Jay Mathes

Author: jaymathes

  • Motivation

    I love writing, performing, recording and practicing music. I dislike promoting my music like I’m trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat.

    Over the last three months, I’ve started to hone in on a little problem I have:
    Promoting music on the internet, though effective, is also a bit boring and impersonal. In fact, I’m promoting my music right now, and it is definitely hard just sitting here in my apartment, typing away, staring at a screen, feeling the tendinitis in my elbows flair up, and hearing the birds chirping right outside my door on a beautiful afternoon…
    Much of my days are spent alone in my apartment, and I think that’s really the rub for me of promoting my music on the web.
    Anyway, I just thought I’d share…

  • The Unique Chicago Music Industry

    There’s a great article about this here:

    The Chicago music scene is uniquely Chicago’s because here, artists aren’t pursuing record deals or publishing contracts. They’re pursuing independent, entrepreneurial success. Artists in Chicago expect full creative license, and assume all of the risks that assure that license. But they don’t always do so knowingly. For most bands in Chicago, the DIY way is the only way they know – it’s the way they grew up with, the way they saw their friends in bands pursue, and the thought of pursuing a “record deal” is, in their minds, quite honestly, a foreign, make-believe concept.
    Somehow, Chicago has, thus far, escaped the fate of L.A., New York, and Nashville. But is it for the better? I think the verdict is still out on that, and we’ll have to make our own assessments, based on the quality of music that Chicago produces in *our* prime – what kind of music *we* produce.
    —
    What do you think?