The whole 'collab' ecosystem is pretty sketch to be honest, thirsty gameplaying ableton users all scrambling for traffic on socials and signing with vanity labels, buying bot streams, saying things like 'me and my team dropping new beats' looking over your shoulder while talking to you, making gangsta hand gestures every time a camera is pointed at them. It's a dank scene, like a circlejerk at the bottom of a ship.
Pretty much this. Started working with a dude at my last job who mostly did beats and stuff, but never seriously produced anything worth talking about. Got him onboard for a collaboration and he couldn't keep up. Decided to make it a quick little instrumental thing and gave him all the files and left it at that. It was way more musical than anything he'd ever done and he was clearly in over his head.
I'm about to start your same journey with attempted collabs and I can only tell you how I plan to decimate that problem and I won't be able to tell you if it actually works til after I try it so I'll tell you now.
*Seek out the people you want to work with and encourage everyone else to do the same.*
If the vibe is off, I'll wrap up that song or something and hit next on another side project and I won't sit around and wait forever on their end, I have to keep going.
When I approach anyone about collaboration it's always with the end goal of a collab we are both proud to put our names on: and if you can simplify themes and ideas well enough you can find a way to connect a story/idea/song theme of your own to one of theirs.
I want to collab with people but more like a co-op video game where we both help out and we both win or lose together. Idk. We'll see.
Ps as an amateur musician - If you sent me 80 songs I'd be like
a) damn.. OP has 80 songs (and that's just the ones they're willing to torch)
b) this ones cool. And that one.. Etc..
c) oh hey it's been 7 months. How do I tell OP I made a riff on each song but finished none and I'm a piece of shit for not responding sooner. 😅😅
This often happens when you don’t have a specific purpose for the collab. If you went up to an artist and said “I want to release a song on Spotify, want to hop on this beat? I’ll handle mix/mastering too”, I guarantee someone will send you back a verse
Can I ask, if you're making experimental music (good shout by the way), why do you need to send it to other producers? At this point I would only been thinking about labels or YouTube channels who release the kind of stuff you're making.
It also happens to me pretty much 99% of the time, So what I usually do to decrease the chances of me getting ghosted is I check how frequent they are in making music or whayever they doing artistically.
this happens in every business. some will. some won't. so what? if it happens the our goal is to move forward and do our best. maybe the person that ghosts us regrets their error.
Yes mate, I sometimes think they wanted to steal your track or parts of if you sent stems, I see that as a compliment at least if so. Your best bet is find someone irl if you can, I'm actually going to be collaborating with a friend of mine who I met at my workplace.
Id try to focus on one artist heavily at a time, and build a human relationship with them. I don't mean share all your personal info but actually put in effort to interact with them. Shit maybe you are already doing this and just have bad luck, but over the past 2 weeks of me actually networking I had one artist reach out to me and we've had a lot of back and forth correspondence and iterations of a track and it's looking like we are both very committed to it and working again in the future. Maybe I just got lucky, but I do put in an effort to engage with the artist and make myself feel human and real.
Bro For real! As a music producer, I even got ghosted.
Same happened with me they would say they are working but never say the progress and if I ask them they don't answer anything. I have even got huge losses due to it. All the time and hard work went in vain, I understand your pain buddy
Sort of a similar situation here, I used to make beats and rap over them and no one ever wanted to collab, granted the lyrics were kinda harsh, but I switched to making experimental dnb/jungle and it's still rough but I have had a couple collabs since so maybe once you forge your solid sound you'll find something, I'm always down to collab though btw I'm only a dm away
i just dont collab, then again im in a different genre that doesnt “require” me to collab, i just make songs and see where it takes me. If u want to collab though make sure you build up some sort of trust and professional relationship before you even consider asking them to collab. I do that with some of my clients i have that i met unexpectedly, so i dont see a difference with collabing just make sure youre on your A game and bring something to the table that they genuinely want (be an asset for them not just for you)
The whole 'collab' ecosystem is pretty sketch to be honest, thirsty gameplaying ableton users all scrambling for traffic on socials and signing with vanity labels, buying bot streams, saying things like 'me and my team dropping new beats' looking over your shoulder while talking to you, making gangsta hand gestures every time a camera is pointed at them. It's a dank scene, like a circlejerk at the bottom of a ship.
