How Would You Promote a Band?

Rooby

Rooby

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Nov 30, 2008
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Anybody ever marketed a band, book, athlete, rapper, or something like that?

Particularly interested in success stories with bands or musicians.

Obviously social media is where my thoughts go first. I know the value of having 1000 real fans, but admittedly I never really used Myspace or FB much (as a user) so I don't know the value of 1000 friends on your friends list on either of those sites.

I feel like a band touring in the information age is...not pointless, but almost not worth the effort considering the alternatives. Certain bands were huge on Myspace before they ever released an album. There was this one industrial metal-ish band with a girl singer that got real big and they just released like two tracks on Myspace before the band even had permanent members. Supposedly that was because this band was manufactured, and social media made it possible.

At concerts some bands will pass around a clipboard to sign people up to their mailing list, but most of those types of shows might get 10 emails and half of them are fake. I understand that in the "buzzmarketing" sense, people at a concert are probably 10 times more likely to spread the word of a band than the average internet user, but as you all know by now it's not real expensive to reach large amounts of people through the internet.

So if anybody has any stories, articles, or books they can recommend or whatever, let's hear them.
 


Seriously! I mean they're either going to like the music or they're not, so just reaching people's ears is the name of the game. Doesn't matter how you do it.
 
Maybe do some PPV advertising on sites that have similar music. Pop up a youtube video or a site with their song playing or something like that so that people will hear the music.
 
1) Make a facebook fan page
2) At their concert, at the end have the singer say, "We have a facebook fan page at ... , add us to get updates". It also helps if there's graphics behind them, toss their name up there.
3) Repeat for Twitter and link the accounts so you don't have to update both all the time for the same message.
4) Put some Craigslist posts a week or two in advance of any concert for free tickets if they sign up to your newsletter and enter X code
5) Youtube the band's concerts, interviews with the members, charity events, etc. and link your website
6) Link those Youtube videos on your Facebook and Twitter pages, and the website.
7) Have the band make local radio appearances when they are in town and give a blurb about the Facebook and Twitter accounts
8) Same as 7, but with local TV show appearances
9) Ads on Facebook, Pandora, and Last.fm
10) PPC on Google for the local areas where the band is playing for terms that'd be appealing to their audiences' music genre.
 
The above is about as good as you will get for advice for Music 2.0.

I've been in the music business for over a decade. Major and indie label A&R & promo.

Rule number 1, start building in your town. If you don't have your hometown then you don't have shit.

For instance, when I say building, if you are starting from Philly work Philly with all of your effort if that's where you are from. The surrounding areas can be given some attention going no further than Wilmington and Trenton. Use Facebook and google PPC to sign up fans to your facebook page, give away music and also sell concert tix (all at the same time if possible). Record your shows. Put fans in the videos maybe saying how much fun they have had or something. Post the videos. WRITE THEIR NAMES DOWN... then post them to FB and then let them know so they can tag themselves. That's one of the single most effective things you will ever do. Golden.

Once you have a fan base in those areas then spread to Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and North Jersey.... then NYC and DC. Once you have your hometown hire a PR person to work the blogs. Find a real one, not someone who says "Maybe I can do that" lol 3rd or 4th year PR majors at the local college who LOVE your music are perfect and possibly free.

MAJOR MARKETS ARE EXPENSIVE AND TIME CONSUMING. Don't forget that. Doubly so if you don't have the smaller markets surrounding the areas locked down. So build slowly and steadily into the big market. Surround and conquer.

I'd add that you should only focus on markets where you are building. Never do national promo that costs money. If it's free, cool, but if it costs money NO.

--> Also, learn how to use "re-targeting" to your advantage. <--

Last.fm, Pandora, Spotify are your friends.


I'm rambling, but that should cover it. Good luck. PM me and let me know how you are doing in a couple of months.
 
interesting thread. am wondering once your are using social media how to push out there above the noise, especially if one doesn't play live that much if at all.
 
I just started doing some promo work with a local band - the kind that isn't even big enough to play shows that you buy tickets for. The kind that plays at bars.

It's rough. Get a twitter, myspace, facebook page, and youtube channel set up. Update them all regularly.

Ever been to a big rave/electronic music event? Notice how your cars are plastered with promo cards for other events coming up? This works. Print some out for the band, have their social media info on it. Have dates/locations for their next date.

When they're this small, the biggest thing is having the bars/small clubs know that they can bring people in.

Now, a lot of owners will look at facebook/myspace pages to see how many fans or friends they have. They're not verifying that these are real people, so fake friends and fans will work at getting your foot in the door... But if the band doesn't draw people in, or get them to stay and keep drinking until the end of the show, they're not going to get invited back.
 
theunicorn said:
interesting thread. am wondering once your are using social media how to push out there above the noise, especially if one doesn't play live that much if at all.
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Focus on the music blogs and rely more heavily on video.

