| Written by David Wang, The Catholic Register,
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Views : 670  |
 Critical Mass Although many of us are still not used to the concept, the commercial landscape is now dominated by mp3 players, many of which I am convinced are surgically attached to the heads of our youth, and low-quality YouTube videos, which sucks countless useful hours of teenage existence into endless surfing for the perfect playlist.
As my band, Critical Mass, is in the midst of recording a new album, I can’t help but think about how this affects musicians who are trying to get their music out to the waiting world. If you or someone you know is a budding Catholic musician, here is how I see a possible path to success.
First of all, the Internet has levelled the playing field. This is good news. There are many discussion groups and forums (eg. check out www.Catholicjukebox.com) to connect with other songwriters. This is an opportunity to get feedback on your songs at the earliest stages. Once you have strong songs worthy of recording, check out the many producers such as Joe Hand, David C. Smith or Andrew Horrocks (Google search with these names and the word “producer”) who can work with you in the studio and online to create a top notch recording. In case you think I am exaggerating, the next album from Critical Mass will have part of almost every song done remotely over the Internet.
Suppose an artist now has a CD worthy of merchandising. The next step is to generate sales. One of the best methods is through www.Tunecore.com, which will get your music out on iTunes as well as incredibly cost-effective CD manufacturing. In my opinion, however, I believe it is now possible for an artist to work exclusively with downloads and just manufacture a few CD-Rs to sell at local performances. This eliminates the hassle of manufacturing and stocking large volumes of CDs. The site www.Catholicmusicnetwork.com is also able to help in this respect.
Now, just having music isn’t sufficient. One needs to market. This is where www.Youtube.com comes in. In the past, a music video or a feature required thousands of dollars of investment. The group, ok go, with its song “Here it goes again,” demonstrated that it is possible to use a camcorder and an ingenious concept (in this case, search on the Youtube site using the word “treadmills” and “ok go”) to get more views over the Internet than would be possible through regular television.
As another example, search on Youtube using “Critical Mass” and “YFE” to see how we used a hidden camcorder to create a behind the scenes look at the band in a bit of an adventure. Even for our relatively amateur efforts, there have been around 15,000 views of our videos as of early this year. In fact, once you have a video, there are lots of other sources of channels to play your videos such as www.Godtube.com and www.Catholic.org/video.
As was the case in the past, the Catholic artist still has to aim for the highest possible quality in their work. Now, more than ever, this is in everyone’s reach. If you happen to know anyone who you feel is an aspiring artist, have them get to work.
In the meantime, they can also check out a cool new venue to ply their craft. Radio Maria in Toronto is sponsoring a music contest at www.radiomariayes.org. I encourage anyone with talent who fits in the age bracket 13-30 to start creating music with a Catholic spirituality. The church needs the arts to inspire.
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