ALIBII’s Will explores the challenges of navigating the ever-changing digital landscape and the abundance of content in the music industry.
Will from ALIBII delves into the challenges of navigating the ever-changing landscape of creativity in the digital age.
With their recent single “Figure 8” seamlessly blending indie rock and synth-pop, Will explores the impact of technology on artists and the overwhelming abundance of content.
While technology has made music creation more accessible, the sheer volume of songs uploaded to platforms like Spotify every day presents a daunting task of standing out.
Will contemplates the delicate balance between following trends and maintaining authenticity, all while grappling with limited time and resources.
He shares ALIBII’s struggle to create captivating video content and conquer the algorithms that dictate success.
In this era of infinite content, Will reflects on the challenges artists face and their ongoing pursuit of artistic excellence amidst the pressures of mass production and the ever-changing digital landscape.
Infinite Content & the Abundance of Creatives
Every artist, no matter their field, cannot deny that we are indebted to the advances technology has brought us in the last 10 or even 5 years.
The ease of creation, the global connection and multitude of platforms to deliver the product. Being a musician has never been easier than it is now.
Not only is music software cheaper and more user friendly (Logic, Ableton or free alternatives like FruityLoops or GarageBand), even artists like Kendrick Lamar and Gorillaz have attested by releasing albums using minimal software.
Not to mention requirements of songwriting, after the dominance of Rap and HipHop genres in the last decade, trap beats and catchy samples are enough to please, and if Rap isn’t your style websites like Splice have huge sample libraries full of bass parts, piano and guitar chords and live drum samples.
Point being, if someone wanted to make a song with zero knowledge of music, they could copy and paste the parts to the best of their ability and could have a nearly completed quality sounding track.
The fact that we have the capacity to throw a song together with websites and software, upload to a streaming service and have the potential of being heard in another country, all without even being a musician, is truly amazing, but is there a down side?
So here we are in the future, a vast majority of 8 billion people have never been more connected, our phones have HD movie quality cameras (with the right lighting of course), and discovering new content and information barely takes any effort.
Well the “monkey see monkey do” attitude is strong, and if people can do it, they usually will. Its so easy to do, it doesn’t cost much to distribute, and plus who knows, maybe your song will be discovered, go viral and you can ride the fame train to Hollywood. It would be nice if it were that easy.
Over 100,000 songs are uploaded to Spotify every day, the songs that succeed and get above a million streams are truly the tip of the iceberg compared to the remaining mass of songs that receive the <1000 play count. So what can you do to give yourself and edge?
When it comes to what interests a publishing company, record label or really anyone that can help you progress in your artist journey, there’s really one thing; Online Presence. It’s pre-existing proof that people are already interested in you.
Now for some creatives this is a positive. They’re in control of the public persona, their photos, their video content and their music, and if they have the right concept or ideas, they can have total synergy across all of their content.
But for others it can be the hardest part, whether it’s those who only care about the music or those who just struggle to think of or execute ideas for tiktok or Instagram.
For us in Alibii, it is purely a challenge of time. We both work two jobs throughout the week, where the majority of the free time is spent writing, producing or rehearsing our songs, continually trying to tighten our sound.
In fact, we only have one day a week where we are both free at the same time. This gives us a single day to cover the majority of the “content” we need to create to grow our project.
And then once we have the time, it’s then a matter of ideas. Do you follow the trends and hope to ride the train until the next trend? Do you attempt to stand out by trying something you’ve never seen, running the risk of obscurity?
Do you ignore concept and creativity and just mass produce any kind of content in the hopes to flood users’ feeds so you can’t be ignored?
These are still questions we don’t know the answers to. Tiktok apparently recommends 1-4 posts a DAY for the highest chance of growth, as well as rewarding users who use the app more (i.e the greater part you play in the community, the more chance you will be cycled throughout).
Now that makes sense, post a lot and follow a lot and you’ll be noticed, but on the other hand it also sounds like “spend all of your time on tiktok and the algorithm may favour you” and for anyone that has been a prisoner to doom scrolling, you can understand why using tik tok all day isn’t an ideal.
And it’s not just tiktok, there is a fast growing user base now moving to Instagram Reels, where an untapped demographic sits. Tiktok has the hold on tweens, teens and twenty year olds, but a lot of the generation just above that (late 20s – 30s) have a loyalty and preference to Instagram.
We still are finding the happy balance of working, funding ourselves and trying to produce a high quality of music (any chance of having a holiday or a personal life is now off the table, but that’s par for the course).
We do enjoy being able to have so many outputs of originality but sadly do not have the formula to fast tracked success.
Now that we’ve started to get a better grasp on our sound and preparing for our other upcoming releases, our next step will be honing in on video content and somehow conquering the ever changing algorithm that controls our future.
