If I was on the front page of AOL in 1997 you'd probably think I was a big shot.
If I had ten followers on LiveJournal in 2000, you'd probably think I was a big shot.
If I had a hundred subscribers to my blog in 2003, you'd probably think I was a big shot.
If I had a thousand friends on MySpace in 2006, you'd probably think I was a big shot.
If I had ten thousand friends on Facebook in 2009, you'd probably think I was a big shot.
If I had a hundred thousand followers on Twitter in 2012...well, you get the idea.
What'll be the sign that I'm a big shot in 2015? Who knows?
That's the thing about social media. It's ephemeral. It's constantly changing. And as potentially fun and rewarding as it can be, there's no guarantee that the effort I put into building my social media platform today will guarantee that I'll have an audience tomorrow. You could all move on in the blink of an eye.
Not to mention the very real threat that you may come to find me on one of my social media outlets one day and find I've given up on it. I can't even list all the detritus out there on the internet with my name still on it. All internet communication exists under the implicit threat that you could lose contact suddenly and permanently.
With one exception.
I've had the same e-mail address since I made it up in the middle school library in 7th grade. Of course, I've changed providers and everything else since then, but if I ever want to access my old account, I've still got it, and it's still forwarding even to my professional account today.
E-mail is, for good or ill, the gold standard of contacting your audience. I've said more about this phenomenon here. But, long story short, as much as I hate mailing lists, as an artist and a small businessman it's absolutely imperative that I have one. So I hope you'll sign up for mine today. You have my ironclad guarantee: one e-mail for each release, no spam. Thanks everybody!
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