Volume Media Sessions: Ideating.
For the past 3 years I have been a live music photographer, shooting music and events from Byron Bay in the North, down to Launceston in the South, and Canberra inland. Throughout this, I have noticed an over saturation of photographers in what is quite a small market. The issue lay in publications having too many photographers to fulfil everyone’s desires. If there are 30 photographers all requesting the same gig, 29 people are going to be disappointed. After experiencing this multiple times myself, and realising I had the skills and the contacts, I decided to branch out and make my own website, Volume Media. This was about 18 months ago, and it was not an easy process. It has gone through a name change, and massive directional changes to get to where it is today.
What I did in creating my own site is not new, now more than ever there are large numbers of small scale, independent live music publications. But what I have noticed by and large, is a lack of unique, engaging, raw and emotive content. Every so often a publication will publish a great interview, where you get a real connection with an artist, or a set of photos from a live show showing an intimate moment on stage. But interviews happen en masse, and there are multiple photographers in the pit at the same time, capturing the same things you are. While one publications photos may be much better than another’s, there is no deciding factor in what makes people choose to view one set of photos over another, other than website loyalty, or perhaps what comes up first on Facebook, or in a Google Search. Don’t get me wrong, this content is invaluable, and I love what I do, I think many people overlook or devalue live music photographers. But there is definitely a gap in content in terms of unique content.
It can be daunting starting or running a small publication in the current media landscape. There is a massive amount of music blogs out there, but as Kevin Kelly wrote in ‘The Internet Is Still at the Beginning of Its Beginning – “You are not late.” He also stated “The things we will make will be constantly, relentlessly becoming something else.” And this is what I am doing. I started with a live music photography website with content solely populated by myself, and I have branched out into other genres and events, and branched out in terms of staff, writers and shooters. And from here, we reach my DA.
I’ve decided to launch a set of acoustic videos with artists. This content would be completely unique to my website, and the intimacy of an acoustic video really allows an opportunity for a direct connection with an artist. This can bring visitors to my site by offering them content that they cannot access elsewhere, as well as providing an outcome to artists and PR agencies, by helping them promote themselves, or the artists on their roster.
Britt Andrews 
August 19, 2018 at 2:10 am
Fantastic blog post on your work so far. The first paragraph providing the background and context to the project was really useful. It places it for the reader into a lens by which we can understand your thought process. When you talk about the first prototype of Volume Media, some screenshots of the website and progress would really enhance the post. Blogs are designed to be engaging both with ones writing and images. To break up some the text, photos would be awesome. Even include some of the memes and gifs you’ve used in your twitter feed? Would definitely enhance your writing! I like how you write about the gap in content and your passions, it shows why you’re building and designing what you are. If you could write a little more about the concept it would really add to the ideation phase, and the reader would have a bit more of an idea of what the background information is leading into. Awesome work so far, I’m excited to see how this project turns out. Good luck!