This article is based on this Dutch article by Martijn Benders
In the past six months, I’ve managed to gather 130 subscribers on YouTube with my personal account. Yesterday, I investigated how many subscribers people I know, who’ve been acting like celebrities their entire lives online, actually have: about the same number. Does this mean these people aren’t really famous and only act like it, or is this the number you have to deal with as a famous artist in the Netherlands? I think the answer lies somewhere in between. A fairly famous band like Spinvis, for example, has 4,000 subscribers.
That’s actually very little. 4,000 fans among 17 million people? Or even more, considering it’s worldwide Dutch speakers.
So if you have 150 subscribers, you can count yourself among the semi-celebrities, and that fate has now befallen me. I’ve already started not responding to people because that’s a taboo for real celebrities.
Your website absolutely shouldn’t have a ‘contact’ section either. Unapproachability is the essence of fame. Put a contact button there and you’re immediately part of the gray masses.
Meanwhile, the Bend-O-Matics have returned to Hieperdepiep Records. I hadn’t heard from them for quite a while. The guys have been practicing hard to polish their garage sound. This is their new song, Summertime Blues. I mastered it myself yesterday.
The Runway clips aren’t everything yet, but they’re already quite good.
By the way, I’m not really a big fan of Spinvis. It’s slightly better than other local bands but just too pseudo for me. On SoundCloud, Spinvis has six times more subscribers than I do (450), but they only get an average of about six likes, which I can also achieve now.
So my LIKE DENSITY is significantly higher, for those of you who love charts.
‘Yes Benders, like density, what do I do with that?’ I hear many a skeptic asking aloud.
Friend, it’s all about like density, everything in life.
Think about your mother. How many likes did you get from her? And how are you doing now? Exactly, see. Like density.
I quickly did a random check on Spinvis. Because maybe I listened to the wrong songs, you never know, so you try again:
It starts nicely, the music pleasantly drifting like Kift. But then: that man can’t sing, can he? What a whiny voice. And if the lyrics were great, but come on, ‘I’m tired of it,’ what a pun and wit. Huhuhu, I’m King Alcohol tired! No, I couldn’t take it any longer. I’m just very sensitive to voices. Someone has to be able to sing, that’s the first condition for me, and the lyrics also have to be very good.
Tastes differ, but I love beautiful, soft, understated voices. By the way, Bonny Prince Billy has 8,000 YouTube subscribers, I saw. So I’m already at 5% BPB level, for those of you who love infographics!
Martijn 06-07-2024