59. October Monthly Recap

Originally Published October 31st, 2024

What Happened in October?

The real question is “What didn’t happen in October?” I am beside myself that Fifteen Minutes of Fame is completing its fourth month. I would like to wish all of the FMOF community and any readers today a very Happy Halloween as we all are gearing up to scramble over to Mariah Carey's Instagram page to see how she plans to roll out her Holiday festivities this year!

October has been the best month yet for Fifteen Minutes of Fame. We had an amazing campaign with so many wonderful submissions for reviews. Overall, the posts that launched the October campaign received more than 20,000 views (!!!!!!) and we had more artists submitting for reviews than ever! Additionally, Fifteen Minutes of Fame rolled out the Fifteen Minutes of Fame Blind Reactions campaign on Spotify and this campaign received more than 10,000 views with hundreds of submissions as well!

In October, Fifteen Minutes of Fame published 10 new reviews. The reviews covered artists from South Dakota, Germany, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ireland, Canada, Florida, California, and England. With the addition of South Dakota to the FMOF map, we are now at 20 covered states in the US! Also, we’ve added Ireland to the overall countries on our global reach putting that at a total of 11 countries represented!

There were so many artists who submitted this month. I am blown away by the response of people who are reaching out. There are some reviews from this month’s submissions that are still upcoming because they are November releases. There are so many talented artists out there; you should all be proud of yourselves. You’re music is real and touching. Thank you. 

I want to recognize the 10 wonderful artists that were reviewed in October: 

Katie Dwyer

Novelley

Madyson Left

circumstantial saint

Taylor D

Fireworks Over London

Charlie A'Court

The Galaxy Electric

Uta K

Ian Roland

I will say, you can definitely tell it is October and I am in a fall state of mind! This month, Fifteen Minutes of Fame featured artists who were well versed in Folk, Roots, Spoken Word Poetry, Pop Rock, Alternative Rock, Blues, Country, Soul, Electronic, and Rap. Many of the artists reviewed displayed a variety of genres within their own work. This month featured award winning artists, artists who’ve charted in categories on iTunes, and who have featured on radio and television. These musicians are exemplary and ones we should all aspire to.

Fifteen Minutes of Fame: Blind Reactions

October also became the month where Fifteen Minutes of Fame launched our First Blind Reactions campaign! The response was outstanding. FMOF landed on doing Blind Reactions for a couple of reasons:

1. In researching for articles over the last few months, I’ve learned that many of the artists who submit work for reviews have music videos to go with them. They range from low-budget DIY videos to professionally engineered productions that likely cost thousands of dollars to make. I think it is important to show the diversity in which an independent artist can promote their music and produce something to visually represent their music.
2. The articles have time restrictions, whereas the Blind Reviews do not. Every month, I have a handful of submissions that I have to disqualify because the don’t meet the deadlines given for those campaigns. The thing is, I listen to music even if it doesn’t meet the deadline because I’m still interested in hearing the music. Eliminating the deadline for Blind Reactions gives me an opportunity to promote artists who have excellent work, but maybe haven’t released anything in a little while.

That being said, there are some things that will disqualify a music video:

1. I will not post a reaction to an AI-made video. I’ve been pretty vocal about my stance on AI. Though I do think it has its uses, even in the music industry. Where I feel like I draw an ethical line is with any actual creative process. In other words, if you take a picture or perform a song, that is your picture; your song. Using AI to enhance your creation is ok. If you use AI to create a picture or create a song and submit it as your own, I respectfully cannot support this work. Because it’s derivative of somebody else who is not being credited.
2. No lyric videos as this would be just reading, I don’t see any point in reacting to these videos. This does not apply if your video has a storyline and also has lyrics present. I’m talking about purely lyric videos.
3. No Live Performance or Demo Live Recordings The goal here is to promote traditional music videos that have storylines, etc. if your video has a story element to it AND a band or musician performance, (for example Smells Like Teen Spirit) that is acceptable.

Other than that, I am a strong advocate for an artist’s right to express themselves. I will not have any censorship restrictions. Depending on the content, I may place a disclaimer on a video. Barring anything that might violate the 1st Amendment’s stipulation that content is harmful to any person or discriminates in any way, all submissions will be accepted and the goal is to do the reactions for all of them!

In October, there were 8 posted blind reactions and there was 1 interview posted to the FMOF YouTube Channel. There have been SO MANY submissions for Blind Reactions and I am working my way through all of them. Thank you to all who have submitted their incredible work!

A special thanks to Changeling for a very special interview where we talked gigs, local music scenes, being an independent artist and how to produce music videos, and record on a budget. It was great getting a better glimpse into the happenings of the Indiana rockers and look forward to some of their upcoming projects!

My How We’ve Grown!

Every month, I don’t know what to expect with Fifteen Minutes of Fame. It’s been such an elated feeling to watch this little idea slowly develop into this movement that is bigger than any one artist. It’s so special to me because the bricks to this foundation are made by the dreams of independent artists everywhere. October has been the biggest month of growth to date. It brings joy to my heart to see these dreams are alive, well, and on the path to being realized!

