Yesterday I wrote about how terrible the websites of most comedians are. Because they are. Now…if you don’t want to listen to me…listen to a fellow artist…Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. Check out this post from NewTeeVee that was posted this morning. Below is an excerpt from the post Reznor made. He’s obviously a musician, but many of the same principles apply to comedians. If your agent, manager, online media agency, website guy, etc. isn’t on top of this…drop them immediately. This is the future of media folks. In fact, its not even the future…its now. Its called the Internet and you can’t afford to have people in your camp that don’t get it.

The database you are amassing should not be abused, but used to inform people that are interested in what you do when you have something going on – like a few shows, or a tour, or a new record, or a webcast, etc.
Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace – it’s dying and reads as cheap / generic. Remove all Flash from your website. Remove all stupid intros and load-times. MAKE IT SIMPLE TO NAVIGATE AND EASY TO FIND AND HEAR MUSIC (but don’t autoplay). Constantly update your site with content – pictures, blogs, whatever. Give people a reason to return to your site all the time. Put up a bulletin board and start a community. Engage your fans (with caution!) Make cheap videos. Film yourself talking. Play shows. Make interesting things. Get a Twitter account. Be interesting. Be real. Submit your music to blogs that may be interested. NEVER CHASE TRENDS. Utilize the multitude of tools available to you for very little cost of any – Flickr / YouTube / Vimeo / SoundCloud / Twitter etc.

If you don’t know anything about new media or how people communicate these days, none of this will work. The role of an independent musician these days requires a mastery of first hand use of these tools. If you don’t get it – find someone who does to do this for you. If you are waiting around for the phone to ring or that A & R guy to show up at your gig – good luck, you’re going to be waiting a while.

Hope this helps, and I’ll scour responses for intelligent comments I can respond to.

TR

I picked up the Rolling Stone Comedy issue in the Vegas airport this weekend on my way home from BlogWorld (yeah…I was at BlogWorld). If you can still grab it, it’s a good read. My biggest take away from the issue was how opinions differed on the importance of the internet to comedy.

It’s 2008 folks. This isn’t debatable anymore. The internet is extremely important to comedy and comedians. Some quotes:

Dane Cook
“It’s the most important tool any comedian can implement into their career. It’s up to you to gather your fans for your own personal personal programming. That’s powerful.”

Katt Williams
“I think it’s been wonderful for comedy – a gold rush. It happened with the comedy clubs in the Eighties and Nineties, and it’s happened again now with the internet. Whoever thinks differently is looking at it the wrong way.”

Craig Ferguson
“I think it’s actually bad for performers who are starting out. They’re not getting a chance to fail in private.”

Zach Galifianakis
“The little bit of success that I have is due to the internet. It has nothing to do with me guest-starring or being on a sitcom at all.”

Albert Brooks
“I think the internet is slowly going to take down all creativity.”