Don't Be An Idiot: How NOT to Grow A Music Podcast (R.E.M. Edition)
I recently got into a twitter fight that was really ridiculous, so I thought it would be a good teachable moment for everyone.
A tweet came across my feed likely because someone I follow liked, replied, or retweeted it - I don’t even remember. That happens all the time on Twitter, and sometimes you discover great things, sometimes you just scroll by, sometimes you comment or RT - who knows?
This one caught my eye because it was about a podcast that discussed R.E.M. who was one of my favorite bands. In my opinion R.E.M. made some masterpieces as well as a few real duds. It seems to me if you were a big R.E.M. fan by the time of the Document album or anytime before you probably don’t love Out Of Time and Automatic For The People even though they were mega blockbuster hits in terms of record sales and airplay. I despise those two albums. Each has about 4 songs I like and the rest are horrible in my opinion. With that backdrop here’s the Twitter fight - I left out his name and profile because the lesson is what’s important - trashing this guy isn’t.
Now let’s break this down:
The first tweet that appeared in my feed was from someone I didn’t know, hadn’t heard of, and describes a podcast where they did a deep dive on R.E.M. They mention ONE album in the tweet - New Adventures In Hi-Fi. This is one of my favorite R.E.M. albums and in some ways could be my favorite overall. A unique and sprawling album where they came up with the ideas for the songs in different cities while on a fateful tour that saw drummer Bill Berry fall ill with an aneurysm. This was his last LP since he ultimately retired from the band. The tour and the direction of the band at this point was partly a reaction driven by Berry himself (as I remember it) to stop with the commercial, watered-down soft material of Out Of Time and Automatic For The People and return to being a rock band. They overcorrected with their heaviest album Monster and New Adventures was the follow-up which was just right.
In my mind someone who loves New Adventures likely doesn’t love OOT & AFTP. My comment reflected that - I was psyched to find an R.E.M. podcaster on the same page. The response I got was complete horseshit and the fight ensued.
But here’s where it gets interesting for me. It’s the comment he makes in the upper right corner - the last comment he made (which he had deleted quickly and reposted to actually make it even more lame…).
*As a side note in my penultimate comment I meant to say NAIHF is one of my fave albums of all time (not AFTP) but the damage had been done by then so it’s not that relevant.
If you tweet about your podcast then that means you’re trying to grow it right? If you create a recap episode specifically for noobs (which he has - I went to look) then you’re trying to get new people and keep them - right? So that means you DO want people to “come out of nowhere” to comment on your content. Is out of nowhere a bad place to find noobs? Or would you prefer them to actually come from out of your asshole? Maybe it doesn’t matter just as long as they don’t disagree with you. Heaven forbid they disagree with you. And I’m not talking about politics, race or religion disagreement - I’m talking I-like-an-R.E.M.-album-and-don’t-like-another-one disagreement.....as a comment on a tweet ABOUT R.E.M. ALBUMS. Oh the horror!!!
People coming from “Out of nowhere” to discover your podcast is THE GOAL you IDIOT.
Despite all that, as a podcaster myself and someone who is passionate about music I STILL extended an olive branch to be friends and honestly offered to give his podcast a listen and………..no response.
So screw this guy. And now I’m going to tell people NOT to listen to his stupid podcast. Hence the title of this blog post.
If you are trying to grow a podcast about a topic people are passionate about be ready to engage in dialogue with new listeners who might have opinions. All he had to do was say “Oh man I LOVE those two albums! You’re killing me dude!” and I probably would have said “Ugh, lol - sorry man not a fan… but I’m looking forward to your podcast!”. If it was good I would have shared it on Instagram, tweeted it and given it a good rating. Not now.
M10 Social is owned by Doug Cohen in West Bloomfield, MI and provides social media training and digital marketing services from the Frameable Faces Photography studio Doug owns with his wife Ally. He can be reached there at tel:248-790-7317, by mobile at tel:248-346-4121 or via email at mailto:doug@frameablefaces.com.
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