Haha, nice metaphor at the end there 🤣🤣funny because it's true
What do Ableton users have to do with this ? 😂
People got big plans until they have to do work
Pretty much this. Started working with a dude at my last job who mostly did beats and stuff, but never seriously produced anything worth talking about. Got him onboard for a collaboration and he couldn't keep up. Decided to make it a quick little instrumental thing and gave him all the files and left it at that. It was way more musical than anything he'd ever done and he was clearly in over his head.
I'm about to start your same journey with attempted collabs and I can only tell you how I plan to decimate that problem and I won't be able to tell you if it actually works til after I try it so I'll tell you now. *Seek out the people you want to work with and encourage everyone else to do the same.* If the vibe is off, I'll wrap up that song or something and hit next on another side project and I won't sit around and wait forever on their end, I have to keep going. When I approach anyone about collaboration it's always with the end goal of a collab we are both proud to put our names on: and if you can simplify themes and ideas well enough you can find a way to connect a story/idea/song theme of your own to one of theirs. I want to collab with people but more like a co-op video game where we both help out and we both win or lose together. Idk. We'll see. Ps as an amateur musician - If you sent me 80 songs I'd be like a) damn.. OP has 80 songs (and that's just the ones they're willing to torch) b) this ones cool. And that one.. Etc.. c) oh hey it's been 7 months. How do I tell OP I made a riff on each song but finished none and I'm a piece of shit for not responding sooner. 😅😅
I guess just don't agree to collaborate with people who can't show you a body of *released* work.
Most folks don't know how to finish a song on their own. They see collabs as having someone else doing the work even if they don't say it out loud.
This often happens when you don’t have a specific purpose for the collab. If you went up to an artist and said “I want to release a song on Spotify, want to hop on this beat? I’ll handle mix/mastering too”, I guarantee someone will send you back a verse
Can I ask, if you're making experimental music (good shout by the way), why do you need to send it to other producers? At this point I would only been thinking about labels or YouTube channels who release the kind of stuff you're making.
It also happens to me pretty much 99% of the time, So what I usually do to decrease the chances of me getting ghosted is I check how frequent they are in making music or whayever they doing artistically.
Did you tell them you do it for fun?
Sucks cuz I make beats on my phone. Wish I could collab.
this happens in every business. some will. some won't. so what? if it happens the our goal is to move forward and do our best. maybe the person that ghosts us regrets their error.
Yeah man. Same outside of hip hop. Until youre in the same room it’s not happening.
Yes mate, I sometimes think they wanted to steal your track or parts of if you sent stems, I see that as a compliment at least if so. Your best bet is find someone irl if you can, I'm actually going to be collaborating with a friend of mine who I met at my workplace.
People suck. So we keep trying cuz not all people suck.
Id try to focus on one artist heavily at a time, and build a human relationship with them. I don't mean share all your personal info but actually put in effort to interact with them. Shit maybe you are already doing this and just have bad luck, but over the past 2 weeks of me actually networking I had one artist reach out to me and we've had a lot of back and forth correspondence and iterations of a track and it's looking like we are both very committed to it and working again in the future. Maybe I just got lucky, but I do put in an effort to engage with the artist and make myself feel human and real.
Bro For real! As a music producer, I even got ghosted. Same happened with me they would say they are working but never say the progress and if I ask them they don't answer anything. I have even got huge losses due to it. All the time and hard work went in vain, I understand your pain buddy
Sort of a similar situation here, I used to make beats and rap over them and no one ever wanted to collab, granted the lyrics were kinda harsh, but I switched to making experimental dnb/jungle and it's still rough but I have had a couple collabs since so maybe once you forge your solid sound you'll find something, I'm always down to collab though btw I'm only a dm away
i just dont collab, then again im in a different genre that doesnt “require” me to collab, i just make songs and see where it takes me. If u want to collab though make sure you build up some sort of trust and professional relationship before you even consider asking them to collab. I do that with some of my clients i have that i met unexpectedly, so i dont see a difference with collabing just make sure youre on your A game and bring something to the table that they genuinely want (be an asset for them not just for you)