls virtually always appear very suddenly, like a big, painful, pus-filled pimple. Typically they emerge (like a daemon from Hell) as a provocative comment on your thread, and it’s the first time you’ve ever heard of this individual. They are not to be confused with spammers, who represent a related (but largely orthogonal) class of social networking vermin.

2) Your first impressions regarding whether or not a comment has been generated by a troll will almost always be accurate. That is, if your gut reaction to a comment is that you’re being trolled, you will likely be very accurate in that appraisal. Outrageous and/or highly provocative statements designed to trigger emotional responses are their hallmark. Occasionally you’ll come up against a troll who takes a slower approach and attempts to draw you into a what appears to be a reasonable argument, but this is quite rare since most trolls aim to do maximal damage to as many threads as they can, as quickly as possible.

3) “Professional” trolls (“pro-trolls”) usually prowl public G+ postings explicitly looking to spread disinformation and propaganda — or even “simply” to disrupt threads — in furtherance of specific goals, often politically or racially oriented. Some of these trolls work in organized packs, sometimes with serious funding behind them as systematic social networking disruption agents. Despite the tone of their postings, professional trolls are usually not actually nuts or idiots, and are very goal-oriented.

4) Freelance (“opportunistic”) trolls usually work alone, and unlike “professional” trolls, they often *are* nuts and/or idiots. Their comments will be at least as provocative as those of pro-trolls, but may tend toward higher levels of wackiness that expose their lack of true goal orientation.

5) Both in the case of freelance and pro-trolls, a quick examination of their G+ profiles and postings is usually extremely useful to verify their status prior to blocking. Dead giveaways of their “trollness” include either a stream of nearly identical postings, a variety of postings that tend to all be concentrated within the “troll zone” of inanities, or very few (even zero) postings of their own at all, the latter suggesting that they rapidly create new accounts as their previous ones become heavily blocked.

6) Without exception, trolls should be *immediately* blocked when detected. Unless threats or the like are involved, it is usually not necessary nor appropriate to also report their profiles. I recommend blocking troll profiles quickly and mercilessly, and not even bothering to flag the individual comments, again unless threats or other illicit behavior are involved. In cases of threats, etc., you may want to flag the individual comments, then block and report the troll’s account.

7) It is usually good practice to delete a troll’s comments from your thread, to avoid later legitimate commenters being drawn into the maelstrom. You may also wish to strongly consider deleting any responses to the troll that fed the beast, especially since leaving those other comments in place after deleting the troll’s comments tends to leave a disjoint comment flow that can be difficult for later readers to understand.

8) Whenever you block/report a troll, and/or delete their own comments and possibly other related comments, consider adding *your own* comment on the thread explaining what you have done. A note as simple as “Troll blocked and associated comments deleted” will usually be adequate.

9) Most importantly, show trolls absolutely no mercy. Block them immediately. Your threads are your responsibility, and you are under no obligation to host comments designed as weapons of destruction. Individual trolls rarely return — they usually move on quickly to greener pastures. Their entire purpose is disruption through asymmetric attacks. You should feel absolutely no hesitation at blocking them, and no compunction for having done so. The saying *Do Not Feed The Trolls* (DNFTT) holds true. Do not engage them in conversation. Do not argue with them — you might as well be arguing with a roll of toilet paper. Block them now. Report them if necessary. Clean up any damage they’ve done to your threads by removing their comments and related comments that could waste the time of other readers.

– – –

The wonders of social networking can only stay wonderful if we take individual responsibility to moderate, manage, and curate our threads, on Google+ or anywhere else.

This means taking our roles as thread creators very seriously, and not enduring the presence of trolls on our threads at any time — not for any reason. No excuses. No exceptions.

Together we can help make Google+ as troll-free as possible. Human nature being what it is, we will never be entirely successful at this effort. But we can certainly give it the ol’ college try.

— Lauren Weinstein

– – –

Although written specifically for Google+ Lauren Weinstein’s Guide to Trolls is equally applicable to all social media.

Trolls are the bane of the internet, nasty pathetic creatures who crawl out from under stones and delight in making other people’s lives a misery.

One troll, for reasons unknown, targets people linked to Paulo Coelho, he would send hate tweets on twitter, post nasty messages on facebook.

