February 24th, 2012

How do you define success as a musician?

As a musician you often feel that what you are doing with your musical career doesn’t compare to what others are achieving. Other bands often seem to gain fans more quickly, get better gigs and get more attention from the press. It’s very easy to lose your motivation.  One thing to bear in mind is that so much success in the music industry is down to sheer perseverance and not giving up whatever happens. Here are some ways of thinking about what success is for musicians that should help to keep you motivated:

  • Don’t judge your own success by the standards of others – Worrying what other bands are doing is a guaranteed way to demotivate yourself. If you see another band gaining more fans and getting better gigs don’t get depressed about it. Follow your own path and build your own audience, don’t worry what others are doing, you don’t have time to waste on that.
  • Be realistic – Is your ambient death/prog album really going to outsell Lady Gaga? The world would probably be a better place if it did but if the music you play is only destined for a small audience don’t be dissapointed when this is what happens. Sometimes remarkable things can happen and odd and interesting music does end up in the mainstream (see the recent case of Jon Gomm), just don’t expect it.
  • Make a plan – Write down some goals and put together a bit of a plan, some things you can make happen. Tick them off as you achieve them, at least this way you can see you are making progress.
  • Don’t do it for the money – The music industry is a poor way of earning serious money, the effort you have to put in versus the amount you make is really high in the early days and there are no guarantees you’ll make anything decent financially. If you don’t love the music you are unlikely to have the passion to put the work in to make it, it’s really hard work. People can tell if you are motivated just by cash, fans aren’t idiots.
  • Set small goals but make them time bound – So perhaps aim for an extra 20 Facebook fans a month or an extra 100 Twitter followers a month. Achieving small goals reguarly will keep you motivated rather than trying to change the world overnight.
  • What is success to some is failure to others – It’s all about context. A massive seller for an underground band would be the same as a disaster for a pop act. Selling a few thousand records can be an album of the year in some genres.

Great music, hard work and a great live show will pay off in the end, even if you sometimes feel nothing is happening. Keep going and eventually you will find your audience.

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February 13th, 2012

Can your band achieve mainstream success via social media?

Recently we highlighted the story of Jon Gomm’s viral video hit Passionflower and the how it received over a million views thanks to Reddit and social media. Many people see viral hits as useful but can’t see that they cross over into the mainstream press and TV. It depends who is talking about your music and how influential they are. This is how Jon Gomm went from posting a video on Youtube to playing live on BBC news after the video had already gone viral online:

  • First Stephen Fry tweeted about the video –  His tweet simply read “WOW” with a link to the video. Although we don’t know how he found the video this caused many thousands more hits to the video, which was already on well over a million hits. This then gets shared and this causes it to achieve more viral success. This is after the events in our original blog post.
  • The press picked up on the story – Once Mr Fry’s celebrity name became attached the story becomes “Stephen Fry tweets about Jon Gomm and it goes viral” (even thou it was already over a million views before Stephen Fry was involved!). The national press started to get interested. “A one-word tweet from author Stephen Fry has boosted the career of an aspiring singer – after it increased traffic to his latest video by one million hits.” was a typical quote from The Telegraph.
  • TV companies get involved – Once the story becomes about Stephen Fry discovering an obscure musician it is of interest to the television. Jon appears on BBC Breakfast TV and his video is featured on prime time TV’s The One Show as part of an interview with Stephen Fry. Here is a video of Jon on BBC Breakfast:

  • David Crosby gets in touch – All this brings Jon’s music to the attention of the legendary David Crosby of Crosby, Still and Nash fame. Another celebrity name attached to the story does it no harm at all and the buzz continues.

Through all this interest Jon has continued to stay 100% independent and refused all record company offers. Many people in the media seemed shocked he wasn’t interested in working with a record company. His music is selling well and his gigs are selling out. It is all without any PR company, direct to fan. It shows that if you have a story (especially one with a celebrity involved like Stephen Fry) you can get the mainstream media involved.

