July 12th, 2011

Should you put your music on Spotify?

Now is a great time to be an independent musician, you can post videos on Youtube, communicate with fans on Twitter and list your gigs on Live Unsigned. Another useful way to spread the word is Spotify, a streaming service for music available in the UK, Finland, France, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden and soon to be launching in Denmark, the USA and across the world.

For fans Spotify is a brilliant way to listen to music and discover new artists. Users can even download their playlists to their iPhone, Android or Windows phone to listen offline if they pay a subscription. Standard free subscriptions limit the number of hours of listening and play listeners adverts alongside the music. There are many services that allow you to get your own music onto Spotify for a small fee including Reverbnation and CD Baby, they offer it as part of their standard distribution deal that includes iTunes, Napster, Amazon etc. Some artists are happy to have their music on Spotify, some less so. We’ll look at the advantages and disadvantages:

The advantages are:

  • Exposure to the Spotify users – Some people use Spotify as their main way of listening to and discovering new music, so in your attempt to build a following it is probably best to have at least some music on there. Spotify is a great way of sharing music across social media and there is a community of people sharing Spotify playlists on blogs and forums.
  • It discourages illegal file sharing – By allowing a great deal of the music available to be be streamed virtually free, some argue that Spotify goes some way to stopping torrenting and other forms of illegal downloading.

The disadvantages are:

  • The royalty rates are awful – The system is set up to most benefit Spotify’s business partners, the major labels. Unsigned artists and indie/micro labels get a much lower rate, the major labels had to get a higher rate to get them on board with Spotify. So don’t expect to make much money, even if you get thousands of plays.
  • It discourages legal downloading (possibly) – If you can listen to music free online and download it as an offline playlist to your phone, why do you need to pay for downloads?  If you are an artist who makes part of their income from paid downloads this is a major problem.
  • You don’t get the fans email addresses – If your music is given away free through for example Bandcamp you get to keep the fan’s email address in exchange for the download. These email addresses allow you to stay in touch with your new fans and let them know about future releases and gigs which may well provide an income stream. With Spotify you don’t get any of this information.

You have to work out if for the exposure gained on Spotify is worth the money lost in sales of downloads. One of the worst things about Spotify is that fans think they have “paid” for the music and don’t need to download it, when in fact indie artists make very little in terms of royalties. Some artists are removing their music or not uploading it to Spotify for this reason.

Each band needs to work out if Spotify is worth being part of. It looks like some sort of streaming cloud based music service could well be the future of music distribution, whether Spotify is this service nobody yet knows.

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June 16th, 2011

Offline promotion ideas for bands (part 2)

In part 2 of this post we look at how working with charities, word of mouth, fanzines and much more can help to grow your audience outside of your efforts online.

Volunteer to help at charity events – Get involved with your local community. Whether it is a meeting at the local squat or an Amnesty benefit, getting out into the real world and meeting people is a great way of promoting your band and doing some good at the same time. You often get interesting people at charity events and you never know who you will meet, we know of a band who ended up playing in front of many well know celebrities at a charity gig and making some friends in high places.

Word of mouth – Marketing works best when it’s from a trusted source. If your fans tell their friends in the pub about your band you’ll soon build your audience, always ask if your fans will spread the word! Think of the amount of times you’ve discovered a new band from a friend. Word of mouth is vital.

Arrange to meet up with fans – Arrange to meet up with some of your most enthusiastic fans somewhere other than at a gig. It will help the connection with your audience and you can ask them about what they would like to see from you in terms of gigs, merchandise and any other things you are considering doing. Looking after your fans is really important, especially when there are only a few of them in the the early stages of your career.

Print Fanzines – Blogs and web have really reduced the amount of print fanzines but as there are less about it makes them more unusual and makes it easier for you to stand out if you have your own. It doesn’t take long to put together an 8 or 16 page A5 fanzine and if you make one not just about your band but about the local scene you can create something that may well be embraced by the local community. Featuring other bands will get them talking about your band and if you go to their gigs and hand out your free fanzine you’ll soon meet people and make friends.