THE BLOG:

The month of October has been our most active month since starting Fifteen Minutes of Fame. We had 1,569 visits, which is significantly more than any other month and about 600 more visits than we had last month! Our total views on the blog to date is 4,969 which means that we will surpass 5,000 views any day now! Thank you so much! 

We also had our most active month with comments, as we added 19 comments, bringing the total number to 60! There is still a huge opportunity there to continue to drive site visits by commenting on these artist reviews and keeping conversations going. 

SOCIAL MEDIA:

October was the most successful month as far as social media growth is concerned. I am speechless at the amount of traffic that took place throughout the various profiles and platforms for Fifteen Minutes of Fame. I’m in AWE of you!

Facebook grew from 110 followers to 121, putting the platforms growth at 10%.

Instagram grew from 546 followers to 762 followers! That is 2 followers shy of a growth of 40%!

On Threads, we grew from 1,043 to 1,281 followers! That is a growth of 23%.

In its second official month, YouTube grew from 3 subscribers to 44. I am sure as content continues to roll out on YouTube, more and more readers/listeners/watchers will find us there!

I haven’t been disclosing TikTok to date, but since I’ve started trying to build YouTube, I’ve been using TikTok to boost promotions for the YouTube campaigns. TikTok saw a growth of 15% and received thousands of views advertising for blind reactions on YouTube!

Speaking of views, I want to run over some of the success that was had across each of these platforms.

First, in its first real month, YouTube has had nearly 400 views to date, from just 30 last month! There have been nearly 70 actions including likes and comments.

The Reels views took a significant increase in performance from last month. Overall, Instagram reached over 6,000 viewers last month, with more than 500 engagements. That is the most activity that has taken place in Instagram by far, having more activity than the previous three months combined!

Thank you so much!

What’s Next?

November Campaign: 

On November 1st, I will be pushing out the November campaign announcement, so hopefully, there will be another huge push for review submissions!

Typical rules apply:

I will be accepting submissions for releases from October 1st and forward!

Don’t forget about my 3 asks when you have work reviewed:

1. Always, when posting, reposting, or sharing a review or any FMOF, content, try to tag the post with #fmof let’s get those algorithms working for us!

2. Be Creative with how you market your work using the review! It’s ok, if you just want to repost a link to the review, but try to make a poster, video, or something else to promote your work, using some highlighted quotes from the review!

3. Pay it Forward Be sure to visit the blog and select at least one artist, read the review, listen to the music, follow the artist, reach out to them and let them know how they did. And leave comments on their blog and your own! We are playing a game of algorithm chess. Interacting with one another is how we win!

Blind Reactions Campaign:

So, this is going to work a little differently. I’m essentially going to keep doing these and keep requesting them, with the intent to post videos for every submission I receive. Right now, I’m trying to get my footing with how I am going to do this. But, all I can say is, keep them coming! My goal is to respond to every qualified submission!

Interviews: 

I am excited to announce that the 4th Fifteen Minutes of Fame Interview has been slated this month and will be posted at the end of the month. It will be the FIRST international interview with the incredibly talented, incredibly wonderful Kathi Deakin. This should be a great interview with some exciting news so be sure to check it out!

STILL LOOKING FOR A LOGO…

I’m going to reach out once again to you all. I would love to have the FMOF community involved in the design of the logo. If you’re interested in designing a logo for FMOF, please message me on Instagram. ($$$)

Final Thoughts

I want to close by talking about something that could actually bring tears to my eyes. I’m talking about realized vision. This month, I have had the privilege of being involved in some collaborative efforts between two extraordinary gentlemen who have started their own efforts to support the indie artist community. 

The first person I want to acknowledge is Marc Schuster. Marc hosts a radio show, audiomiragestudios, another one called tweetcore radio hour, he has a podcast, AND he has a blog. This month, I received submissions from people who heard about FMOF from some of the resources Marc provides; not from FMOF posts. Marc has also featured FMOF artists on his radio show, a song of mine, AND he interviewed me to discuss FMOF really taking an opportunity to network and put the word out for what our two communities are doing.

Additionally, Neccos for Breakfast has begun his own campaign #communityovercompetition and it is flourishing! Last month, I wrote a review of his song disco helmet man. This month, he debuted the music video that features DOZENS of independent musicians. Furthermore, the song itself was inspired by his reaction to how an independent artist was perceived on social media. 

There have been a few instances where our goals and initiatives have aligned and I see the workings of a real alliance. If you haven’t, you need to check out what these incredible guys are doing; not just their work with independent artists, but their own music as well, as they (like me) are independent musicians themselves.

Thank You!

That is a wrap for the October Recab! Here comes November! Let’s make this holiday season a great one for independent artists!

If you have read to this point, comment the word “Turkey” in the Comment Section of this article!