5 Tips For Successful Band Promotion
Tips For Successful Band Promotion
Beyond making great music, you have to be able to successfully promote your band and your music, if you are to have a successful band. Either you hire someone else to do it, or you learn to do it yourself. That is just the way it is. Even if you hire someone else to do it, it is still wise to know how to do it yourself.
For successful band promotion the following tips are the core, the minimum necessary that you should do. You need to embrace this and have a serious attitude and work ethic to get anywhere these days. Look out for more details in future articles.
Do what it takes for successful band promotion. When it comes to promoting music, anything else is just preparing to fail. Simple. Your music deserves successful band promotion!
Meanwhile, dive in. Be sure to join us in our music community forums to talk about this, and much, much more.
Table of Contents
Tip 1: Follow Success - Copy What Works
There is no sense in promoting music by completely re-inventing the wheel. By all means, be creative, but start from a point that builds upon what other people have done. It saves time and money and gives you a much better chance of success. Help your band become successful by copying what works. Rehearse and record where successful, local, signed bands rehearse and record.
Take a look at what successful bands do for promo, the venues they play, etc, and then do something similar, play at the same venues, etc. You don’t need to exactly copy the idea, just the actions involved.
Help your band by getting to know other local bands. This allows you to benefit from each other’s experience and contacts.
Successful Band Promotion - Follow Success Example
A band has a gig in a new area and they have a very successful marketing effort, resulting in a gig with a sell-out attendance. The details behind this are invaluable as music industry knowledge.
Get the answers to these questions:
- What quality of leaflet was used? (design, paper, etc.)
- Where were the leaflets distributed? What streets and times etc?
- How many leaflets?
- How long pre-gig were they distributed?
- Were posters used? What size? Where were they placed?
- Was the gig plugged on the local radio? Internet radio?
- Was the gig promoted in the local press? What press? What method (interview, article, listing, etc)?
- Where was the gig?
- What day was the gig on?
- What else did the band do to promote the gig?
- Where and when before this did the band play “near” this venue?
- Does the band have any contacts they could / would pass on? Would they introduce you?
Gathering music industry knowledge of this kind from bands you know, meet, etc can be a very, very valuable method to improve the odds of your success. Make sure you ask the right questions and write down the answers. It’s worth your while.
Tip 2: Get Smart - Learn About The Music Industry
You can transform your chances if you take a little time to learn about the music industry. Educate yourself on standard music industry processes, procedures, and organizations. You can get a lot of help and support, source funding, etc plus gain an understanding of contracts and how the various music industry businesses interact.
This level of understanding is invaluable when it comes to negotiating contracts. If you are going to trade something away, you should what it is and any value attached to it.
Gather market intelligence about your local and national scene. Knowing the key venues in not only your local area is not enough. Become familiar with the key venues in the main cities you would like to play in. Get to know where are the new bands breaking on the scene. What venues do A&R men, tastemakers, song pluggers, Music press, local celebrities, and bands go to? Where do they all go to see new and exciting bands? Those are the venues you should become familiar with the venue, the staff, and the regulars.
Tip 3: Build Your Music Industry Contacts - Network
When you want to build the reputation of your band, build your music industry contacts by networking and growing your local and music industry contacts cannot be underestimated. You need to Schmooz.
Who are the important people locally? Who are the DJs and radio program controllers, music journalists, band managers, promoters, agents, music lawyers, indie labels… even music gear manufacturers!
Get to know them! Go to gigs, parties, and events where you can mix with these people. The more you go, the more you get invited. These are not simply chances to party.
Remember you are there for business reasons, not to get drunk.
Networking provides contacts AND opportunities. Opportunities that you would otherwise miss out on. So, make sure that you network and build your music industry contacts!
Tip 4: Build Your Fan Mailing List
Make and keep in contact with your fans. Tell them your band news directly. This is one of the best ways to build an active fan base and reduce the impact of illegal downloads on your recording-based income.
Build your fan mailing list online, and by getting people to sign up at your gigs. At gigs get an extended band member (manager, roadie, etc) to man a “stall” with info about the band, and any merchandise, and sign fans up to your mailing list using their email addresses. Ideally, provide internet access and directly add the email addresses to your fan mailing list.
Tip 5: Build Presence For Your Band, Both Online AND Offline
When you want to build awareness of your band, it doesn’t need to be about one or the other, build both!
Make all your efforts pay off in both worlds. You can use your fan mailing list to get fans to a gig, but video the gig and then post it or parts of it online. Build in the benefits of being a member of your fan mailing list. For example, make one song available to everyone, while reserving the bulk of the video for the members of your fan mailing list.
Build your band website. Include music, videos, images, news, and any special offers for your fans and visitors. Use social networking, forums, and blogs to get the breadth and then focus on one at a time to build depth. Consider hiring an online music promotion service to help promote your band.
If you are a bedroom musician obviously the internet offers the more obvious option to get your name and music out there, but you should perhaps think about what you can do in a real-world sense, even if that is playing acoustic or unplugged gigs. Videos of these can then be turned into a nice bonus for fan club members, and they can also be used to raise awareness of your music on a more local basis.
Following The 5 Tips For Successful Band Promotion
It didn’t take long to write out these tips, but it takes dedication, hard work, creativity, and time, to apply all of the above tips and to keep applying them. That is exactly why bands recruit people to help!
- Follow Success
- Learn About The Music Industry
- Build Your Music Industry Contacts
- Build Your Fan Mailing List
- Build Presence For Your Band
Nothing guarantees success but you can be sure that your chances of success will increasingly improve if you apply, and keep applying, all “5 Tips For Successful Band Promotion”.
Keep building your skills. Look out for “5 More Tips For Successful Band Promotion”.
Discuss this article in our Music Forum.
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