Since I
hold a couple of gateways to different things, I get a lot of requests on
social media. Most people are of course people I never have met in real life. There
are fake accounts so the first thing you look after if the person is real. If
we have common friends is a sign that the person is real, not just one common friend
but a couple.

Now these
common friends also give away a bit what level you are on in the industry.
Almost like a fortune teller, I can read what you want and what will happen with
your friend’s request. I have been playing with my staff here in the office to
see if my theory is right and so far, I have been better than the fortune teller
machine Zoltar in the movie “Big”.

One example
is when an unknown artist is making a friend’s request. You can see that they are
new to the industry, there are few friends and the ones they have is usual
local heroes in the area they are from. I usually say yes, and my guess is that
that in the first 48 hours I will get a message with a question that they can
send a song for me to listen to.

The fun
part is that since they are an artist I just go into their accounts and check out
what they have so when the question comes, I have usually already seen and
heard it. It only takes a couple of minutes. I like those in one way. The problem is
usually that they demand a lot of feedback which I really don’t have time to
answer on. Unfortunately, my work time is limited to helping you with your new
song that is already released.

Then you
have a certain area. You get friend’s requests from local industry professionals
and you can easily see that all the friends are from an area or a specific
country. These usually just say hello and hope that they will meet me on some
convention later that are held in their area. The strange part is that they never
offer their services or do an exchange thing?

Then you
have the bragger. These are usually older people ask for friendship and immediately
start boosting about names they have worked with. The main problem with these
is that the names they are throwing around are generally not in the industry any
longer, a lot of “has been”. The question comes down to that they seek a job or something
that we can hire them for. The problem here is that the friend’s list gives away
that your “best before” date is long overdue and several of the same friends
have done the exact same request.

Then you
have the spies. The ones that just make a friend’s request. You can see that they
hold quite many interesting contacts. These usually just never send you a message.
Instead, they are in for keeping an eye on what you are launching and what you
are telling. This is the reason why I stopped telling who I meet or when. The
only time I do that is if something is already made a decision on and I want to
brag.  During on showcase festival, we
made the whole page crazy by taking pictures with big companies and posting them
on social media and everybody though we did deal with them.

Another
cringy one is the artist that runs around like a headless chicken befriending
everyone and ask for favors. There you can see that they end up with a list of
who is who along with the shady people in the industry. In those cases, I more or
less just avoid them. In the end, they will never make it.

This is of course just for fun. The list, later on, can grow and can reveal when a person is getting to a place where they are an influencer in the industry. Still in many cases, if your friends are only bearded men that plays the flute, I know what level you are on. 

Yes,
everything can be read in the numbers on the internet.  Still, we can’t seem to get an accurate top
chart?