There is no greater threat to one’s career than playing to an audience that doesn’t want to hear you. A room full of strangers is much preferable to a room full of people that think you suck. It’s part of human nature to be vocal about that which we dislike, much more so than that which we love.

To put it simply, you’ll tell a couple of friends about something you really love, but you’ll tell the whole world about something that annoys you.

It’s like playing rap music in a country bar… If all you see is a crowd of wallets, you’re going to get beer bottles thrown at you. Before you start rapping, those people are just bystanders. Once you’ve given them a dose of something they don’t want, they become a negative PR force actively working against you.

This is the reason I do not sign people up for my email list that didn’t ask for it. I’ll send invites- ONCE -but if they don’t want my emails, I don’t want to send to them. My blacklist is almost as big as my mailing list. Why? Because each person I send an email to is remotely interested in my music. If they’re not, the last thing I want to do is annoy them!

Lately I’ve been receiving auto-DM invites to a music site via Twitter. One invite? Sure. Identical invites from many different people with no way to opt-out? Now I’m never going to sign up for that service. In fact, I’m writing a blog post about it because they’ve ticked me off. I am now a negative PR force working against them, all because they wouldn’t let me opt out.

The lesson? Don’t play rap to a country crowd. No audience is worse than the wrong audience.

Behold, the Myxercycle

We do tend to trap ourselves, don’t we? We build walls of technology so that we can make ingenious little windows like Facebook and Twitter and look out at the world.

Yesterday I was riding through the world at 25-30mph (40-50 kph) on my electric bike, the Myxercycle. It looked a lot bigger than it has for the past 5 months. Here I am, Monday morning, typing into my little window again, but at least now I know the front door leads to a warmer world again. Forget the economy, things are looking brighter simply because I can bike again.

Now availble on Pandora.com!

Why is this awesome, you ask? Because so many people these days find new music via Pandora. It takes artists, songs, and albums you like and finds similar music to put into a customized radio station just for you.

Now anyone listening to Ben Folds or Keane or other well-known acts may very well end up listening to two of my albums. I’ve already made new fans this way, and I’m glad to see they’re adding more of my inventory.

If you haven’t built a station yet, go to Pandora.com and set one up… your ears will thank you!

Photo by John Tlumacki

You see, this was all part of the Magic of Television™. A lot of my fans (you folks) are producers yourselves, making albums and podcasts and videos. As someone who is fascinated by how this stuff works, I’ll walk you through the assembly of a major-league TV show.

When I say we stood in line, I mean it. My room mate, Ronin, and I got there at 7:30am, about 90 minutes before I usually get out of bed on weekdays, and I didn’t audition for another 8 hours. That’s right, EIGHT. HOURS. Fortunately, it wasn’t all standing in line. Sort of like the way the Inquisition wasn’t all burning and screaming.

Read More…

A while ago I had a young filmmaker ask my permission to use one of my songs as a music video project. He and his friends create films, practice martial arts, and have an incredible sense of humor. I’d say more, but I think the video more than speaks for itself…

My favorite part about all this? I’ve never met these guys. In fact, I’ve never been to the continent they live on. They just found my music and decided to create something awesome to go with it.

Check out more from Dead Star Film at YouTube.com/deadstarfilm or watch the Ninjery at YouTube.com/recklessninjasquad

This also made me realize that I need to start working on my own Ninja Beer recipe. Definitely high-gravity, something that’ll sneak up and kill you.

A little over a month ago I posted this contest asking folks to caption this great photo:

My room mates and I sat down and deliberated, picking the best entries and deciding on which one would eventually take the prize- one free month of a Matthew Ebel dot net All-Access pass. We recorded our reactions to the best entries here:
Mugshot Contest Winner.mp3

The winner? Below the fold…
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You recently made me Sellaband’s Artist of the Week and, as a part of that package, they interviewed me for a feature news article on their site. Here’s a short clip:

…you can have the ten greatest musicians on stage with you- string players, guitarists, drummer, bass, singers, etc. -but if you aren’t reaching someone and speaking to them directly, you’re just making noise.

Check out the full article right here.

So the economy is bottoming out. We’ve finally discovered as a nation (I hope) that an economic plan consisting of

• Buying cheap plastic junk from China
• Driving the most inefficient vehicles ever designed by man
• Taking out loans for things we know we can’t afford
• Fueling our entire transportation system with a substance whose price is controlled by a tiny group of people who don’t like us very much
• Letting our government spend money without telling us what it’s buying (Halliburton, anyone?)

is not exactly a plan for success. Excellent. Now we can start rebuilding from the ground up, right? I have a simple plan, and there are two sides to it:
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I just got a couple of emails… one from the Eventful.com staff (posted here) and one from the guy who recommended Eventful to me in the first place, Jonathan Coulton:

Hey Matthew,

Very surprised to hear that, I’ve never heard any complaints from my fans, and I know they’re generally very careful about being spammy. Are you sure that’s happening, and have you contacted eventful about it? I’ve found them to be very helpful in the past.

-j

If you’re getting emails from Eventful.com that you don’t want, I’d suggest checking the unsubscribe links and reading carefully. I can’t find any evidence that they’re spammy. In fact, they seem to be fairly reputable as far as online services go.

Sure, they want to send you mail, but I can confirm that they do indeed let you opt-out once you’ve created an account. If you still have any problems, though, please let me know!

Well, at the very least, they wrote about me and my friend C.C. Chapman. This is pretty sweet, so please check it out. Here’s a clip from the article:

Photo by Angela Rowlings

“In a field as competitive as entertainment, what matters most is how well you connect with your fans,” said Ebel, who moved to Boston from Nashville, Tenn., a year ago. “The technological tools we have give us the power to not just talk to but to listen to more people on a more meaningful level. If I stopped listening to my fans, they’d stop listening to me.”
Ryan Foley, The Boston Herald

You can read the article in full at a ridiculously long URL that I’ll just say is here.