It is great to see Jon Gomm reaching a larger audience but all this came about because Jon’s music is genuinely great and he worked for years on the live circuit and online gradually building an audience. On this occasion he got a lucky break but the more hard work you put in playing live and making friends the more chance you have of eventually connecting with someone of influence such as Stephen Fry. It’s important to remember that the video had already gone viral before any of this happened

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December 22nd, 2011

Frank Turner and why your band should be playing house concerts

In 2005 Frank Turner left post-hardcore band Million Dead and began a career as an acoustic singer-songwriter. He toured relentlessly playing over 1000 gigs. He would play anywhere and one of the things he did was play lots of house concerts between gigs at traditional venues as a reward for fans. This touring has lead to a really supportive audience, you build your fan base one person at a time. Next year he is playing Wembley Arena. It shows that with hard work and a supportive audience you can make progress, it has taken him six years but it has worked really well for him. Every time you play live whether it’s in someones house or in a stadium it’s an opportunity to make new friends and further connect to your existing fans. This video shows Frank playing in the homes of his fans:

House concerts are a great opportunity to play live in areas where you haven’t got a big enough fan base to fill a club or bar. So if you only have 10 or 20 fans in an area but they are prepared to put on a concert in one of their homes you can go and play there, make some money and probably get some accommodation and food as part of the deal. It’s really useful to do house concerts to fill gaps between dates in a long tour. Here are a few things to expect at a house concert:

  • A house concert is a concert that takes place in a fans home, the audience is usually around 10-20 people, but sometimes more.
  • This audience tends to include mostly the person hosting the gig’s friends and neighbours.
  • A suggested donation of £10 per person seems about right and you can always sell merchandise. People are often keen to buy merchandise of artists they feel connected to and house concerts are a great way of building these connections.
  • Usually house concerts are not for profit so the money goes to the performers directly.
  • These gigs aren’t open to the public and aren’t advertised on the bands website.
  • Often the people putting on the house concerts put on a meal for the musicians and the audience.
  • Most bands play acoustically although you can use a small PA if required, these things do tend to be fairly low volume events.
  • Bands sometimes do two sets, sometimes one long one. Sometimes there is only one act and a support. It’s really up to the person putting on the event, the available space and the musicians involved.

No two house concerts are the same, they are unusual events and are individual and special. If the person hosting the event is OK with it you can even UStream the event so your fans around the world can watch. You don’t have to be an acoustic act to play them but remember that you may have problems if your band is a really loud death metal act! Drums are always a problem in residential areas.

Getting house concerts can be a bit more difficult than usual gigs. One of the best ways to get them is to ask your followers on Twitter, on your mailing list and across other social media sites. See who is interested and find out how they want to do it. With the increased popularity of house concerts a few networks have sprung up to connect hosts with performers with sites such as Slowbizz and the House Concert Network. Ensure you and the person putting on the gig are aware of each others expectations, otherwise people can end up disappointed when things don’t go to plan. Remember parking can be a problem if a large number of people are visiting!

House concerts are another great way to get connected to your fans. Who knows next time you come to the hosts town you may well be playing the larger venues and listing your gigs on Live Unsigned. It’s all about building that fan base.

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November 22nd, 2011

How does viral video really work? (a case study)

Often bands talk about how they are “going to do a viral video” but you can’t just decide to create a viral video, it has to happen organically. You can do all you can to make it happen by getting key influencers (blogs etc.) to share it and by making the content as amazing as possible but there are no guarantees. If you could just make it happen everyone would do it.

 

Last weekend Jon Gomm’s Passionflower video was viewed over half a million times. The video was posted a few months ago but only suddenly became popular when someone downloaded the video from Jon’s Youtube channel (using some dodgy software) and reposted it as “Insane Guitar Skills “Passionflower”" on their own channel. This version of the video was then posted online and discovered by a user of the site Reddit who shared it there and it became popular and ended up on the front page. A few days later the video has had 600,000 plus views across the two versions (Jon’s and the original). Jon got the person who posted the new version to direct people back to his Youtube channel.

The results of this have seen Jon offered gigs across the world and he has made contact with a whole new audience. “In the past hours I’ve sold hundreds of downloads, had gig offers in New Orleans and Poland (yay), dubious record deal offers (boo) & a grateful email from an inspired recovering heroin addict (amazing)” Jon said on his Facebook page.

So what can we learn from this?

  • The title is really important – “Insane Guitar Skills” gets more views than simply the title of the song. Once they are viewing they are blown away by the playing, but getting them to watch first is the hard bit.
  • The content must be so good people will share it because it is truly remarkable, unusual and impressive. If you want people to share your video you need to get an emotional reaction, in this case “wow check out this amazing guitar playing”.
  • However good something is, people on Youtube will write nasty comments about it – Jon is an amazing guitar player but people have still made nasty comments about it. They are called Trolls, ignore them.
  • Reddit, Digg etc. are really important – From the front page of Reddit Jon’s video was shared across blogs and social media, Reddit is a great place for people to discover your music, the hard bit is getting Reddit users interested in your music. You have to make your content really remarkable to do well there.
  • The chain for a “viral video” is complex – From the original post to the video being re-titled, to the social news site Reddit then blogs and social media, the viral path was not straight forward and it is different for everything that goes viral (although the basic principal of making great content and getting influential people to share it still holds true).

