Over the last few weeks I’ve been musing a lot about what my various websites are for.
One piece of advice I was given was to run a user survey, which I’ve done on two sites including this one.
I didn’t expect many answers – I don’t get a lot of visitors and I don’t offer frequent content so I don’t expect a lot of visitors. But I wanted to see who came by and what they’d like to see.
I had some confirmations of what I thought and some surprises.
The average reader of lamontations is
- male
- over 30
- someone who knows me in ‘real life’
- in the UK.
What they like and want on the site is
- stories about the background to my songs
- free albums to download
- free one off tracks as and when recorded
- ambient music (a surprise to me)
You can gather from the above that most prefer free tracks, but if they were to pay they’d willingly pay up to £1 a track. Not many do actually pay so I’ll take that as a gesture of goodwill in most cases. I provide most of my music free anyway and will be offering more back catalogue free on Bandcamp very soon.
Something I found very interesting is that the preferred channels to listen to my music were emphatically Soundcloud and YouTube, two platforms I use but haven’t put much thought into. Others like Bandcamp and Reverbnation were much further down the list, but still above the mainstream places like iTunes and Amazon.
So I’ll be working a bit on my Soundcloud and YouTube channels, guys. (You are guys, right?)
I asked about artists you like for the same reasons you like my material and got a wide range of answers. Most mentioned people I already name as influences – Dylan, Cohen, Fripp, Eno etc.
But I also got people who surprised me and a few I’d never heard of. Here are some of the names:
- Ry Cooder
- Weird Al
- The Who
- Susanna Espie
- Amy Macdonald
- Tiny Tim (Tiny Tim?)
- Awna Teixeira
- Dean Carter
- Laura Viers
- Marty Robbins
- Andy Othling
- Withered Hand
- Passenger
Some music for me to explore there.
OK, so it’s not a scientific survey and there were only a handful of responses, but that’s still better than guessing what I should be putting here, or even winding the whole thing up.
One change I’m going to make is to make the site more personal, less of the pretence of a ‘professional recording artist’ . When I first set up a music site I was looking at, not only famous artists, but also local professional and semi-pro artists and following how they did it. Now I know I’m talking mainly to people who know me, I can drop that persona and just be my own lovable self. See how you like that, punks!