Band Promotion

jstover77

jstover77

Fwhat?
Dec 23, 2011
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Doylestown PA
www.bestseofirm.com
Anyone here marketing bands? Know it's been discussed a bit, but not for a while.

Have a good buddy who has a great band. I want to help him out. Toured with dudes back in the late 90s. They're still plugging away.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljGY08L-oN4[/ame]


Is Facebook the way to go?
 


Bands? Oh you mean those guys that made music with instruments on cassettes and CD's? I heard of those before, didn't know any still existed.
 
My brother is in a band right now, but the only thing they have is a Facebook page. They'll make posts about gigs coming up, ones that passed, etc. He's not too serious about it though, he has a full-time job.

If it was me, I'd also set up a Twitter, but I think the most important thing would be to set up a YouTube channel. There you can post videos of live shows or any videos they have made. Most importantly, with bands it helps to show some sort of personality (ie. videos of them doing stupid shit, maybe on the tour bus, pranks, etc). There are tons of bands to compete with so you need something that'll give an edge. One good example of this is Pantera or Black Dahlia. They make home movies of being on tour, being on the bus, getting drunk etc. I didn't even know who Black Dahlia was until my brother showed me their home video a few months ago. So you could also upload videos of them doing stupid stuff too, that could get a lot of views.

Or you could just do some twerking, exposing, or have someone in the band wanted for murder.
 
Tobias Funke said:
If it was me, I'd also set up a Twitter, but I think the most important thing would be to set up a YouTube channel. There you can post videos of live shows or any videos they have made. Most importantly, with bands it helps to show some sort of personality (ie. videos of them doing stupid shit, maybe on the tour bus, pranks, etc). There are tons of bands to compete with so you need something that'll give an edge. One good example of this is Pantera or Black Dahlia. They make home movies of being on tour, being on the bus, getting drunk etc. I didn't even know who Black Dahlia was until my brother showed me their home video a few months ago. So you could also upload videos of them doing stupid stuff too, that could get a lot of views.
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^^^ YouTube FTW. Start there and disseminate the videos through other social platforms.

I've also seen a lot of bands doing FB ads for page likes. The CTA is usually something a long the lines of "Like [Famous Band That Sounds Like My Band]? Click here to check out the new generation...."

You can also check out the message boards for all of these gigantic music festivals that are going on these days. Warped Tour, Bonnaroo, Coachella, etc. Obviously, they are the most active during spring and early summer before the festival, but most of them have traffic year round at this point. You'll find fans, bands, promoters, and music biz people hanging around these forums. So, if you're creative, you should be able to grab some attention.
 
Something more out of the box:

Checkout playlists on Spotify.
There are genre related playlists with like 100k followers who get notifications whenever a new song has been added to the list. You can see the name of the playlist owner at the top and can message him on Facebook to include your songs (probably paying him for that).
 
Bundle giveaway on bittorrent.com? Might be worth a look anyway. (have a look at what Tim Ferriss did with 4 hour chef there, and what other bands are doing - they can even gate the download for email signup or whatnot as well afaik).
 
After my band broke up when I was 16 I started up a little 'promotions' biz to keep me involved in the heavy metal scene. I'd hire 2-3 wannabe suicide girls for like $15/hr, and have them come out to local shows. The chics had to show up decked out in leather, they had to hit on everyone, they had to love the music (no matter how bad it was), and they had a drinking budget to do body-shots with ppl to promote booze sales. The only rule is that everyone had to think that they were just there for fun (ie. not being paid), and all the losers they hit on had to think that they were single and going to be at the next show. This means they weren't allowed to go home with anyone from the show.

Ticket sales would usually increase by 20-60% for the next show (WOM from dudes talking about the gals to all their friends). If the band was smart enough to host their own venue their alcohol sales would go through the fucking roof. The chics loved it because they were getting paid to stick it to their dads by being wasted and slutty, and sometimes they'd bring their friends along for free to join the 'fun' (seriously dads, don't skip those soccer games). I'd get a flat fee upfront, and a cut of the increase if they hired me again for a second show (they all re-hired me until I moved off to uni).

I'm not sure if this helps, but you could probably take this a step further now that facebook/twitter/instagram exists. Boobs favis drive clicks like a mofo.
 
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I know a guy that's a pretty damn good drummer, but he has no band.
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Kiss-Explicit-Cypher/dp/B00149VC8U/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1408732342&sr=1-1&keywords=cypher+music+acid"]Cypher: Acid Kiss[/ame]
 
I think you need to talk to someone who's represented big bands at one point. ;)

...It's too bad that CEO Sam's new BST hasn't been posted yet...
 
I'd like to know more about this too, as I'm doing music w/ my band.

I'd imagine creating a FB page, Youtube channel, and website...and getting traffic to those channels would be good. I wonder if PPV would be a method to get cheap traffic?

Does anyone know about getting your songs on online streaming (Spotify, Pandora, smaller 3rd party ones)?
 