On TripAdvisor trolls post nasty reviews, though there is also a problem with rivals dishing the competition and glowing reviews by mates of the venue being reviewed.

There is a very simple rule for trolls: Do not engage, report and block.

Do not feed the trolls! If you engage, you encourage them and inflate their self importance.

On TripAdvisor report fake reviews.

Trolls never seem to learn. Periodically I have trolls, I block and report.

Trolls post messages on this blog (or try to). They get blocked. Any negative or abusive post gets blocked.

I have no problem with anyone posting a differing view. Occasionally they highlight I have made a mistake or got something incorrect or overlooked something.

Fake (best money can buy) reviews

Suddenly it hit him. Instead of trying to cajole others to review a client’s work, why not cut out the middleman and write the review himself? Then it would say exactly what the client wanted – that it was a terrific book. A shattering novel. A classic memoir. Will change your life. Lyrical and gripping, Stunning and compelling. Or words to that effect.

Todd Rutherford placed fake book reviews

Does anyone read a book based on a review?

I do not as book reviews are meaningless.

Often they are pretentious crap. Try listening to the pretentious crap on BBC Radio 4 Front Row (especially when presented by Mark Lawson) and you get the idea. A programme that should have been scrapped years ago, as too often scraping the bottom of the barrel to pad out the programme.

A deposit in the Favour Bank. You write a good review of my book and I will return the favour.

A hatchet job, too often a hack who cannot write, and writes a bad review out of sheer spite.

Too often the reviewer has not read the book, or if they have they have completely failed to comprehend what the writer has had to say, but they are on a deadline, they are paid to churn out so many words.

The blurb on the back often bears no resemblance to the book. Did the person who wrote the blurb actually read the book? Probably not.

Books are hyped, could be baked beans, a commodity to be flogged, pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap (as Waterstone’s does).

An excellent example of a hyped book is 50 Shades of Crap.

There is now a new category, the paid for book review. A bit like you have an essay to write, you are not up to it, well why not pay someone to write it for you? It is called cheating.

Step forward Todd Rutherford, he offers the best book reviews money can buy. He even set up a website offering his service. He does not only write the reviews, he will place them for you.

• GettingBookReviews.com

He used to try and get books which his company published reviewed. Hard work. Why not do the reviews yourself, cut out the middleman? Why not go one step better and offer a positive review service?

At first, he advertised that he would review a book for $99. But some clients wanted a chorus proclaiming their excellence. So, for $499, Todd Rutherford would do 20 online reviews. A few people needed a whole orchestra. For $999, he would do 50.

Before he knew it he was raking in $28,000 a month!

According to  Bing Liu, a data-mining expert at the University of Illinois, Chicago, the wheels of online commerce run on positive reviews

The New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell wrote in 1964:

If there was anything the human race had a sufficiency of, a sufficiency and a surfeit, it was books … the cataracts of books, the Niagaras of books, the rushing rivers of books, the oceans of books, the tons and truckloads and trainloads of books that were pouring off the presses of the world at that moment … [so few would be] worth picking up and looking at, let alone reading.

Most of these books went to be pulped.

What Joseph Mitchell saw as a torrent, was a mere trickle to what we have today, a flood of books of Biblical proportions, thanks to self-publishing, now hyper-charged with e-publishing. And I am not counting blogs and tweets.

In 2006, before Amazon supercharged electronic publishing with the Kindle, 51,237 self-published titles appeared as physical books, according to the data company Bowker. Last year, Bowker estimates that more than 300,000 self-published titles were issued in either print or digital form.

It seems lost on those churning out this rubbish, that a) you have to be able to write and b) you have to have something interesting to say.

In theory a good review sorts out the wheat from the chaff. The job of a good editor in the days of gentleman publishers, when publishing was owned by people who understand and appreciated good literature, now we have the Murdoch family and other spivs and philistines out to make a fast buck with the latest best-seller, me-too copycat novel, and the pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap mentality of chains like Waterstone’s.

Job opportunities for hacks are a rarity these days with provincial papers going under and salaries no better than flipping burgers at McDonald’s.

With the service he was offering Todd Rutherford soon realised he needed help. He advertised on Craiglist for hacks. Within 24 hours, 75 wannabe hacks had taken the bait. He was offering $15 for a favourable review, a less than favourable review got half that. No surprise then the hacks churned out glowing testimonials for the books they were paid to review.

