- Facebook Begins To Roll Out New Page Widths
- Tweet For A Track Now Does Facebook Sharing
- MagCloud Will Make Your Group A Magazine To Promote Yourself With?
- Leading With the Chorus
- Behind The Video: Those Mockingbirds "Honest, Honest"
- Mastering Engineer Greg Calbi Discusses Compression And Loudness
- Cash Music Goes 1.0 With Flower Video, Picture And Sound Player
- Installing SoundCloud On The New MySpace Layouts
- Interview With Jac Holzman, Founder Of Elektra Records
- Mastering Engineer Greg Calbi Discusses Compression And Loudness
- QR Codes Can Now Generate Facebook Likes
- MySpace Updates Music Pages, Can Now Upload 20 Songs!
- Gmail To Allow You To Make Free Domestic Calls In The Browser
- Writing Stories Around Your Music For Bigger Publicity
- Does Freemium Work For Everyone?
- Sufjan Stevens Lets His Record Loose First Through Bandcamp Then iTunes
- Lissie Makes Music Video Controlled By The Weather
- Vinyl Mastering Process Considerations
- Tutorial On Paul Stretch The Program That Makes Justin Bieber Sound Like Siguir Ros
- The Arcade Fire Show What Podcast Technology Can Do For An Album Experience
- How To Make Your Own Siguir Ros... I Mean Slowed Down Justin Bieber Song
- Use Postcards To Spread Your Word
- Sound Profile For The Film Inception
- Check Out A Tour Of TopSpin's Interface
- The Insanity Of Licensing
- Who Do Your Fans Trust For Recommendations?
- Grooveshark Now Rewards You For Referrels!
- Selling Out Shows Every Time You Play
- DamnTheRadio Enables Streaming Music And Email And Phone #
- SoundCloud Enables Creative Commons Search
- Check Out This Music Video Made Only From Creative Common Images!
- Virb Will Now Host And Help You Build A great Looking Site For $10 A Month
- What Is Album Artwork Worth?
- The Fairtilizer Is Now Official.FM
- Using QR Codes To Promote Your Music
- Headliner.FM Now Offering Express Promotions
- Check Out A Fantastic Template For A Music Based Facebook Welcome Page
- MySpace's Music Romeo iPad App And How To Get Your Video On It
- Twitter Releases Their Own Tweet Button And It's Worth Updating Your Old One For
- Keep Records Of Everything On The Road
- Pro Tools vs. Reaper Sound Test!
- A Breakdown Of Physical vs. Digital Sales On Arcade Fire's #1 Album
- ReverbNation Will Automatically Adapt Your MyBand Page On Facebook
- SoundCloud Enables SoundCloud Remix App To Makes Remix Contests Easier
- Record All Your Ideas Right Away
- Be Willing To Play Shows For Free
- SongKick Now Aggregating Show Listings To VeVo And YouTube Videos
- 10 Awesome Tumblr Themes For Your Music Tumblr
- More On Making QR Codes Work For Your Music
- More Dates Doesn't Make It A Better Tour
- The Public Record Is An Awesome Collaboration Site Where You Work With Popular Artists
It's important to think of playing free as an investment, not as a waste of time and fruitless labor. Free shows can produce money from merchandise and can add addresses to your email list. Most importantly, it starts word of mouth promotion and gives people a "risk free" trial of your band. The whole "support the arts" movement is fine and dandy, but people only support the arts after they find something they believe in/are excited about - you can't guilt people into coming to your show.
Let's imagine you're a quirky electronic artist in NYC and Modeselektor is coming to town but they have no openers touring with them. Your band has a decent following, but so do 20 other bands like you. Naturally, the competition for opening act slots is going to be fierce, but if you are willing to play the gig for free, the promoter can relax a bit and worry about meeting the headliners guarantee. We've seen this technique effectively used at some of the biggest venues in NYC. After you've built up some more clout and proven yourself at a large venue, you can easily begin asking for a little money, but wait until you've shown the promoter something before getting on your high horse.
Free is never actually "free" - it's a sample of what you can do and an investment in attracting future fans and drawing in revenue.
Perhaps you are like me and you have been seeing these funny looking barcodes everywhere and giving them a WTF? These barcodes are QR codes, which smart phones can scan with their built-in camera and it will take them to a website of your choice or even put your contact info into a phone automatically, depending on how you set up your QR code. These codes present many cool ways to promote your music:
- Make one that you hang up at your merch booth where you link a place where fans can get more info on your group.