I pay to promote our shows on FB with some success. The targeting options are pretty cool. Of course I have to use some junk account since my personal account was disabled from all types of advertising in like 2009.
 
titanium777 said:
Does anyone know about getting your songs on online streaming (Spotify, Pandora, smaller 3rd party ones)?
Click to expand...


Music

USA concerts and tour dates, tickets and festivals - 5gig.com (concerts and tickets)
Promote musicians on www.amazon.com (Amazon Music)
Apple - iTunes - Working with iTunes - Sell Your Content - Music Provider: FAQs (Apple iTunes)
ArtistLink (MTV, VH1, CMT, and Logo)
Bandcamp
http://www.bandpage.com
http://www.bandsintown.com (concert discovery app/networking platform for bands and live music fans)
http://play.google.com/artists/ (Google Play)
http://www.last.fm/uploadmusic (Last.fm)
http://www.livemusicnearme.com
http://www.localsounds.com
http://www.managerspro.com (managers)
http://www.musicclout.com
http://www.myspace.com (Myspace Music)
http://help.pandora.com/customer/portal/articles/24802-information-for-artists-submitting-to-pandora (Pandora)
http://www.pitchmystuff.com
http://www.residentadvisor.net (electronic music)
http://www.reverbnation.com
http://help.rhapsody.com/entries/30612613-How-do-I-get-my-band-on-Rhapsody- (Rhapsody)
http://www.songkick.com
http://www.soundcloud.com
http://www.spotifyartists.com/guides/ (Spotify)
http://www.thedjlist.com
http://www.tourvolume.com (concert listings, music and venue listings)

Source: http://www.confidentbrand.com/resources/business-directories#music

One guy I went to college with has a band based out of Cleveland, OH and they seem to do doing VERY well on Facebook. The thing is though, the guy has been making local/industry/touring/festival/event connections for like 10 years now. They used to play at house parties, small college bars and stick around the same few cities: Cleveland, Akron, Kent, Pitt etc. FB alone wouldn't have got him where he is at. The other big thing is these guys are traveling throughout the Midwest on the weekends. I noticed that when the band started doing some serious traveling, not just driving an hour or two to the nearby city, is when they started getting a lot more online attention and it gives local/college newspapers something to write about etc.

It seems like hooking up with lots of similar bands and putting on festivals or just playing at existing festivals and existing bars and events and having every single band page and every single band member posting/sharing/commenting about the events is what keeps their promotion rolling. Depending on music style and location this can be tough I'd imagine though.

Whenever I take a look at his FB page, they are posting and sharing those "flyer" graphics that mention/tag all of the related bands and venues etc. This gets the "snowball" rolling because people are all like "Can't wait! Hey [insert tagged friends here] LET'S SEE THESE GUYS AT DIRTY MIKE'S THIS SATURDAY! [insert similar local band] will be opening for them, so stoked!" So they get comments coming from not just their own connections, they then get sharing/comments/likes from all the other band's connections and people that follow that particular venue or follow related bands start commenting and sharing etc.

They have a Youtube channel that is active with local people commenting and they post official videos and tour footage on that too. They post funny videos of them out on the road like someone else mentioned too. I think they just had one guy take a trash can and climb on top of their tour bus/converted school bus and pour ice on the band members standing on the ground for the ALS challenge etc...
 
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StackCash said:
I've also seen a lot of bands doing FB ads for page likes. The CTA is usually something a long the lines of "Like [Famous Band That Sounds Like My Band]? Click here to check out the new generation...."
Click to expand...

As cheap as recording is now, this can be taken a step further by actually recording cover songs from bands that don't sound similar, but share a similar demographic.

Bird & the Bee did this with their Hall & Oats tribute record, and it exposed them to a massive pre-identified audience of people who were likely to appreciate their original music.

I'm not suggesting that you need to go as far as selling the cover tunes, b/c you get into licensing and lots of other headaches, but it's an interesting idea, I think.
 
IceToEskimos said:
As cheap as recording is now, this can be taken a step further by actually recording cover songs from bands that don't sound similar, but share a similar demographic.

Bird & the Bee did this with their Hall & Oats tribute record, and it exposed them to a massive pre-identified audience of people who were likely to appreciate their original music.

I'm not suggesting that you need to go as far as selling the cover tunes, b/c you get into licensing and lots of other headaches, but it's an interesting idea, I think.
Click to expand...

This seems like it might work, but most musicians are saving up for the inevitable tax on weed once it's legalized. Oh well.
 
StackCash said:
This seems like it might work, but most musicians are saving up for the inevitable tax on weed once it's legalized. Oh well.
Click to expand...

I haven't even watched any of these videos, but this guy seems to have done exactly what I talked about:

https://www.youtube.com/user/NateJones1/videos?sort=p&flow=grid&view=0

No idea if he's good, or if he sucks or what, and it looks like he gave up, but he managed to get close to 2,000 subscribers, and his top video has close to 80k views (over 6 years, but still). It doesn't really look like he tried very hard either.

Jazz pianist Brad Mehldau has done a lot of stuff in this vein as well, with interesting arrangments of pop tunes like this take on Paranoid Android:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuRpTqY1lI8=embed[/ame]
 
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