In January 2018 I decided that I would launch an indie music blog and artist community on Instagram. I had always been out supporting the local music and arts scene and amazed at the talent. I was always sharing my experiences with others so I decided that I would dedicate myself to being on the scene,& essentially covering events on my phone, and just spreading the word about anything dope going on. I would also keep artists in the know of opportunities and teach them how to brand & market themselves.
I had always been passionate about marketing and branding. I basically signed myself up to be a one-woman media team along with my friend Terrance, who was just starting out in videography. We hit the ground running creating a lot of content, and I made Instagram my home base for content. I started to pay more attention to the artists I stumbled across and reposted their content. I also got into coordinating events, curating playlist series, and just being on scene for whatever was going on so that I could show everyone what was going on. We live in Columbia, SC where most people coming from “real” cities would say is boring and there is nothing to do. I remember one of my friends hitting me up saying “yo Cre you got Columbia looking lit!”. There were several people who told me that they had no idea so much was going on in Columbia until I stepped on scene.
While I loved the live action that comes with micro-blogging on Instagram and Facebook, I have always been about ownership . I started blogging in 2011 when I was a stay-at-home mom trying to make money online so I was familiar with how to set up hosting, and domains, and set up a basic WordPress blog. I was always doing the most so I didn’t stay consistent with it, but I did it here and there.
I returned to blogging in March 2018 on Wordpress. I decided to launch an indie music blog on my self-hosted Wordpress site. I had a rocky, yet decent start reviewing local artists & recapping events in my area. Most of my content was published on Instagram because my hands were full with various gigs, event hopping, and content creation that I never had the time to upload to a blog. Wordpress Maintenance has always been a pain in the ass.
I always felt like maybe I just needed to take more classes, but if I am honest it’s just too time-consuming for my life. I just want to write, upload a pic, and video and go. But there are all these hiccups along the way plus installing and updating plugins to do basic things like center your photo, have your title show up a certain way, to keep spam bots out, you name it. My blog became a thing that I wrote on every few months and then completely abandoned it. I also got some feedback that I need to redesign my blog. So I decided that in 2020 I would spend that year revamping my design. I purchased a new theme and played around with different designs. Here in 2022 I am still not done. In fact, I was almost done but I messed around too much with different settings that had me feeling like I would need to start all the way over with a new theme.
The worst part is I did some music reviews along the way that never got published because the maintenance of the blog was too much for my busy lifestyle. I am a mom of 3 living with chronic health conditions that take up a lot of my energy and time before I even punch in on anyone’s clock. Plus I am a crazy, multi-passionate creative that always has my hands in some new project. My ADHD tendencies makes it hard to finish things. There is always some new idea I want to embark on so I forget to go back and finish other things I've started. .
I recently had to weigh my options because my brand has grown so much on and offline. I am well known in the city as that go to person if you’re trying to get your artist career to take off. Some event curators have started to put me on their guest list or giving me press passes.
I wanted to have a home for my blog to have something to call my own.
I said I would go with Squarespace and started a free trial to test out their platform (UX(user experience)/UI(User Interface) design). I love what I came up with, but I had to be honest about the huge jump in price. I am currently paying $9.99 at GreenGeeks for hosting and I can host as many websites as I want. I also have other domains that I wanted to keep. Squarespace would cost me $19 plus per month for each domain. That isn’t a lot of money, but we live in Subscription World where all this shit starts to add up! I also had to be honest with myself about how I am still planning my business and rebranding with no cushion from a 9–5 like most people.
I quit my job back in February to save my health and sanity so I can focus more on studying to transition to a career in Tech, and to focus on ways I can monetize my present and past efforts. I made the decision that I can’t give an honest date on when I can relaunch a blog. There is so much work associated with transferring content to a new platform, and right now I don’t have it.
So I am doing what needs to be done: I am starting a blog here on Medium until I work out my own blog. I don’t want to let anymore artists down who are waiting on the blog to wait another 3 years-ish because that is how it is looking. I spend a lot of time creating content on Instagram, but I wanna do something for people who enjoy reading. I most definitely will repurpose the old social media content & blog posts and pull a lot of things out of the vault, but I needed a fresh start that doesn’t involve spending all day aligning text and images, updating plugins, and all that other BUULLLSHIITTT. I am so glad you guys let me get that off my chest LOL.
I really just don’t want to spend forever trying to transfer over blogs and missing my calling as a writer because of all the technical things. I am very grateful that Medium seems to be user-friendly.
What can you expect on the blog? Music reviews, playlist , write-ups on artists, and my thinkpieces on all things indie music, artist community, music business, and my love for music and authentic experiences overall. There will be a lot of meat between my Instagram, podcast, playlists on Apple & Spotify, and this blog.
I look forward to producing authentic content that speaks to your soul. Let me know how you resonate with my blogs in the comments please!
