Tag Archives | playing live

18 April 2013

What is your band’s Elevator Pitch?

What happens when someone asks: “What does you band sound like?” This is never an easy question to answer, it’s the question most musicians dread. Everyone likes to think their band is unique and special but often people need to get a rough idea of what sort of music you perform. Sometimes you only get seconds [...]

10 March 2012

How do musicians really earn a living?

It used to be relatively simple to work out how successful musicians got paid, you signed to a record label, put out an album and toured in support of it. If you made a profit after paying back your advance and all associated costs you got paid. This is called recouping (most bands failed to [...]

02 March 2012

How can your band benefit from piracy?

Many musicians are looking to stop piracy but some bands are finding ways to use free music, illegal downloading and so called “piracy” to grow their audience. In a recent interview on Forbes.com Joy Williams from successful indie band The Civil Wars said: “Sure, piracy has its drawbacks, but it also has positives, we’ve had [...]

13 February 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 [...]

04 February 2012

How much does it cost to “make it” in music?

On the Time magazine website there is an article by an obscure indie rock band called Two Lights talking about how expensive it is to become a rock star. It is always a bad idea to complain in public. GQ called them “Hapless poster-bros for self-importance…full of whiny self-entitlement” and across the web people are ridiculing [...]

26 January 2012

How do you make the most of music industry showcase gigs?

On this blog we often talk about building the audience first and letting the music industry come to you, this will happen as soon as they see you playing large venues, selling thousands of CDs and bringing a crowd. The other way is to play music industry showcase gigs, often at conferences, sometimes in front [...]

09 December 2011

Over 25? Are you too old to become a full time musician?

At a recent music industry event a well known music industry manager said that he wouldn’t even consider working with an act unless they were “under 25, good looking and ready to sign to a major label in 6 months”. Many people within the music industry are the same. But when you look at how [...]

02 December 2011

How do you get support slots with touring bands?

One of the things unsigned bands often want to do is do support slots with well known acts. Support slots allow you the opportunity to connect to both a new audience and people within the industry. Bands have supports for a few reasons but mostly to get a few extra people through the door. Sometimes [...]

15 November 2011

How do you connect to an audience of 10000 fans?

Most bands dream of walking out onstage to a packed audience, full of excited fans, screaming and clapping. That is the dream. But what is the path to get to that point? How do you go from playing in a pub to gaining the attention of the fans and the music industry? It happens all [...]

02 November 2011

Do you still need to sell CDs when everything is digital?

Ten years ago it used to be easy to know how to sell your music, you printed CDs then hoped you would sell them at gigs or if possible you would get a distributer. Now most people consume music digitally via the web, often illegally. So do you need to sell CDs or any physical [...]