I was talking with a friend about songwriting credits the other day, probably an outgrowth of the Lizzo trademark controversy, and have been thinking about the term “singer-songwriter” – a phrase that I use for myself, and one which many people in the Big City Folk community use for themselves as well.  It’s funny because […]

In the last Localist article (link), I suggested asking friends how it was that they got into listening to a new artist. As a result of this, a few Big City Folk musicians went out and asked their friends how they found out about new music. I provide a broad general ranking based on an […]

One of the big difficulties with building a music career is learning the difference between marketing to acquaintances and marketing to perfect strangers. Many musicians perform a great number of live shows in their respective hometowns and manage to get a good crowd of friends and acquaintances out to an event, but simultaneously see little […]

As I’ve used it before, the phenomenon of monetization of word of mouth refers to the practice whereby Facebook and other social media downgrade artistic media posts, forcing the artist to pay for advertisement in order get exposure for their work. The name “monetization of word of mouth” refers to the fact that Facebook literally […]