Week 11: Applause

I live for the applause, applause, applause

I live for the applause-plause, live for the applause-plause, live for the-

Way that you cheer and scream for me

The applause, applause, applause – Lady Gaga

This week we posted three covers! My first band settled on a name: Sweatshop Six. So I am proud to announce that covers of Fly Me to the Moon, Cherry Wine, and Nothing have been posted to the I’m With The Band YouTube channel. 

Views, likes, comments, and subscribers have been coming in, hence the song choice for this week: Applause by Lady Gaga. Experimenting with social media has been fun with this project, and YouTube was another avenue for me to explore. 

 Even though I can directly reach out to more people on Instagram, posting content on YouTube has been beneficial so far. The algorithm has pushed my content to strangers on both platforms, but I’ve noticed that people are more comfortable interacting on YouTube. All of the videos posted have comments from people I don’t know, which hasn’t happened on any of my Instagram content. 

My Instagram page seems to have grown a voice of its own over the past couple weeks. I’ve moved into more audience motivated content, instead of providing strict weekly summaries. One series I started was posting clips of the “Best Parts” of songs. These can be cool introductions, fun riffs, unique vocals, and even instrumental portions. The response to the first video of this kind was great. I asked for song suggestions, and the people replied with some of their favorite songs. In the next video of this series, I tried to incorporate as many suggestions as I could, while still including the song for the weekly blogs. That video has the most comments, mostly of people getting excited that their favorite songs were featured. 

Gaining popularity was a large part of this project, but appealing to the masses on social media is difficult. My main goal for this week was convincing people to attend the live concert (!) that I have organized for Senior Project Presentation Day. The main audience is BISV students who wouldn’t have originally come to watch the presentations. Sweatshop Six will be playing during the breaks, which will hopefully usher people to watch presentations in the meantime. I worked with the band to finalize their setlist (six songs total, grouped into two sets of three) and worked on promotion by designing a poster. 

The poster is now out around the school, so go check it out! Publicity is such an important and often overlooked part of putting out music. I spent last weekend in NYC, and artists busking on the street had mastered the art of gaining the public’s attention. I spotted two artists on the street who employed different strategies. One rapper had a sign set up with QR codes to his Instagram and Spotify accounts, and called those out during his performance. The other artist, who was playing the bass, decided to dance along with his playing, and people on the street danced along with him! Both strategies were used to catch attention, and I hope this poster achieves the same effect. 

Next week is the last week of the project and we’re going out with a bang (read: live performance)! I hope to see you all there!