Music Group…
The original concept of this site was to be a hub for new music – not just R&B music. Our origin and M.O. was supposed to be a place to find new music for all genre’s with writers and content creators in their respective lane providing content for fans to truly find new music regardless of an artist’s stature or history – if the music was good, we wanted to promote it.
When it came time to execute, the content quickly shifted to only one individual providing constant content while other writers moved on to other passions in their life, leaving this site to be focused in its entirety on R&B Music from its infancy. That’s why this was never called “R&B Music Group” yet simply “Music Group”. Individually, we were grown men in our 40’s who have had a history of obviously being huge fans of music, but also involved in Record Pools, DJ’ing in Toronto and attending concerts as frequent as the wallet allowed us. Years later, the focus shifted to becoming more of a behind-the-scenes operation where our identity was never important, it was never about us, it was always about the music. We’re not doing anything here, this is all about the grind, the sweat, the creative process and execution of these immensely talented artists.
1%. That’s what it was all about. Doing our 1% to get great music into the ears of new listeners that deserved to be there. Finding a new artist that you can share within your circle of friends or online groups that no one knew about was the drive. There are few better feelings then discovering that new, talented artist who you know is going to be a Superstar and share that with as many people as you can. Being the Home of this notion was what it was all about.
The marketplace of what we were trying to do already existed but they continued to put spotlights on artists that didn’t necessarily need the attention. We get it, putting out an article on someone who has two singles to their portfolio is going to garner significantly less traction and ‘clicks’ that an article on The Weeknd or Bryson Tiller would. And ‘clicks’ are what drive metrics, which ultimately drive revenue. We never took this approach. We didn’t want to litter the website with ad’s or charge artists for yet another expense, so we operated 100% for three full years never collecting a single penny from anyone – in fact, we refused money, donations, and more from anyone that wanted to thank us. An artist already has to pay for studio time, samples, engineering, mixing, production/beats, artwork, printing, and so much more, why should we have our hand out too? We want to continue to float these artists up, not drag them down and bury them with another fee so deep that they don’t show up again. They give us so much already.
As we kicked off 2023, we started to charge artists who wanted to promote their singles a small fee, (I think it was $12 Canadian) completely going against our entire purpose – and it felt wrong. At the same time, you can be sure that the $12 an artist paid us certainly got their monies worth in our view. Social media platform posts with video samples and a personalized, dedicated article made me feel like it was ok to charge an artist -afterall we are easily spending 3-4 hours on a single post – but it wasn’t.
As we approach our 4 year anniversary in July, the sustainability of the website has taken an obvious turn, where metrics really did become important. Not the metrics that are measured in dollars and cents, but the metrics on Our Relevancy. Our Importance. Our Point. I failed to get over 800 followers on Instagram even after running paid ad’s for months. I know that isn’t and shouldn’t be the barometer of success, but its certainly a contributing one. Oh, and Twitter had us stuck on 300 followers. Of those followers on Twitter, the vast majority are fake accounts of porn stars or scam accounts. Incredibly disappointing. Our posts would get minimal impressions, and almost zero interactions. Quite disappointing when you spend hours researching an artist and prepping posts on these social channels. The frustration grew seeing other blog’s get endless interactions with virtually zero proprietary content. How can they have so many followers and have all of these artists & people chatting up their pages and Music Group gets nothing? It appeared that I failed. I couldn’t get enough traffic here to stay relevant. I couldn’t compete with the others. I can honestly say that I gave this thing every ounce that I had to promote these talented souls. I’m sorry.
Because of this, after months of reflection, it has become obvious that its time to close this chapter of my life and move on from Music Group.
The one thing that was the most eye-opening to me through this entire journey was how open and honest these musicians were. They’re not just an open book in their lyrics and music, they are unguarded in their conversation as well. I want to thank so many people for their time in connecting with me. I profoundly enjoyed (virtually) meeting you all and chatting about your music and lending my thoughts and ideas when asked. All of the promoters and producers, and of course, the Artists. You guys are amazing people, and I wish you endless success and prosperity. Thank you for always being available to talk with me about the music that we mutually love.
All the best.
Steven.