Offer to DJ at other events – Even if you are not in a genre that is known for its DJ culture DJ’ing at an event is a good way of showing your skills and excellent taste in music. You never know who you’ll meet and it is often a way of getting some contacts with a venue, especially if you offer to do it free. With an iPad you can even DJ without a big pile of CDs or vinyl.

Gigs – The most important place to connect with fans, hand out your flyers, print fanzines and CD samplers. Shake hands and meet people, say thanks and get people’s email addresses. Build bridges with other bands, fans, promoters, sound people and bar staff. You never know who you’ll bump into. Gigs aren’t just about playing, they are a great chance to meet people.

Local Newspapers and Magazines – Build relationships with journalists by being remarkable, send them gifts, remember their names and treat them with respect. Print press in local papers can be really useful in the run up to gigs and can be handy for quotes on your flyers and website. You’ll have to give them something interesting to write about, local band releases CD isn’t good enough.

Print ads – Print ads can be expensive so focus your advertising spend on niche publications within your genre. A small add over the course of several months is better than one big splash, remember that the fans need to see the name multiple times for it to log in their mind. Use quotes from credible sources in your add, for example magazines or blogs or from a Live Unsigned review of your band. Keep it simple and focus on the message you want to get across to your potential fans. When purchasing ads make sure you never take the first price given as the actual amount you’ll pay, always ask for the best price. Magazines have a ratecard of deals but very rarely does anyone pay that price, for example you can often get ads that are £700 for £300 if you wait around for a last minute deal when the magazine is looking to fill space.

The way these methods work best are in combination with web activity and the other items listed. For example if someone picks up a flyer at a gig then reads about you in a magazine then sees your gig listing on Live Unsigned eventually they will take notice of your band. Some marketing experts say that people need to see a message nine times before they take notice of it, so every time you do one of the above you are getting one of those 9. If you focus your efforts on your niche audience specific to your band your marketing will be most effective.  Think about the clubs, gigs and shops your fans hangs out at and make sure your offline promotion is focused there. Make sure your website URL is prominent on all of your marketing and get all promotional materials checked and double checked for grammar and spelling errors. Mistakes can prove expensive!

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June 9th, 2011

20 ways to make money when music is free online

Have you ever been to the circus? Seen the high wire act and the clowns? How do they make most of their money?

Candy floss.

Candy floss is cheap to make (essentially just sugar) and massively profitable. For a band your music and live performance is the circus show, so what is the equivalent of candy floss? What can you sell when people download music from the web for free? You need to find another way of making money that allows your fans to support you once they have discovered you through free music via torrents. You need to create items that the superfan will want, the fan who sees every tweet, every blog post and waits for you to post the latest gigs on Live Unsigned. Items smart bands can sell include:

Guitar Lessons (either in person or via Skype).

Limited access Ustream gigs.

Clothing.

Backstage access.

Live concert downloads/limited CDs (especially if they tie in with an event that people were at).

Stems for your songs to remix.

Fan Clubs.

Signed stuff.

Limited edition numbered DVDs/CDs/Box Sets.

Posters and individual one off pieces of artwork.

One off hand stenciled items.

Signed hand written lyrics .

Endorsements.

House concerts.

Tour Scenery.

Personal items.

Numbered items.

Access to the band.

Tour Junk.

Instruments (signed).

And many other things that are specific to your band alone.

