Edit, Tag and Post. Repeat.

With the constant updating of the screen after posting his latest video, the nerves of whether people will like this post just as much as his last. This is a question that many indie musicians sometimes have. Most of the performance that is posted on their account is cut down to just the best 50–60 seconds that they found in the 2 hours of footage they sat through.

It was rather amazing seeing how one musician in particular was looking every now and then how many people were tuning in on his live stream. I tuned in to his stream and saw how this musician in particular was adding more cuts and rolls to his playing every time someone responded to his live stream. It was almost as if the people that were tuning in were in control of how he performed.

After the show, the young drummer took a couple pictures with the group, the stage, crowd and then left. The next morning I looked up his Instagram account to find that he had posted new content which were tagged with many musicians that were playing that night. To top it off, the post were songs that were well known and have been popular at the time and he had felt that they were close to the original. The reason for all this trouble was to hopefully get his post shared and become known to others outside his social network. By tagging different people into his post, the goal was get his name out there because the other musicians were well known in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Baltimore. So by posting himself playing alongside them, he felt he had a good chance of becoming as well known as the others.

The short video that was posted was a cover of a song that most of his audience knew well. With an upbeat song and multiple people tagged in his post it was no surprise that this post in particular was one his most viewed and most liked post. However it was not the best overall which was rather surprising. Instead his best post was of him covering a song on the drums. So although he went through all the trouble of tagging and editing, he still couldn’t manage to his most recent video to do better than his previous ones.

The same can be traced back to the film directors in the book Reel World because they are creating films they believe will be a hit. Many times they fail and end up losing money, but they continue to create new films in hopes that they become successful directors. There is never a guarantee that the films they produce will draw many crowds but one way they can help to do so is by getting assistance from well-known actors to help to promote the film. They can also use the song that is in the film to be played in stations to help draw more interest towards the film.

Overall the act of trying to do better than your previous post can work or fail and there is no real way of predicting the success of each post. Both directors in Tamil cinema and indie musicians on social media share the same uncertainty about their work and come up with new ways to promote their talents while also improving along the way.