One of the reviewers earnt herself $12,500 in a few months. It goes without saying she did not read the books. She is co-founder of a PR company!

The end came crashing down when a young Oregon woman Ashly Lorenzana wrote about life as a working girl,  Sex, Drugs & Being an Escort. She did not feel she had got what she had paid for and said she could get a better service for $5.

The website is now for sale.

But not deterred, Todd Rutherford is developing a service where, for $99, he blogs and tweets about a book.

The word fraud comes to mind.

That is where bandcamp is a big plus. You listen, you decide, and if you like, you can download, share with your friends.

TripAdvisor is plagued by fake reviews and not enough is being done to weed them out.

There are glowing reviews, all singing from the same hymn sheet, clearly put there at the behest of the owner or management of the business.

There are bad reviews, owners of rival businesses dishing the competition.

Then there are the trolls.

There is also the problem of competence. Is someone who eats at KFC or McDonald’s capable of writing restaurant reviews?

Spam tweets offer twitter followers for sale. I block and report as spam. Any suspicious followers on twitter I delete.

If you have something worthwhile to say, people will follow you, they will re-tweet what you tweet. If you do not have anything worthwhile to say, do not tweet.

Tweetlevel is a better measure than crude number of followers.

All the reviews here, opinions, are genuine, nothing has been paid for!

• The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy
• How many Twitter followers do they really have?
• Using internet and social media
• Har Paulo Coelho blitt en pervers gammel gris?

Not using facebook then you must be a mass muderer

According to an article in tagesspiegel.de, not having a facebook account should be the first sign that you are a mass murderer.

No facebook, no job offer

The article mentions the fact that in the US, people were subject to handing their passwords over to potential employers, which privacy advocates, facebook, and the US government disagree with. But the article takes it one step further in claiming that not only did US employers have a legitimate point, but also suggesting that those who abstain from facebook could be mass murderers.

As examples they use Norwegian shooter Anders Breivik, who used myspace instead of facebook (or as they put it, “largely invisible on the web”, haha @ myspace), and the newer Aurora shooter who used adultfriendfinder instead of facebook. So being social on any other website isn’t good enough, it has to be specifically facebook that people are using.

While it is already established that sites like facebook and google+ are no good for political activists, abuse survivors, and people in the witness protection program; abuse survivors will have to take a back seat while more and more insane articles like this come out.

There seems to be an insanity bubble around older people which has arrived after the initial facebook boom that brought in the youth, where they see facebook as a necessary utility; instead of a trendy website that will have passed in a few years.

Google translation of article …

Wake up young people who do not have a Facebook account, mistrust, then? Determined in some human resources departments in the U.S., there were at last aware of cases where heads of their applicants requested the access to their profile. Who does not have a profile, for which there is no job offer, because he has something to hide. So far it is not yet in this country. But ask even in Germany, “70 to 80 percent of HR professionals by the candidates in the network,” says psychologist Christopher Moeller Hanover.

Revealing images that users and private messages were better off not making it accessible for everyone is aware by now the most. But that the opposite effect – the absolute abstinence – seems suspect makes new. “The Internet has become a natural part of life,” says Moeller. And: “It is possible that you get with virtual friends and feelings of positive feedback.” But only as long as users do not overdo it. As long as they continue to maintain contacts and real and the virtual tours are not addictive, because the can, according to the scientist “reinforce basic psychological disorders and anxiety.”

On the other hand, Moller, however not convinced. “. That an abstinence from the Internet similar causes, can not be said,” Nevertheless, the assassin of Aurora is not the first assassin, who shunned social networks also the Norwegian Anders Breivik , the front of a year for the mass murderer was, in fact, its largely invisible on the web. Like Holmes, he reported only in a few forums to speak, hidden otherwise isolated themselves. He was an outsider.

And maybe this is for investigators and experts in the latest case, the important finding: that Holmes not only had no Facebook friends, but – so far known – not even good acquaintances and friends in real life.

