Best ways to promote your band...

clockwork green · August 21, 2011, 06:08:15 AM

Or, how to make people like unpopular music. My band is just far too lazy but it's time to get more done. What do you find actually works? Facebook? Flyers? Buddying up to other bands? Free cd's? Free downloads? Frequent updates on website? Sending cd's to blogs for review? Frequent touring?

Hemisaurus · August 21, 2011, 06:25:03 AM

Learn to embrace rejection.

eyeprod · August 21, 2011, 10:46:26 AM

shmooze. be a social butterfly. do what you must to make connections that provide opportunities.

then you might get to play rad shows.

better have some rad tunes, or just something that people can wrap their head around or groove to.

must perform well and engage the audience enough for them to talk about you the next day.

who knows?

mawso · August 21, 2011, 11:08:18 AM

If you have a CD pressed.. DO A FKN MAILOUT.. put together a press sheet to go with the CD, and hit blogs, print media, radio, mailorder record labels, everything.

We did this a few months ago and it's the best thing we did.. a song from the EP ended up on the front cover CD of Classic Rock magazine in the UK.. that has a circulation of 70000. For us to do our own promo run of 70000 CDs would cost like 20 grand, and we got it all pretty much for free.

seriously it amazes me how many people work really hard on their music and spend time and $$$ on getting a release together, and then just let it sit in boxes. I mean, you can sell a handful of copies to people at shows, but at the end of the day the world just isn't going to come to you. A reasonable sized mailout is only a couple hundred bucks and a few hours of work.. and if what you've got is worth a damn then something will come of it.

giving away free CDs is good too.. it's not really anywhere near as good as a mailout, but the one thing we got out of doing that was that guys who play in bands ended up liking the CD, and they set us up with cooler shows than what we could have done ourselves. I've done flyers for shows too but never noticed it did much to get people through the door.

Hemisaurus · August 21, 2011, 11:31:49 AM

I can testify giving away CD's not nearly as good.

How did you compile your mailing list?

eyeprod · August 21, 2011, 11:36:33 AM

^^ that's good advice.

A band I used to play in briefly, and the drummer from my band still plays in recently got signed to holy mountain. How? All from shmoozing. Their music ain't that great, but it fits in aesthetically with some scene and the leader is really good at socializing. So they got some good shows in the big city this way, and a few reviews. They have not done a single release. All their songs sound the same and are not even a little bit original. Two of the guys don't even really know how to play their instruments. Figure that one out.

MichaelZodiac · August 21, 2011, 11:57:04 AM

Quote from: Hemisaurus on August 21, 2011, 11:31:49 AM
How did you compile your mailing list?

Some labels do the press for the releases they bring out but if it's completely DIY I suggest mailing it some websites/zines that you know of and most importantly that have frequent visitors. If you don't know any, get together with the bandmates and good friends and ask around.

Metal and Beer · August 21, 2011, 03:22:05 PM

We're in a small market that would be completely isolated from tours if not for a major interstate (I-40). Pretty much every member of both the bands I'm in are the diehard guys that are at all the "good" shows and lots of the not-so-good ones over the span of many years now, we're the fellas that go to the big fests in other cities and end up sort of representing our local scene/region. We're one of the small handful of local go-to bands that play on the national tour stops here because of this kind of networking and immersion in the heavy underground community. None of this has been a calculated move or anything; our passion and love for heavy music ended up serving us pretty well...we sell all our merch, make a few bucks or at least stay even and have played with some incredibly badass bands; a success in this day and age, really !

So, schmoozing I guess ? It occurs to me that simply schmoozing wouldn't work in a crowded field in LA, NYC, Bay Area, etc. but it's great in smaller pools

clockwork green · August 21, 2011, 10:26:56 PM

So what do you guys normally put on these press sheets that you send out to clubs and publications? Are there any templates you're aware of online or samples?

mawso · August 22, 2011, 01:25:55 AM

Quote from: Hemisaurus on August 21, 2011, 11:31:49 AM
I can testify giving away CD's not nearly as good.

How did you compile your mailing list?

A few ways.. I knew of a handful of places already, just from being a music fan. Mostly though, I went on facebook and looked at other band's profiles to see what reviews they were getting, and where they were coming from. I also started a thread here and asked people what some cool websites are. There are some really good places in that little list, although only a couple of guys on here seemed interested in it. The other thing that I did was that I also sent the disc to a few labels in europe.. and two of those got back to me to say they really liked it, and that although they weren't looking to do anything with any more acts right now, it was something we could think about down the track.. so when that happened, I hit them up for some addresses of places that I should be sending review copies to

From there it was just a matter of going on to websites and looking up the mailing address. Pretty much anywhere you might want to send something to will have a postal address on their site. The ones that didn't, I just emailed.

It's all pretty easy. If you have a laptop you can do it during the ad breaks while you're watching Futurama or whatever.

spookstrickland · August 22, 2011, 05:15:06 PM

The best things we ever did to promote that worked were: Playing Strip Clubs and giving away Free Beer