What tends to happen with a viral hit is that the effect doesn’t last for too long, it is all about making the most of it when it does happen. Make sure you answer every message and build a relationship with every new fan you gain this way and start thinking about how to create another one! Perhaps its best to keep gradually building your audience, listing your gigs on Live Unsigned, getting email addresses and think of a viral hit as something that would be a bonus if it comes along.

 

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October 11th, 2011

Using Ticket Tailor to sell tickets for your gigs

Often on the blog we talk about putting on your own gigs and how to make things happen for yourself. One of the things you will want to do when organising your own events is to sell tickets via the web. Ticket Tailor is a company that allows you to sell tickets for your events and take control of ticket sales for your gigs. Most companies take a cut of the ticket sales, but Ticket Tailor doesn’t.

Here are some reasons to use Ticket Tailor:

  • Absolutely no booking fees – You can set your own booking fees and keep them. This really makes a difference when you start to sell large numbers of tickets.
  • Ticket Tailor do not use your customer data for their own advantage – You can keep your customer information and get graphs to keep track of your orders. The more information you have about your fans the more chance you have of making a connection with them.
  • Ticket Tailor is very versatile – Ticket Tailor includes Facebook and Website integration to sell direct to fans. There is a smart phone version for on-the-move selling and the service is search engine optimised so fans can find your events easily.
  • No middle man costs – Payment is direct to your account and the service can be used alongside Paypal. Tickets are sold in the form of SMS / Email E-tickets to make things easy with no printing or the need to post tickets. Door entry is via an easy to use system. There is small charge for SMS use and Ticket Tailor just charges a flat monthly fee for its services, there is even a free trial available.

Ticket Tailor is growing fast in popularity  (35,198 tickets sold and counting) and is another way for you to connect directly to your fans and keep more of the money from your gigs. Don’t forget if you really want to sell tickets post your gigs on Live Unsigned, your social networks and send a message to your email list well in advance of the gig. Flyering gigs of acts in your genre that are playing locally and approaching the local press will also help. Ask your fans to tell their friends and really make it happen. Ticket Tailor can then be a really useful service as part of your DIY promotions.

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October 4th, 2011

How to get your music played on the radio

Getting your music played on the radio is difficult, but not impossible. One play on the radio is unlikely to help gain you many fans but if it’s played multiple times by a DJ that loves what you do it can make a big difference. What you need is someone to champion your music, like the legendary DJ John Peel did for so many bands. Here are are a few ways of getting your music on the radio:

  • Do your research – Make sure you find out the name of the person who hosts the show for your genre and ideally their producer. Try and build a relationship with them if possible, this is easier with a small online station than it is with a major national FM station. Start on the small stations (local and digital), build up a reputation then take it to the big nationals.
  • Ignore daytime radio – The chances of getting on daytime are tiny. You are competing with all the acts on majors paying pluggers thousands of pounds. It’s not going to happen.
  • Send your press kit – If you have previously contacted a DJ/Producer send your personalised press kit with a CD and a personalised letter specific to the person you are targeting. Make sure you get their name right and if possible try and mention something specific about the show and why they should play your music. There is more information on putting together an effective press kit here.
  • Send promos well in advance of release – Make sure your promos go out 6-8 weeks ahead of your release date. If you have a really special relationship with one particular radio show, consider offering them an exclusive track in advance of other stations.
  • Follow up – A few weeks after sending your promo get in touch and make sure they got the promo, see what they thought about it. Remember not to be be pushy or annoying, be friendly and build a positive relationship with who you are talking to. They probably get thousands of promos so you need to be patient.
  • If you live in the UK try BBC Introducing – BBC Introducing is a great way for bands to get played on their local BBC radio stations. You just upload your tracks and the station listens to them to see if they are suitable for play. There is more information on BBC Introducing here.
  • Consider hiring a plugger – If you are really serious about radio play and you believe your music is commercial enough to get on daytime radio, consider hiring a plugger. Hiring a plugger is very expensive and there are no guaranteed results. Although you can do all your radio promo yourself, when you hire a good radio plugger you get the benefit of the relationships they have built in radio, often over years. Ask to see credentials for a plugger before you hire them and ideally get a personal recommendations from friends. Make sure the plugger has experience of getting play for new bands (not established names) in your specific genre. Be careful because you can end up wasting a lot of money here that is better spent elsewhere on touring, marketing, PR and fan relationships.
  • Offer to do a session – Once a DJ is regularly playing your music try and see if they want you to do a session. Some radio stations have small studios you can record in but often small stations don’t. Offer to record a session at home or at a rehearsal space for them and send them the files to play on the show.
  • Make sure there is a buzz about your band – If you want radio to play your music make sure there is a buzz about your band. Make sure bloggers are writing about you, magazines are featuring you and you’re playing live and posting your gigs on Live Unsigned. Radio presenters and producers should be aware of what is going on the genre that they cover, make sure they hear about you from sources other than just yourself.
  • Think outside the box – If you have an interesting story you may be able to get your music on talk radio. You will need to think of something remarkable but this can be an effective way to reach a larger audience. Just “band releases album” won’t work here, you’ll need something interesting for them to talk about.