You need to sell souvenirs, things that remind them of the experience of seeing you live. You need to ask yourself, what can you do to earn an extra £5 from each person in your audience. Some of the merchandise KISS sells is very cheesy but it has made them millions. If you are in the early stages of your career you may only have a few hundred fans so you need to think about how you can earn the most income from each fan, but without ruining the relationship with them by exploiting them. Remember it is better to keep fans in the long run, better to earn thousands over years than try and push it in the short term. Once you have loyal fans you can have an income for years to come. Amanda Palmer made $19000 in 10 hours selling personal items on Twitter. Items Included:

Ukulele used on the European tour: $640

Guitar hero plastic guitar controller used in album promo shoot: $250

A copy of Neo2 magazine, plus two post-war trade slap-bracelets & a crime-photo set: $230

Glass dildo, with subtly-sordid back story: $560

Hipsters Ruin Everything t-shirt, $155.55

A Bill Bryson book, A Short History of Nearly Everything: $280

Huge metal “the establishment” sign, used at Rothbury festival for the circus tent: $450

Vintage stockings used in a video: $200

Basically fairly random stuff. The point is that they bought the above because they wanted to feel a connection to the artist and to support her. Those loyal fans allow her to keep going and play across the world.

Think about what you’d like to get from your favorite band and make that available for your fans. If you are not sure what to offer, ask the fans. Now is a great time to be in a band thanks to sites like Live Unsigned, Youtube and Twitter. At least now you have access to your audience.  Remember to treat the fans well or you can easily lose them, if it looks like you are only in it for the money that will soon happen.

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May 31st, 2011

How to avoid getting ripped off by promoters

Many promoters go out of their way to make gigs great for bands and audiences, listing gigs on Live Unsigned, putting up posters, flyering and spreading the word across social media. This post isn’t about those promoters. It is about the promoters who create the gigs that split up bands and waste your time. You can avoid them by researching venues online and playing at places that friends and bands you like play at. You have to be careful, there is one venue in London that manages to tick every box on the list below. Here are some things to watch out for:

Pay to play – The way this one works is that you have to buy a certain amount of tickets from a promoter then the band has to sell these tickets to get paid. However what normally happens is that the band can’t get the correct amount of people to the gig and loses money. Don’t play at any venue that asks you for money to play there, instead set up your own night like we wrote about here. If you buy tickets and have to sell them to get your money back you are taking the risk, not the promoter. Some venues insist this is standard practice but its actually quite rare, often these sort of venues will allow any band to play, regardless of quality as long as they are prepared to pay the money up front. By playing these sorts of venues you can often end up playing on bills crammed full of bands that don’t share an audience and are of variable quality. You don’t want to be associated with this and if you are offered these kind of deals make sure that you tell your friends to avoid these venues and spread the word to other bands. This needs to stop, no band should pay to play.

Over filling venues – What happens here is the promoter tells the band there is a smaller audience than is actually at the gig. So for example for a gig with 300 people they would say there is only 230, allowing them to pay a band who is on a percentage of the door a lot less. This happens often in even the biggest venues, you would be surprised. It is also dangerous in terms of Health and Safety, if there was a fire at some of these gigs it is going to be really dangerous. Peter Grant who managed Led Zeppelin used to get people from his organisation to count the amount of people coming into the gig to ensure that Zeppelin got paid correctly. You can do the same but be careful, promoters are unlikely to take kindly to this. Try and keep some sort of rough idea of how many people are actually coming into the building and you have more chance of getting paid correctly.

Promising to pay you then failing to do so – This happens a lot. Some promoters disappear before the night is over, others say that costs have risen and “there is no money in the pot” to pay the band. The way to avoid this is to agree in writing what you’ll get before the gig, so there is no argument about who gets paid and how much. Ask if there are any conditions that may result in non-payment. Get it in writing and you have a chance of getting paid. If you can get a promoter to sign one of the standard contracts that’s great but it is very hard to get most venues and promoters to do this.

All of the above and worse happen to bands every day. We’ve written before about being careful about choosing the venues you play (you can read it here) but some promoters actually go out of their way to try and get that little bit extra out of bands. If you are treated badly at a venue, tell people and help others to avoid being ripped off. What normally happens to theses promoters is that eventually their reputation becomes so bad that they stop promoting gigs. Unfortunately there are always more people thinking there is easy money to be made from gigs. Be aware these promoters are out there and be careful where you play.

