I haven’t been here in a while. Between the holidays, doing some social media reorganization, some web development, a couple of radio shows a week and paying the bills, time has been very limited. There is a ton of stuff going on behind the scenes, all of it in the continuing effort to provide maximum exposure to all of the this incredible indie music. This article is nothing more than a few updates and some of the plans I have in place for 2018. If you’re looking for my normal soapbox stuff, you’ll have to wait a little longer.
- Artists, I want to hear your music. Between the mountain of submissions received at Music Mafia Radio and those bands following me on social media, I don’t have as much time to go out exploring for new music as I used to. I do want the opportunity to hear you, but I need you to get my attention. The two best ways are to either send an email to the website, or follow me on Twitter, Reverbnation or Soundcloud. I don’t mention the social media follows because I’m looking to add to my followers list, but instead because it is easy to identify new people to the group. In any event, I ask for you to have some patience, as I may not be able to get right to you. I do promise that I will, as time allows.
- New Releases are so awesome. My social feeds are active, to put it mildly. I probably see about 10% of what is posted by folks, and I know I’m missing some incredible stuff, simply because I can’t catch everything. I absolutely love new releases from those artists I already know, and want to do whatever I can to get the word out. This is another “help me help you” moment. Tag me in social media, send me an email or private message, do whatever you can to get my attention. I plan to feature new releases prominently on the website (including links for purchase). I just need to know they are out there.
- Social media mayhem. At the end of the year, when I looked at my social media strategy, I found it to be incredibly scattered, to say the least. While both Twitter and Facebook were operating under the Cozmic Debris brand, my accounts on Reverbnation, Spotify, Soundcloud and a few other places were set up as personal accounts. This explains why I wasn’t seeing a whole lot of activity on these accounts- nobody knew who the hell I was. I am currently working to fix this by creating branded accounts on these platforms. It is time consuming, because I have to go through the list of almost 1100 artists in the Cozmic Debris library to find who I can follow on these platforms. I’m currently working through Reverbnation, with Spotify and Soundcloud to come next.
- Social media segmentation. The problem with following and sharing music of all styles is that is extremely hard to catch the eye of the casual music listener, who typically tend to gravitate toward a specific style or genre of music. To address this, I am working to create style-specific social media pages, where I can group like artists in one spot. I will still post everything to the master Cozmic Debris accounts, but plan to see Cozmic Rock, Cozmic Country, Cozmic Pop and a number of genre-specific CD pages start to pop up in the near future.
- The website needed a refresh. I’ve been working on a complete redesign of the website, with the goal to provide as much content as humanly possible. I recently purchased the cozmicdebris.net domain, and my intent is to make the branded website the center of the cozmic universe. The long range goal is to have a website with artist showcases and links to the music, websites and social media for all of the artists I follow. This is a huge undertaking, and the fact that I haven’t done any serious web development in almost a decade makes it a slow process to start. My hope is to have everything on place by the end of 2018.
- Coz, the on-air personality. In addition to all of the above, I’ve still got a very passionate commitment to my duties at Music Mafia Radio. I don’t think I ever announced it here, but in addition to doing live shows a couple of nights a week on MMR, I accepted the position of Programming Director, which fits perfectly with the skillset I bring to the table. I’ve written here about Music Mafia Radio, and much like the Cozmic Debris brand, MMR is using 2018 to lay the foundation to implement all of the dreams and ideas the staff has for both the artists and listeners.
- Cozmic Debris TV? Okay, it sounds silly to even me, but the idea of putting together a YouTube channel has been rattling around in my head. For those of you old enough to remember it, think old school MTV- all music, all the time. It’s a longshot, but a possibility. It’s at the bottom of this list, because it is at the bottom of the list of everything I’d like to do. Everything else mentioned here would need to be in place before I consider getting this off the ground.
So, there you have it, the crazy dreams of a music fanatic. I promise I am constantly busy, trying to get all of this in place. I also promise that my goal of exposing incredible indie music to the world is as important as ever before. I’m excited for what 2018 may bring. Stay tuned, it could be a fun ride.
Coz