With radio it is not about one random radio play changing your lives and connecting you to a larger audience. One play is unlikely to help much, what you really need is to build a relationship with the DJs and producers so that they champion your music to their listeners over time. Radio is not a magic bullet but combined with other avenues of promotion it can help to build an audience over time.

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August 5th, 2011

Google plus for musicians

Google Plus is Google’s latest attempt at a social network. It is like a stripped down Facebook or like Twitter if you could use more than 140 characters, with a few cool additional features. You can post links, photos and videos as you can on most networks but you can also filter people you are following with Circles and do video chats.

Some people are getting very excited about it, it has the potential to be big but it depends on numerous factors including how well adopted it is, what features they add and what they can offer.  For what it is at the moment it seems to work pretty well, but because it is so new it is very hard to see exactly what will happen with it.  Also at the moment it is invite only and you need a Gmail account, although this changes from day to day, so by the time you read this it may be open to all. If you need an invite ask your fans on Twitter and other social media to help. Here is our guide:

  • Don’t start a page for your band – The opposite advice to usual, Google frown upon this as they have not yet confirmed what their offer for bands, businesses and organistations will be. There is a very high chance that your page will be deleted (yes this has actually happened), so just have a personal page and interact with people. Google Plus isn’t the place for the hard sell, just chat to people and build relationships. Be social! There are plenty of places you can post your music and create a profile – make sure you are on Soundcloud, have a decent website and have a Live Unsigned profile set up. These places actively encourage you to have a music profile, Google Plus doesn’t, yet.
  • Complete your personal profile page – Make sure the basics are there, information about who you are personally, some photos and a link to your music. Again, it must be for you as an individual not your band. Don’t start following people until you have your profile set up.
  • Try a Hangout concert or chat – Hangouts are a way for you to perform and interact with your fans via a multi person video chat. You can chat or play some songs, like doing a UStream concert but the audience can talk back to you. You can just use the camera in your laptop. As the amount of people you can have in a Hangout is limited (currently to 10) it is like a backstage pass for fans to chat to you via their video camera. You can share rehearsals, recording sessions or even give guitar lessons. As well as live streaming you can also send Youtube videos to your Hangout and you can all watch the video at the same time. The person organising the Hangout can choose to mute the other people’s mics if they so desire, so that no one else in the Hangout can hear them, very handy if someone is being noisy during your guitar ballad. You can also use a limited Hangout for band and business meetings. Hangouts are probably the most exciting feature of Google Plus.
  • It is all about conversations – Just chatting to people and interacting with them is the best way to build an audience on any social network. Spamming people and only talking about yourself and your band will just annoy everyone. Stop self promoting and start talking, then you can slip the odd link to your own music into the conversation.
  • Use the Circles as your filters – Circles allow you sub divide and organise the people you are following into groups and only share specific information with them. So you might have a fans Circle or a music industry Circle or a close friends Circle or a street team Circle and only share specific content with them. Always remember that nothing you post on a social network is ever really private, even if you are sharing it only with a specific Circle.
  • Share and create interesting content – Post any cool links you find, share any cool things your friends post and write interesting updates to start questions. Ask people their opinion, Plus is great for chats. You’ll find a lot of the chat on there is about Google Plus itself at the moment so try and be a bit more interesting.
  • Follow some interesting people – Have a look at who your friends are following or search Google Plus for people with specific phrases in their profile and follow some of them. You can create a specific circle for this purpose so you don’t get them mixed up with your actual friends.
  • Invite your fans – While the network is invite only at present when you join you have the opportunity to invite others to join. Ask if any fans need an invite via your other social networks and help them out. Then they will be more likely to share your content and help you out in the future. Look after your fans and they will look after you.

