Jonathan Coulton, a Day in the Life

The New York Times is running a look behind the scenes with singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton, creator the somewhat popular "Thing a week" songs on his blog. Coulton describes a bit of how he got started and what daily life is like maintaining relations with his fans. "Along the way, he discovered a fact that many small-scale recording artists are coming to terms with these days: his fans do not want merely to buy his music. They want to be his friend. And that means they want to interact with him all day long online. They pore over his blog entries, commenting with sympathy and support every time he recounts the difficulty of writing a song. They send e-mail messages, dozens a day, ranging from simple mash notes of the "you rock!" variety to starkly emotional letters, including one by a man who described singing one of Coulton's love songs to his 6-month-old infant during her heart surgery. Coulton responds to every letter, though as the e-mail volume has grown to as many as 100 messages a day, his replies have grown more and more terse, to the point where he's now feeling guilty about being rude."

Comments

Losing His Segment

[mfh]

John has to know that with popularity will come the pressures of fanmail. Do not answer all of it. Pick three a day, MAX, that are worthy of response, and archive/backup the rest (mainly for legal reasons).

You have to delegate your time when you're a public figure. Don't waste it by talking to people who idolize you. At the very best it will make them STILL LOVE YOU. At the very worst, it could break the illusion of your stardom and cause them to lose interest (and you lose your fan) -- or even cause them to get a wrong vibe from you that could lead to some serious personal safety ramifications.

Sometimes stars need to be up in the sky. At night.