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April 21st, 2011

Planning a DIY album release (part 2)

In the second part of our post on planning an album release we look at the final few months before the album comes out:

Picture by Paul Linus Claassen

2 months before the release:

  • Work out and allocate your advertising budget and place ads. Remember to focus on a small niche audience, ideally of a few thousand people. If you’re placing print ads be aware that different magazines have different lead times for copy, make sure you check. It is very easy to waste money on ads, make sure you are targeting exactly the right audience.
  • Ensure you are reading and commenting on (not spamming!) the blogs that are relevant to your genre, find them by using Google blog search to look for acts that sound similar to you. There is more information on getting your music featured on blogs here.
  • Register the album’s songs with the relevant performing rights society for your part of the world (it is the PRS in the UK) so that if they are played live or on the radio you get the royalties.
  • Get promotional items printed. Flyers and stickers are very useful at this point. Review the gigs coming up in your area on Live Unsigned by bands in your genre and flyer them. If you have a street team/loyal fans/friends that will do it in other parts of the world get them involved as well. It is essential to build this awareness now.
  • Upload the album to your digital distribution company of choice, delivery to the various download distributers takes a while and it varies from company to company. Remember to tell them the release date or they will simply post it straight away, not good for your release strategy!
  • If CDs are part of your release get them duplicated NOW! There is nothing worse than a CD release event with no CDs (this has happened). Check all proofs and masters yourself, then get someone else to double check them. Work out with the CD duplication company exactly how much lead time they need to get the order completed and shipped out to you. Get quotes from a few companies and try to get a recommendation from a friend for a reliable supplier. Think carefully about how you want your CD to look, for example Digipacks are nice but will make the CDs more expensive. Work out how much you can charge your fans for them, are they even interested in having CDs or would they be happy with a digital download?
  • Are you doing any special promotions for the album – remix competitions, give aways, videos, streaming gigs etc? Now is the time to plan them and include them on your calendar. As with everything the more remarkable and interesting they are the better.
  • Post a pre-order offer online and send it to your email list. This is an opportunity to get fans to pay up front. This is very useful for improving cash flow, you can use this money to pay for your CDs (as long as you have enough fans). Explain to your fans how important it is for them to pre order and don’t forget to say thank you, without your audience you have nothing. Email out to your list and only mention the one thing you want them to do, make it clear how much it will help support your music if the fans pre-order.
  • Prepare a press release and update your press kit. Make sure the headline isn’t just “xxxx releases CD”, if you want people to write about what you do make it remarkable. Are you the first band to record an album only using a dictaphone or did the singer have to phone in the vocals from prison? If you want the press to write about you give them something to write about. If you need new photos now is the time to get them done not on the day you release the album. There is more information on press kits here.
  • Send CDs (or CDRs if you don’t have your CDs yet) off to traditional press and radio, along with your press release (if you are doing the PR yourself). As with advertising remember to check the magazines lead times, some magazine are only published quarterly for example so you’ll have to send them off a bit earlier. You have more chance of having your music reviewed if you are also advertising in the same magazine.
  • Post some tracks across social media as teasers. Perhaps a video on Youtube or a demo on Soundcloud? Don’t give them too much, just a couple of tracks to build interest.
  • Plan your social media, work out if you are doing blogs or videos daily or weekly and who in the band will be promoting on Facebook and Twitter. You need to tell your story and take your audience along with you as you go. Getting your audience involved at this stage will make it more likely they will purchase the album when it comes out. Ask your fans what they think of your CD artwork and demos (you don’t have to agree) and try to finish all of your social media with a question, this will get people talking.

1 month before the release:

  • Increase the amount of social media you are doing, more blogs, more tweets and more videos. Make sure you are not spamming people and don’t just talk about yourself, on Twitter if only 5% of your tweets are about your music you are probably OK. Every time you post something online make sure it is interesting enough for people to talk about, don’t just post things for the sake of it.
  • Send your album as a download to podcasters and bloggers, using the list of contacts you have built up over the last few months . You can host your album as a private file on Soundcloud or one of the various sharing sites and send links to the relevant bloggers and podcasters. Make sure you say which tracks are OK to post on blogs, at this point you want tracks to start to appear to get people interested in time for the release.