At the moment Google Plus is interesting but not an essential part of your marketing for your band. Google Plus is not the place to focus all your marketing efforts at present. This may well change and it could become really big, it is certainly growing very quickly. For the moment try it out, make some friends, have some fun, post the odd link to your music and work out your own take on this network that is evolving very quickly. In a few months Google Plus could be huge.

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July 26th, 2011

How to organise your first national tour – part 1

A national tour is an amazing experience for a band but it needs a lot of work to ensure the venues are full, the fans are happy and the band doesn’t end up freezing in a ditch or in prison. You need to put a lot of effort in if you don’t want to end up losing a lot of money and playing to no one. Badly organised tours have split up some amazing bands.

So when should you start touring? You should probably leave it until you have built a following in your local area, that you have got some mentions in the press and that there is a chance of people outside of your area coming to see you. Rarely do people go and see a band they haven’t heard of, so initially it is best to do some gig swaps and perhaps a weekend tour playing with bands that you know have a following in other places first. Make sure you have a bit of a buzz about what you are doing. Remember you can use Live Unsigned to find venues and bands to swap gigs with, just look through the listings for the area that you want to play. There is more information on gig swaps here.

Here are some things to do if you want your first national tour to run well:

  • Know the details – What time is the sound check? Is there a guest list? Is there food/a rider? Where can you park the van? What time can you get into the venue? Can you sell merch and hand out flyers? What time are you on? How are you being paid? Can they put you up for the night or is there a good/cheap local hotel? Are you sharing equipment? It is all about the details. Make sure one member of the band or crew has this specifically as their job. Get all the small things right and the whole tour will run well.
  • Have your biog/press pack/photos easily available – Have a specific place on your web site where venues and promoters can download all your press information from, it will save time in the long run. You can password protect it if you don’t want fans to see it. If you need more info on putting together a press pack it is here.
  • Start planning early – 6 months ahead sounds about right, ideally tie the tour in with a CD release or another major event in the band’s career that will give the tour a bit more publicity. It will always take longer then you expect to get things organised so give yourself time.
  • Do support slots where you can – For your first tour, supporting local bands in their own area is the best thing to do. You can find other bands to play with via Live Unsigned or Twitter. Get in touch and ask if you can play with them as a support (after saying how much you like their music) or if they know any local promoters. Another alternative is to play at club nights that already have an audience, like indie nights or metal nights. These can be more difficult to play at, as competition is fierce and your music needs to fit the specific niche of the club night.
  • Fill your off days with gigs in alternative venues – If you are looking to do a run of gigs you may find it hard to get them all to run in order. There is an answer. Perhaps you can fill these off days with busking, house concerts, squat gigs or other forms of guerrilla gigs. There is a whole list of them here and not only do they fill the dates up but they give you a chance to connect to a whole new fan base. Even if your tour itinerary is full why not do some gigs during the day if you are playing at night? If you want to build a fan base it is all about hard work.
  • Check your gear – Make sure everything is working, now is the time to get the distortion pedal you tried to mend with Blue Tac properly fixed. Try and carry spares of everything, especially batteries, drum heads, leads and strings.  If you are using a laptop for sequencing ensure you have an mp3 back up of the backing tracks on your iPhone or mp3 player in case of emergency or someone spilling a beer on your computer. The rules of touring are if it can go wrong, it will.
  • Don’t forget to book the time off work – If you have a day job make sure you book the time off well in advance, there was a UK band who had to cancel a full American tour due to their drummer having to work. Sometimes it is the simple things that mess up the best laid plans.
  • Inform the local press – It can be very difficult to get press in the local papers, unless you are playing their town. This is your chance. Make sure you get in touch with the press in every town early on, get them on side, find out the music journalists name and see if you can get a feature. This will also help to get people to the gig. Mention any support slots you’ve done, national press or remarkable things that have happened. This is how you make the most of a tour, it is not just about playing it is about raising the profile of the band.
  • Work your mailing list – When fans come and see you this is your chance to get some more people on your email list. Have a clipboard and pass it round to get the addresses, don’t just leave it on the merch desk and expect people to sign up. Mention the email list from the stage and really push it. Then when you play the same venue again you have more chance of more fans coming back to see you (and hopefully bringing their friends).
  • Go where your fans are – Ask your fans where they would like to see you play, get them to suggest venues, places and promoters via Twitter and other social media. If they want to see you and there is enough of them in that area then play there, you’ll have more chance of playing to an audience. Don’t forget to ask fans to bring their friends and share your links.

In part 2 of this post we will look at agents, touring with big name bands, crew, riders and lots more.

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