Once upon a rebrand.
A small backstory on the history of a long term, multi disciplined artist about how and why the "Branding" aspect that comes with the territory has proved to be constant pain point. =) Expand for context...
On "May 31, 2019" I made the request to my digital music distributor (at the time) to change my "Producer Alias" artist name from "Dutchy" to "Dutchyyy"
How and why did we get here?
So, I'll explain how and why "Dutchy" (my producer alias) became "Dutchyyy" but first some nuance around Artist branding in general over a long period of time, especially when the artist wears many different hats and likes to be creative outside of one specific style or genre.
For this not to be taken as "Sounds like a you problem" I'll provide a few examples that are not about myself.
Deftones / Team Sleep
Kool Keith / Dr. Octagon
David Bowie / Ziggy Stardust
Julian “Cannonball” Adderley / Buckshot La Funke
Titty boi / 2chainz
Madlib / Yesterday's New Quintet
This list could go on for miles and some of the examples I gave have several aliases.
For me personally.
Birth Name: Dutch
1994 - DigOne (Graffiti)
1995 - DutchMaster / Autol0gik (Emcee)
1998 - Dutchmassive (emcee)
2006 - The Hobbyshop Hero (Blogger)
2012 - Dutchy (Producer)
2012 - PeacePeaceGawd (Social Media)
2019 - Dutchyyy (Producer)
Now I'll explain the reasoning behind them in reverse chronological order beginning with the Subject of this Artifact.
Dutchy to Dutchyyy.
On January 1st 2016, I dropped one album through a digital music distributor then said, "Nope, This may be convenient as a listener, this may be reaction to combating piracy but this model is definitely anti-artist on so many levels" and I never touched Spotify, Apple, etc again as an artist or a listener and continued to buy music either digitally on Bandcamp or buy the physical releases.
This choice did not come without constant pushback from fans, so in 2018 I tested the waters releasing 5 separate singles throughout the year under the artist name Dutchy. Got scammed by those playlist submit hub things and realized for all the pushback I was getting about not having my catalog on streaming platforms, the Data was showing me the demand didn't match the data I saw from bandcamp or soundcloud in terms of people listening. That was fine, but the problem I was having was every time I went to upload a new song, when I checked my artist page there was always like 6 other artists named Dutchy who's crappy music kept getting attached to my artist profiles. The amount of time it took each time between Distrokid blaming Spotify, and Spotify blaming Distrokid was time I would never recoup dealing with something my spirit didn't want any part of in the first place haha so I just stopped adding music.
2019 rolls around and twitter was filled with hot-takes about botted playlists and the new meta of releasing 1 minute songs to farm that .00000000003 per stream income.
me being me, I wanted to rebel and upload a 32 minute song.
🎧🔗 "ASMR.WAV" (Evolving Portals) - Catalog Works
But when I checked my Artist page, it was flooded with a million different artists named "Dutchy" and I lost my mind haha.
I realized that name was way to common to use especially for SEO, So I decided to change it without even telling anyone to the same name, just spelled the way it sounded when people heard my "Producer Drop/Tag"
🎧🔗 EXAMPLE at the very start of song
Unfortunately by doing this, It created a new artist page no one knew about and retained none of followers or stream counts (the 2nd part I could care less about)
So, I uploaded the 32 minute song and never returned again until 2022 when Cxy was able to talk me into releasing music to DSP's again. Which I'm still resistant to in spirit and feel justified in based on the results of seeing the data.
Now the only other important rebrand of note is when I rebranded from "Dutchmassive" to "Dutchy"
The TDLR context for this is, I've been producing as long as i've been emceeing. Both Equally since 1995, but I was primarily known as an emcee.
My first Instrumental only project was officially released in 2006 during the blog era was titled "TheDrumLoveEP" but in 2010, I released my first full length, 39 track instrumental album on my bandcamp titled "Yawn of the Gemini" and fans were very confused and unhappy they bought a Dutchmassive album that had zero Dutchmassive verses on it haha.
In 2012, I moved to Los Angeles and linked up with Soulection. Joy Kay (Soulection's Founder) kept referring to me as "Dutchy" on the Radio so anytime I would book a show, The promoters would put Dutchy on the flier instead of "Dutchmassive". 98% of my shows and sets while in Los Angeles were either DJ or Beat sets so that's when I decided to just have a separate alias for emceeing and production and my Dutchy Alias popped off, especially on soundcloud.
It wasn't until 2015 the first official "Dutchy" album would be released on my Bandcamp titled "Chill Gawd, Chill" and that 120 minute Cassette became legendary.
🎧🔗 "Chill Gawd, Chill" - Bandcamp
🎧🔗Chill Gawd, Chill - Catalog Works
In Closing, all I see the past few years is noise about how important it is for Artists to become a brand, to create "A Community" but the reality is, A lot of Artists grow and evolve over time, When that artist gains success creating a specific genre of music, their fanbase gets whiplash when they decide they want to release an album of meditative whale sounds or any other example.
Everyone becomes an artist for different reasons, but the idea of my artistic expression or me in general being a "Brand" just doesn't and has never felt good (to me personally) =)