  • Email your fan mailing list on the day of your release and make sure your fans are aware of what is happening, this is essential. Include links to buy the album in every place it is possible to do so, remember some people prefer to buy their music from specific places i.e. Emusic subscribers.
  • Stream your release event on Ustream if possible. Ustream allows fans from across the world to watch your gig. Share your event with your online fan base and get them involved. There is more information on Ustream gigs here.

After the release:

  • The promo of your album must not stop here! The release is just the start, carry on connecting to bloggers, podcaster and the press. Put out more videos and upload more remixes. Play the long game and build your fan base over time. Try and keep up the momentum with social media. If people write about your music, blog about it and share it online via Twitter. Keep the blogs and videos coming and tell fans how the album is doing. Make it “you and the fans against the world”.
  • Gig heavily and list your gigs on Live Unsigned. Make sure you blog about the process. Make as much web content as possible when you play live by taking photos and making videos.
  • Do interviews with press/podcasters and blogs. If anyone has reviewed your album favourably, follow it up and ask if they would like to interview you. Make yourself available to everyone, you never know what a contact will bring. A play on an obscure podcast can lead to lots of other interesting things.

Every album release is different and there are things that everyone would do differently, the above list is just the start. There is always more you can do and each act will have different factors that effect the release. Make sure that your album release is an event that is truly special, not just “band releases CD”. Make it remarkable and you’ll get people talking and that is when the word of mouth buzz works really well.

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September 21st, 2010

5 reasons local scenes are great for your band

Local scenes have always been vital for the development of new acts. From Folktronica to Madchester to Dubstep to Punk, these scenes often start locally then break internationally. Now online and offline local scenes are just as important, as a community of people is always stronger than bands working alone. Here are some reasons why local scenes are great for bands:

 

Picture by Paul Linus Claassen

1 – Sharing A Fanbase – If you support a local band or they support you, its a great opportunity for fans to crossover between bands. You can even swop gigs with people in different towns in similar scenes. A good way to find similar bands in different towns is using the Liveunsigned guide gig listings and genre tags.

2 – Shared Projects – Why not do a download compilation of best of the acts in your local area and post it online, using perhaps Bandcamp or Soundcloud? You could give it away free or sell it to raise money for a local charity. Publicise it with a tie-in live performance, giving you something else to talk to podcasters, bloggers and the local press about.

3  – Events – Rather than just a band plus support make something special by uniting with other bands from the local scene. A Night Of Amsterdam Punk, 12 Acoustic Acts from New Jersey, One Night Only Burlesque Metal etc. People are bored of a band plus support, you need to get people excited and talking about what you’re doing. Remember to post the event to Liveunsigned, create a Facebook event and promote to the local press and bloggers. Music industry people are often pleased to hear you can draw a decent crowd in your local area.

4 – Gaining Press – An exciting local music scene is always more interesting than a band alone. Start by getting the local press/blogs and podcasters interested, this gives you quotes for your press kit. You can then work up to approaching the national press and bigger blogs when there is a decent story to talk about.

5 – Social Media – Now you can tell people about the fantastic Yeovil Doom Metal scene or Antwerp Folktronica scene or whatever scene you are building. Set up a blog or podcast devoted to the scene and tweet about it. Use a Facebook group or forum and get people talking. With more than one band its a lot easier to get conversations started, its all about word of mouth. Make sure all the bands are doing their bit!!!

To connect with your local scene look up your area and the relevant genre tag on Live Unsigned.Go and see local unsigned bands live and and talk to them. Be friendly and if you like their music tell them! You will be amazed how much positive response you will get (and maybe the odd support slot).

You can even take the concept of a local scene and apply it to online communities. One of the great things about the web is a local scene can be virtual with like minded people brought together by a passion for a type of music, whether it’s based around a forum, Facebook group or something more advanced like Second Life. Strong communities are great for bands. People tell their friends and word of mouth amplified through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter is a powerful thing.

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