The First Blog - Welcome

As the LA Acoustic Music Meetup begins to turn its wheels and move forward as a vehicle for promoting locally-based talent, I thought I'd write a bit more about my goals and opinions regarding the exploding community of music creators, appreciators, managers and producers that populate this wonderful city of angels that we call home. As someone who is new to the LA music scene (but certainly not new to music-adoration in general), observation has brought many mixed emotions: excitement for artists who challenge our standards for the amount of talent that one person can offer, hope and confidence for musicians who appear to be just two fingers from reaching major success, admiration for performers that appear to be just as proud for having played to and touched an audience of one versus a crowd of 1,000, frustration for people who force themselves to smile and buckle in daily to the rollercoaster that is the music industry and the current economy.

As someone who has spent my short life marketing and creating results for struggling companies/products in a variety of industries, I figured that surely there was somehow that I could help. After all, objectively speaking, what is a commercial artist and their talent but a message waiting to be expressed, received and enjoyed? The same principles of marketing apply: it can be the best product in the world but if no one knows about it, only the creator benefits.

SO, WHAT BUILDS AWARENESS? In this internet-focused age that is driven by search-engine-optimization, online communities and blogging, text is power. Traditional PR placement has gone the way of the VHS- it no longer matters as much if you're featured in Time magazine versus if you have one brilliant quote that travels virally around the world. Also, community is essential. We no longer operate within just one village as our ancestors did. Our world is large, sprawling and at times overwhelming. As much as we long to explore, it is human nature to crave communities based on a similar interest. These communities are simply waiting to be discovered, united and inspired. And, as we all know, once even a small group of people with a common passion are brought together, word of mouth is like an unstoppable electricity.

That being said, the LA Acoustic Music Meetup aims to create an online and real-time community of people who are all passionate about creating, appreciating and celebrating acoustically-driven music. It will focus on specific up-and-coming artists who stand at critical points on their path to fame and recognition.

The Myspace site (www.myspace.com/laacousticmeetup) will provide important blog/comment space to review new artists and describe why they are worthy of placement on our already flooded radars. The Meetup website (http://acoustic.meetup.com/91) will support this by serving as a tool to promote these artists' local shows to a growing community of interested members. Please feel free to submit suggestions on artists who deserve special attention and I'll do my best to review them / promote them accordingly.

All of the text that is written on either space is free for the taking, so as a note to artists reading this: feel free to borrow any quotes for your own marketing campaigns, as long as they are attributed to the author. This is what the text was created for.
Finally, let me remind you that if you are reading this, you are just as important to this vehicle as I am. If you see a great artist, do not keep it a secret. If you love music and support the idea of this Meetup, pass it on.

Thanks for reading and please come introduce yourself to me at an upcoming show.