Using internet and social media

West End Centre cultural oasis in the cultural wasteland of Aldershot

SHOCK NEWS! Twitter late at night is not a sedative. — West End Centre, 1-46am 10 July 2012

@keithpp what’s on details are on website. That is where you will find all the facts. . — West End Centre, 10 July 2012

Tweet us your favourite thought for today… — West End Centre, 1 July 2012

Is going to penalties footballers’ equivalent of an encore? — West End Centre, 24 June 2012

..and don’t forget farnborough event tomorrow either… — West End Centre, 22 June 2012

There are those who know how to make effective use of the internet and see what is has to offer: Paulo Coelho, Andrew Dubber, Steve Lawson, Imogen Heap, Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood.

They see the benefits internet has to offer to creative artists.

There are those who see the internet as a threat to their business model, they fail to see the world has moved on, they try to criminalise people.

When Paulo Coelho saw a man on the street selling pirate copies of his books, he went over to have a chat, he wanted to talk to the man. But the man saw it as a threat, ran away. Paulo Coelho wanted to thank him for taking the trouble to make more people aware of his books.

When people download music from Steve Lawson and share it with their friends, he does not think OMG, this must be stopped. He is pleased that they are taking the trouble to tell people about his music. No one tells it better than the people who like it.

Marketing people and PR and lobbyists I ignore. They are paid liars.

Critics I ignore. They rarely know what they are talking about.

If people tell me read this book, listen to this music, I usually ignore them too.

I make my own mind up what to read, what to listen to.

There are though rare exceptions. A friend has a vast record collection. If he says something is worth listening to I will give it a listen.

When a friend gave me The Eight to read, I read it. She brought if from the US to Istanbul. I passed it on and it is now in Moscow.

The best advice to a musician is be on twitter. It is far more important to be on twitter than a record label. You do not need a record label, but you do need twitter.

• What do record labels exist for?

But if you feel you really need to be on a record label, then sign up to Any And All Records.

Having a twitter account is not in itself enough, you have to use it effectively. What is it you do? Only you know the answer, but that is what you tweet about. If you are a baker you tweet about bread. A restaurant the dish of the day. A musician the latest album you have released, the next gig.

Social networks, split it down.

• social – interaction
• networks – many to many

It is not broadcast, one to many.

Do not tweet drivel. Not unless you want to piss people off, be followed by trolls and be seen by the people you need to communicate with as a total dick head.

One of the worst examples I have seen of the use of twitter is by the West End Centre, a cultural oasis in the wasteland of Aldershot. Occasional useful tweets lost in a sea of juvenile drivel. If the West End personnel wish to tweet juvenile drivel to their mates, that is fine, but do so from your own personal account, not an official account.

Asked repeatedly to please restrict to what is on and other useful, relevant information, their response was look at our website, do not follow us, our customers like our informal style.

Style is not a problem, it can be formal or informal, content does matter.

Yes, you can go to their website. Twitter should be to compliment their website, to deliver timely information.

Yes, you do do not have to follow them on twitter. But if everyone took that advice, they would have no followers. One assumes they want followers, want people to attend their venue, but people will only do that if they know what is on.

Anyone who has the audacity to highlight the West End Centre as an example of poor use of social media gets subject to a torrent of orchestrated abuse.

Some people like a venue, like the buzz, the atmosphere, meet their mates, it is almost irrelevant what is on.

With a few notable exceptions, I am the opposite. I will only go if there is something worth going to. I am hard to reach. But if you get me there, and I like, I am more likely to tell others.

The Barn is a cutural space in Farnham. Literally a barn. It is hidden in a courtyard, blink as you walk by and you would miss it. The West End Centre would be well advised to look at how they use twitter (unless of course they wish to remain a laughing stock).

The only criticism I would make of The Barn is that too often they tweet a link and nothing more. They need to say what it is about, else why visit, or you visit and find of no interest and will be less inclined to follow the next time. Nothing worse than wasting time following dead ends. Also make use of hashtags to reach beyond their followers.

For a musician being on bandcamp is as essential as being on twitter. People can listen to your music (I assume you want people to listen to it), can share with their mates (no one can like your music until they have heard it), can download high quality audio files, buy albums.

Although you do see the posting of individual tracks on bandcamp, it is primarily for albums. For tracks, work in progress, soundcloud is better, and you can always then collect together into an album on bandcamp.

For writers, the equivalent of bandcamp is wattpad, though personally I like bandcamp a lot more than wattpad.

This month bandcamp passed an amazing milestone: $20 million direct into the pockets of grass roots musicians.

