Yeah, I know…it’s been a minute since I posted anything here. I’ve only been working on this article for about a month. I’ll blame it on life deciding to get a little out of control. Nothing serious, nothing bad, just a whole lot of everything all at once. I promise to be much better going forward.
I’m five months into this wonderful roller coaster ride called indie music. When I started, I had this dream of finding 100 or so great bands and helping them expand their fan bases. After all ,there can’t be that much good undiscovered music out there. Fast forward to today. 625 incredible musicians identified to date, and my ‘hobby’ has become a full-time occupation. I started this blog as a vehicle to document my own journey, only to find a huge need to expand that focus to include artists and their works. In short, I completely missed the mark in identifying my place in this world of indie music. And in doing so, I find the time commitment to be crushing (to say the least). However, I’m having the time of my life and wouldn’t change a thing. Well, maybe just one thing that I would change. More on that in a bit.
I need to stop here and thank everyone for the incredible support and encouragement. The embracing of the Cozmic Debris brand by indie musicians and others in the business has felt more like a big old bear hug. I am humbled beyond words by the incredibly kind words and almost instant credibility many of you have bestowed upon me. It is so much fun to talk about great music as only musicians can, to speak in the secret code only we understand. Each ‘thank you, Coz’ puts a big smile on my face, as it shows that I’m having a small impact on the efforts of these incredible musicians. My own confidence grows daily, and I now feel like a full member of the indie music community.
I’m now to the point where I recognize my place as that of a social media influencer. Granted, I’m nothing more than a micro- influencer at best right now, but my reach grows a little bit more every day, the impact of what I do becomes a little more powerful as the weeks pass by. This is not said to be boastful or to stroke my ego, but rather to be real about the state of Cozmic Debris. I see musicians that are starving for recognition, and rightly so. The music that I talk about is of such a high quality, with such incredible artistic perfection, that it deserves to be played every hour on the hour by every radio station on the planet. It is that good. However, I’ve run up against a brick wall, of sorts. And this brings me back to the one thing I would change.
The great majority of followers I have amassed are the musicians I have followed myself. This isn’t a bad thing, as I love them all, but in the end, it only allows me to share incredible music with other musicians. Granted, I do have a small following of music listeners, but not nearly to help bands and musicians grow their fan bases. After all, this is one of the primary reasons I started this journey- to help great indie music gain visibility and expand their fan base. And to do this, I need your help.
Most of my Cozmic Debris time is spent sharing music via social media, specifically on Facebook and Twitter. Again, most of the visibility these posts get comes from musicians and industry folks. If I can tap into the fan bases associated with these bands, the lift in awareness of this music grows exponentially, and everyone wins. Your fans become their fans, and their fans become your fans. Instead of just being local or regional phenoms, you can pick up a following that spans the globe. This is where I want to have an impact, but in order to do so I need your help.
Send your fans, your friends, your enemies, your families and random people on the street to Cozmic Debris on Facebook and Twitter. The more people I can influence, the more the indie community can thrive. It is not about me being able to brag about having a huge number of followers (because none of this is about me), but rather to allow the musicians to boast about their growing fan bases. With your help, I can do my little part to make the indie music world a little stronger. This may be the one and only time I ask for anything from the community, but to me, it is an important ask.