Brainstorm with your film student fanbase. Shoot something buzz-worthy often. Let them do the heavy mental lifting based around your music and your scene. Dominate the music memes with that. Guest star important people in your scene to gain more traffic and piggyback on cred.
 
Cthalupa said:
Ever been to a big rave/electronic music event? Notice how your cars are plastered with promo cards for other events coming up? This works. Print some out for the band, have their social media info on it. Have dates/locations for their next date.
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It will cost at least $100 in design, $200 to get enough cards printed to make an impact and double that for good manpower.

$300+ is better spent on Facebook ads. They can click, hear, see, follow and buy. Offline promotion doesn't compare. Especially when they are that small and every dollar is hard to come by. Trust me, I've been there and done that. lol

The only 2 fairly cheap things that works offline are remnant ads on radio and local cable that play the band's music for 30 seconds. Usually you can snag those for as low as $10 a spot. 30 of those spread across a week goes a long way to getting local notoriety.
 
MrBradshaw said:
It will cost at least $100 in design, $200 to get enough cards printed to make an impact and double that for good manpower.

$300+ is better spent on Facebook ads. They can click, hear, see, follow and buy. Offline promotion doesn't compare. Especially when they are that small and every dollar is hard to come by. Trust me, I've been there and done that. lol

The only 2 fairly cheap things that works offline are remnant ads on radio and local cable that play the band's music for 30 seconds. Usually you can snag those for as low as $10 a spot. 30 of those spread across a week goes a long way to getting local notoriety.
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Very true. I think what he was getting at though is that either the band, or people very close to the members (like family/friends) do it while they are playing, or one night when they are not.

Most bands starting out will just print the fliers on computer paper without much thought about graphics and design.

It's pretty inexpensive, and most friends and family are happy to support occasionally if they see the band going somewhere with their career without compensation.
 
Rexibit said:
Very true. I think what he was getting at though is that either the band, or people very close to the members (like family/friends) do it while they are playing, or one night when they are not.

Most bands starting out will just print the fliers on computer paper without much thought about graphics and design.

It's pretty inexpensive, and most friends and family are happy to support occasionally if they see the band going somewhere with their career without compensation.
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This. You don't need some ultra fancy stuff for a small band. I don't think that would even work well for the target audience of a lot of smaller bands - The guys I'm working with do some classic rock/psychobilly stuff, so an ultra fancy eye popping promo card would be weird to the demographic they're going after.

They've been using just some simple cardstock paper with black and white graphics printed out on 'em. Since they started doing this they've been averaging about 2-4x more signups/follows from fans at the venues than before when they were just mentioning it on the mic.
 
MrBradshaw said:
Put fans in the videos maybe saying how much fun they have had or something. Post the videos. WRITE THEIR NAMES DOWN... then post them to FB and then let them know so they can tag themselves. That's one of the single most effective things you will ever do. Golden.
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This. No matter how into your band your fans might be, they will always be 10,000x more interested in themselves.
 
kingofsp said:
This. No matter how into your band your fans might be, they will always be 10,000x more interested in themselves.
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Exactly! You get it.

Counting on someone to talk about how cool a band is always comes second to someone wanting to talk about how cool they are. lol

But making it possible to do both at the same time is priceless.
 
Cthalupa said:
This. You don't need some ultra fancy stuff for a small band. I don't think that would even work well for the target audience of a lot of smaller bands - The guys I'm working with do some classic rock/psychobilly stuff, so an ultra fancy eye popping promo card would be weird to the demographic they're going after.

They've been using just some simple cardstock paper with black and white graphics printed out on 'em. Since they started doing this they've been averaging about 2-4x more signups/follows from fans at the venues than before when they were just mentioning it on the mic.
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Oh, you mean passing them out at THEIR shows. I gotcha. I thought you meant just passing them out on the street or putting them in unrelated club parking lots.

Two totally different things. :thumbsup::thumbsup:
 
Rooby said:
I feel like a band touring in the information age is...not pointless, but almost not worth the effort considering the alternatives.
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I wanted to mention this because all of us who are as connected to the net as we are usually have a tendency to disregard what happens offline.

Never forget that touring is the single most important thing a band will do.

The vast majority of their money will come from shows. Large and small bands. Show money is their bread and butter. It always will be. It's much bigger than record deals, music sales, merch, publishing or anything else. Concerts ARE the money.

So part of your job is not just to make them popular, it's to get people to go to their shows so they can do more and bigger shows.

In order of importance:

1. Make sure people hear or see them
2. Put some asses in the seats.

Make sure that is an important part of what you do when you are shaping the conversation in every ad, board post, comment, tweet or whatever else.

Get people to see them live and hopefully the band is good enough to carry the ball once it is passed to them. Then they have a fan for life... or until they make a bad album. lol
 
MrBradshaw said:
Oh, you mean passing them out at THEIR shows. I gotcha. I thought you meant just passing them out on the street or putting them in unrelated club parking lots.

Two totally different things. :thumbsup::thumbsup:
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Yep, sorry if I wasn't clear enough on that. Meant just at their shows!
 
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