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 Artist Logs: Artist Logs // Websites for musicians and artists

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Bella Tromba

6 March 2006, by Andy Hume

The trumpet quartet Bella Tromba, has recently gone live with their new website. Having worked alongside Artist Logs for more time than is really healthy on this project, it is a nice one to finally get out the door.

The best news is, that they’re blogging. About all things chamber music, and particularly brass chamber music. So keep an eye out and make sure to subscribe to the blog.

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Engage your personality

16 February 2005, by Andy Hume

I recently read an article by Drew McManus, which discusses how the classical music industry needs to reassess its view of itself to move forward.

In Thereas never been a better time for the business, Drew summarises many of my own feelings about the way in which musicians approach their business and its promotion.

The one crucial element missing from the way classical music views itself and how it functions in the larger sense of culture and entertainment is a sense of entrepreneurialism.

In my opinion, what this boils down to in many cases, is the feeling that as artists we should just be allowed to get on with the art. There’s a strong sense that musicians at the top of their field, or organisations with a long history of high standards should somehow be above having to develop effective marketing and promotional campaigns. Even within organisations that have a forward thinking and proactive management, there is often a problem selling these ideas to the finely toned professionals who make up their orchestra or chamber ensemble.

It is the nature of professional musicians to be concerned with one thing: artistic standards. That is a requirement of their lives from the time they begin studying to when they retire, and it is difficult to break that mindset. However, in today’s climate a more ruthless, business orientated outlook is required—particularly for smaller ensembles and individuals—and the response of artists themselves is vital in driving the industry forward.

Drew cites the tuba soloist Patrick Sheridan, as an example of an artist who has found a way to “sell himself and the overall experience to potential consumers.”

Patrick took the time to examine the experience he provided, not just from the artistic listening viewpoint but from an entertainment anmusicians look to promote themselves. Partly because that is exactly what I am trying to do here at Artist Logs, and partly because I still earn some of my living as a freelance musician, and that’s something I never want to stop doing.

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“We don’t need anything posh”

4 February 2005, by Andy Hume

In a theme that might be getting a little familiar, I started writing this second post about one topic, then scrapped the lot and knocked this one up in about half an hour. I was writing about musicians websites, how I hated the standard “diary, biography, gallery” format which has been so prevailent since about 1995, and why I was so fed up that these kind of non-sites were still being produced.

As I was drafting the post, an email from a former/potential client popped up (I use Opera, and I love the way email just pops up, literally), asking about this ‘Artist Logs’ thing. I wrote him a quick note explaining how a weblog at a new site would bring traffic, a community, a buzz, and all those other wonderful things the web is associated with, and tagged on the end something like this: “Of course, if all they’re after is a site telling people they’re available for weddings, this is probably overkill".

Having sent this off, I started thinking about that last thing I had written. “Probably overkill".

Apart from potentially putting people off what I want to do for them (never a great idea), it’s just plain wrong. I quickly came up with dozens of possible weblog topics that concern music at weddings. This group could write about repertoire for weddings (including diffrent parts of the ceremony, the reception, first dance, etc~), their own experiences of what worked and didn’t work repertoire wise, why their type of group is so good for wedding music as well as background music, even anecdotes about past experiences.

Not only would they begin to look like the experts on providing wedding music, but Google would be lapping up their content and hurling potential customers their way. My guess is that ‘wedding music‘ is quite a popular search on google, and with a little bit of decent content and simple SEO advice they could easily be topping the list. The advice these customers receive at their site will make them look like a market leader, give them confidence in the service, and have them signing up quicker than they can say, “We don’t need anything posh - we just play at weddings!”

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Why Artist Logs?

31 January 2005, by Andy Hume

When I sat down to write the first weblog entry at Artist Logs, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about. I wanted to call it Why Artist Logs?, and I wanted to talk about how my work as a musician had led to the kind of web design I do here, and how this kind of design was different to your average, everyday musician’s website.

Within an hour of firing up my text editor I had written about 1000 words of animated, passionate, earnest—but ultimately worthless gibberish. It was the kind of gibberish that tends to appear when you’ve got so much to say, you don’t really know where to begin. And you certainly don’t know where to end.

As I was developing the concept of Artist Logs, numerous friends and colleagues were flooded with similiarly vague and ranting emails. The most encouraging reply I ever received was. “Hmm… Yeah, sounds good”. I’m fairly certain I actually scared off a few potential clients as well. Promising start.

The point I’m making is: I have so much to say about Artist Logs—why I’m doing it, how I’m doing it, and what I hope will come from it—that not even a true wordsmith could write about it as succinctly as I needed.

So I gave up.

If you want to know what Artist Logs is all about, then you can explore the site as much as you want. You won’t find much yet though. However, over the next few days I will be putting together a series of succinct articles for this weblog that explains what I’m doing here, why I’m doing it, and how it’s going to change the world. Honest guv!

For the less web saavy amongst you, this seems like a good time to introduce the wonders of RSS. If you want to be notified the next time our site is updated, then you can subscribe to a newsfeed which will deliver you the content and a link to the new article. Discover more on our RSS Feeds page.

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