If you can produce high quality video, then vimeo and youtube are a must. Please do not upload rubbish from a mobile phone from a pub. You are not doing yourself any favours. If you are good, then you want people to see you are good. If you are crap, well there is not a lot can be done, but as they say, practice makes perfect.

The Crypt Sessions are a good example of excellent videos.

• Reasons – Ahab

If you were applying for a job, you do not perform at your worst, not unless it is the local Job Centre forcing you to apply for some McShit job you do not want.

A blog is useful, but only if you have something worthwhile to say and can write (or if you cannot write you have to have something very worthwhile to say).

I was talking to a guitarist busking on the street. He said he wrote a blog. He was busking around Europe, he wrote about the places he visited.

An excellent blog and a must for musicians, is the blog written by bass-player Steve Lawson.

Another good blog is that written by nine-year-old Martha Payne. She is currently on holiday and has invited in guest bloggers. NeverSeconds has clocked up over 7 million hits!

For a how to then Music in the Digital Age by Andrew Dubber is a must read!

A picture tells a story. For individual pictures use twitpic, for albums flckr or facebook.

With facebook beware it is a walled garden, you do not wish to see people forced to join to see your pictures. Construct tunnels through the wall.

The one place not to be apart from legacy reasons is myspace.

Then tie it all together. In the blog embed an album from bandcamp. Tweet about the gig you have just written about on your blog.

• Andrew Dubber and Steve Lawson discussing use of the internet
• Neil Gaiman Addresses the University of the Arts Class of 2012
• “Twitter is art”
• Paulo Coelho: “Tweeting Is Art”

What do record labels exist for?

Any And All Records

Do we need record labels, if yes, then what do they exist for?

One common myth is they exist to filter out the rubbish. The same argument could be put forward for publishers.

We hear all the time of writers who were rejected by a hundred publishers before anyone would take them on.

I dare say musicians have similar stories to tell.

In which case, why is there so much rubbish on record labels? Why are so many bad writers being published?

In other words they are not acting as filters. Far from it. Often as not it is the good stuff that is rejected, it is rejected because it is different. That is why we hear of the writer who was rejected by one hundred publishers. We read their book and think, how could this have been rejected?

The rubbish is then hyped and the public brainwashed into buying.

What then of those creative artists we have never heard of? Who send off their demo disks, their manuscripts, only to get rejected.

The record labels, the publishers, are not acting as filters, they are acting as gatekeepers, deciding what will be read, what will be heard.

Anyone who has the money, can go into a recording studio and record good music. Many sadly go in and record poorly engineered crap, but that is another story.

On the other hand you can invest in your own recording equipment.

At the end of the day good music is good because it is good music, not because it has been hyped by a record label.

A twitter account is more important than a record label, but only if you use it effectively.

• Steve Lawson on books, music, communication and sharing
• Paulo Coelho: “Tweeting Is Art”
• “Twitter is art”
• A Conversation With Paulo Coelho
• Atwood leads the way in social media and new publishing

For those unsigned artists, Andrew Dubber and Steve Lawson have set up a record label, Any And All Records.

• Steve Lawson and Andrew Dubber discussing record labels
• We started a record label
• No More Unsigned Artists – A Solution To A Semantic Problem

Three people, eight hours, £17 and Any And All Records the world’s fastest growing record label was up and running.

Impromptu – Darin Wilson

Conversations – Steve Lawson and Jez Carr

It is also vital to be on bandcamp, people can then easily listen to, share and download your music.

WattPad has been set up to provide a platform for writers and poets.

• Margaret Atwood: why Wattpad works

About the only useful thing record labels ever did was put records into record shops. But could you listen?

When was the last time you saw a record shop?

Rounder Records in Brighton Record is to close at the end of July after 46 years trading.

• Rounder Records to close

Spillers Records in Cardiff which claims to be ‘The Oldest Record Shop In The World’ narrowly avoided closure and eventually had to move from its prime high street spot in 2010 after 60 years in the same location.

Record shops have gone the same was as bookshops. Record shops destroyed by the big record labels, bookshops destroyed by the big publishers.

• A quarter of independent bookshops lost in last five years
• What’s gone wrong with our bookshops?

Good record shops do still exist, Ben’s Records in Guildford, Resident in Brighton, but they are a rarity.