Big City Folk founder Niall Connolly chats with Pakistani songwriter and former Fulbright Scholar, Ammar Farooki about quitting his day job, his first six months in NYC, Islamabad’s best spots for kayaking and much more. Ammar’s music can be found HERE. ///**// Niall: Tell me about your Fulbright scholarship? How did that come about? What […]
Author Archives: bigcityfolks
February
25
The Localist: The Basic Standard of Quality for Hitmaking
posted by bigcityfolks
I was looking for a different article but ran into a study done on how music trends develop. A number of years ago, a Princeton professor ran randomized trials on 30,000 teenagers, exposing them to the music of 48 emerging artists, to learn about how musical trends develop. His conclusion from the study is essentially […]
February
20
The Localist: Developing Vision as a Writer
posted by bigcityfolks
One way to get at the concept of vision is to think about how you would describe your music to someone if they asked you what kind of music you play. I know the question is a cliché. But suppose that the person asking you isn’t a co-worker asking the question to just be polite. […]
January
11
The Localist: Don’t Compete Locally, Compete Nationally
posted by bigcityfolks
One of the fundamental mistakes of musicians trying to grow a music career is that they try to compete locally instead of competing nationally. Under the local competition mindset, gaining success on a larger level is a matter of winning at the local level, where winning at the local level helps you to “get to […]
January
08
The Localist: Setting Concrete Goals
posted by bigcityfolks
The start of a new decade is a good time to start setting a concrete plan for yourself as a musician. I think a lot of people have a general idea that they want to be “successful” as a musician, but from there things get a little bit hazy. For many musicians, the plan oftentimes […]
November
19
The Localist: The Independent Album Release Calendar
posted by bigcityfolks
Consequence of Sound has a useful Album Release calendar that they put together, which gives people a heads up as to what releases are coming up and when. Their release calendar can be found HERE. If you’re a music journalist, it’s useful, because it allows you to plan ahead in terms of knowing what releases […]
October
27
The Localist: What it Means to be a Singer-Songwriter
posted by bigcityfolks
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 […]
October
19
The Localist: Marketing Music to Perfect Strangers, Part 2
posted by bigcityfolks
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 […]
October
18
The Localist: Marketing Music to Perfect Strangers
posted by bigcityfolks
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 […]
October
13
The Localist: Monetization and Alienation
posted by bigcityfolks
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 […]
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