01 May Band Promotion – How to reach a wider audience and keep them interested

Most bands are created by teens whose primary goal is just having fun, playing a couple of gigs for their friends and hopefully impressing some special girl or boy. What most of them don’t realize at the time, is that being in a band is highly addictive and that it is really hard to let go, even when it’s time to “grow up”. The process of creating music is hard, but once a song or, even better, an album starts coming together, there is nothing quite like that sense of accomplishment and pride.

While there are a lot of musicians who consider making music their hobby, they always secretly want to make it their primary vocation. Unfortunately, the music industry is one of the hardest to break into and there is no guaranteed path to success, regardless of the genre you play and its current popularity. The reason for this is that there is such a large number of bands and a lot of them are good, so the competition for the audiences’ attention is very fierce. On top of that, there are more than a few labels with tremendous marketing funds which focus on the promotion of their protégés in order to protect their own interests. This makes it even harder for a band with average funds and no sponsorship to get big.

While it may be true that it is hard, it is not impossible to break out of a local scene and reach a wider audience. Here are some of things that might help.

Live gigs and contacts with other musicians

Nothing leaves an impression like a great live performance. A lot of bends tend to fool themselves that a YouTube clip with a well recorded live performance is valid proof of their virtuosity, but I still haven’t seen a recording that accurately presents the atmosphere you experience while actually witnessing a concert. For example, I’ve seen a lot of recordings of Portishead in concert and I was thrilled at how great they were, but after I’ve had the honor of seeing them live, I was left speechless.

Every band needs to make a solid fan base by performing. The core of your fans, in the beginning, will almost exclusively be made out of people who have heard you perform live. There is a presumption that, these days, the only way to make it is through media promotion, but a lot of bands actually blew up after being discovered by somebody who was accidentally at the venue they were playing.

Live gigs are also great places to connect with other musicians and people who organize concerts within their community. There is strength in numbers – a lot of bands have realized this and formed their own “guilds” from which many of the successful independent record labels sprouted. One of the best examples I can think of is Neurot Records.

Depending on the strength of your local and regional scene, this might not always be an option, but there are ways to bridge this gap.

Social media and the Web

Meeting new people has become easier compared to some 15 years in the past. These days, people are far easier to reach, and even in cases where people are literally halfway around the world, you can still get in touch with just about anyone. I’ve witnessed collaborations between bands from Serbia and bands from Colombia, and the distance between these two countries is 6,200 miles, with the whole Atlantic Ocean separating them. This is why I would like to stress the importance of having an active social media presence.

Here is a list of social media websites that you should consider signing up to:

• SoundCloud

While this is more of an audio distribution platform than a social network, it is very well integrated, and the content that is uploaded to SoundCloud can be embedded on almost any social network, making it a great resource. According to statistics from 2013 it has a community of 20,000,000 registered users and 250,000,000 listeners, which boosts your chances of being accidentally discovered by people who liked your music.

• Facebook

This one is unavoidable due to its sheer popularity. With over 900,000,000 monthly visits, it is definitely one of the largest social networks. It’s great because it allows a natural expansion of your fan base, which usually starts with your friends and local fans, but can reach a much wider audience. It also gives you the option to promote your band page through Facebook ads with an option to specify your target audience.

• Twitter

A great place to stay connected with your fans and expand your fan base by following bands who draw a similar crowd.  Retweets can bring in a lot of fans and help you build a bigger and steadier fan base.

• Google+ & Youtube

Yes, these two are kind of intertwined now, due to the whole comment section thing. While Google+ has a lot of similarities with Facebook, it has one important feature which you can use to make a firmer connection with your fans. The ability to create circles with different people in them allows you to treat your more devoted fans with some inside information or an “inner circle” exclusive song, video or photo.  I’m not going to talk about YouTube, since the necessity for having your music videos available on the most popular video sharing website is self-evident.

• LastFM

The first thing you are going to see in the description text when you search for LastFM is the sentence “Discover more music.”, and this is precisely the point of this website. LastFM holds the most extensive music library on the Web covering all the musical genres you ever heard of and ones you didn’t even know existed. It is easy to navigate through and it enables its users to use their current taste in music in order to find new music which is similar in sound or genre. Also, you can discover music by choosing your favorite band. For example, LastFM will create a radio station for you, which will play their music and that of the most similar artists.

By keeping your band socially alive, you will increase your connections to other bands and fans, be present on an international scene and raise the possibility of being discovered. It might be a bit of work to set the whole thing up, but when you finally do it, it really doesn’t require too much work to maintain.

Website

In order to leave the best impression, you need to have an official website for your band which contains all the relevant information about it. This information should include your e-mail, bio, discography and information about where fans can purchase your gear and music. This is also a great resource for your band because it reflects the level of seriousness you are devoting to promoting yourselves as professionals.

Now, I realize that creating a professional website can be a big investment, but it doesn’t always have to be. There are ways to create a cheap website which looks pretty decent, while also giving you the possibility to modify its appearance to fit the needs of your band. IMCreator can be a solution for bands which are operating on a tight budget. It also eliminates the need for a web designer since it has a very intuitive and user-friendly interface. You can choose a template and then modify it to suit your needs, or you can start from scratch.

Blogs and blog

A large part of the music community is concentrated around a more unofficial form of sharing both music and musical experience – namely blogs. Most commonly, they follow a certain genre, but there are blogs that are centered around a certain scene or a certain element in music. The people who manage these blogs are usually enthusiasts and, in most cases, you can contact them and ask them to do a review of your music. This way, you can reach a large audience without wasting any money on marketing.

A lot of successful artists have very active blogs – if somebody in your band has a knack for the written word, then it would be a good idea to have them blog on a regular basis. Blogging allows you to give your fans a greater insight into the life of your band and its band members. David Byrne, the lead singer of Talking Heads, has a blog that can serve as a very good example of how to manage a musician’s blog. Even if you are not a fan of this band, you should definitely take a look at this.

It would be too ambitious of me to tell you that all of this will make you famous just like that, but it will surely give you better chances and help you get a larger fan base. The rest is a combination of work, talent and luck. Good luck!