- If you know HTML you can make a web landing page where you can trade fans their email address for free tracks.
- You can put this on promotional posters and flyers so that fans can preview tracks from the groups playing a show.
- Using Last.FM To Promote Your Music
- Looking For Good Management? Don't Look On Craigslist Like DAS*EFX
- The Details On Arcade Fire's To Vinyl First Mastering Process
- Music Got You Down? Try A Visit To The Rock Shrink
- Licensing Your Music To Labels In Other Regions
- Jango Now Allows Music Video Uploads - Closer To Being A MySpace Replacement?
- LicenseQuote Is A Store Front For Your Licensing Catalog
- What It's Really Like To Work In A Music Retail Store
- Google Now Allows Multiple Logins
- TicketLeap Expands With Social Functions
- Jango Now Offers Concert Tour Date Listings
- ASCAP Makes Worlds Stupidest Videos To Defend Their Stupid Actions
- So You Wanna Be A Musician
- Make Your Facebook Page A Welcome Tab For Your Fans To Land On
- Humor Tuesday: Synths + Religion = Awesome
- Anatomy Of Arcade Fire's Social Media Strategy
We have long been fans of Ticketleap for its ability to promote your own events and sell directly to fans for a small PayPal commission. It enables many groups who play at off the radar venues to capitalize on advance/online ticket sales. It now looks as if TicketLeap has stepped up their game and added ways to promote your events through social media like Twitter and Facebook making their service a helpful way to spread the word about your shows. Totally kick ass!
- Releasing A Song For A Stream Is A Fools Game - Maximize Your Sharing
- Affordable Live Strings Recorded Remotely With Christian Howes
- Thank Everyone Who Gives You A Good Review And Pour Fuel On The Fire
- TweetMakr Will Make You An Easy To Use Button To Encourage ReTweets
- Another Reason You Need To Keep Updating Your Myspace - Concert Dates
- The State Of YouTube
- BandWPThemes v1.5 Are Now Available And Awesome!
- 10 Awesome Crowd Sourced Music Videos
- Social Mention Is A Fantastic Way To Search Many Social Networks
- Your Live Show Strategy Is Insane
- Where We Are Going - Selling Tickets Direct To Fan
- Making Your Guitar Look Artificially Ancient
- Watch The Trailer For The Upcoming Daytrotter Movie
- Humor - Unique Merch Idea! Silkscreen In Human Blood
- How Hip Hop Artists Use Social Media
This is indeed sanity and like many insane things in this world we watch many loved ones and friends do this on a day to day basis. Tour:Smart author Matin Atkins has a great saying when he talks about how you shouldn't take your country to war unless you know the outcome. Many bands have their momentum, wallets and time drained by driving for days to places that don't care about seeing them in order to fill some myths about paying some sort of dues.
The fact of the matter is if you are going to play a show somewhere and it has a bad turn out, don't play there unless you are going to do something different. If you played a town and no one came don't go back till you are sure the situation will be better. There are many people who believe a record company is going to be impressed that you played hundreds of shows even if it is to 12 people every night. They would much rather see you playing smart gigs where you make situations happen where there is a decent turnout. That 6 hours you were going to drive to a far off show can often be better spent taking 6 hours to talk to other bands who could help make you draw in that town and organizing a great show where you will do something productive for you group!
Topspin Ticketing - Pixies @ The Troxy, London June 2010 from ian rogers on Vimeo.
Yesterday, Topspin offered a glimpse into something we knew they were doing but hadn't quite seen the big picture of. They are now enabling artists to sell tickets direct-to-fan which could knock down many of the walls and profit problems in the industry. While the technology is cool and all and in TopSpin's blog post they claim they don't intend to threaten the big ticket companies, this is indeed the Achilles Heel of the big ticketing companies.
We all know that music fans despise the insane ticket charges that Ticketmaster/LiveNation inflict upon people who just want to enjoy music. This puts the power for artists to finally maximize the potential of both retaining fans and getting bargaining power for artists to get more of a cut from live shows. The groups have always been the people to drive the sales to a show, but since they hold no power over the situation. With direct ticket sales groups can negotiate higher pay outs and better terms as well as eliminating the horrific middle man of a Ticketmaster/Livenation. We are excited to say the least.
GigMaven is currently available for NY, LA, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and Ohio and are looking to expand further. For more information check out the GigMaven website.
- How Man Overboard Made Their Record Leak Turn Into A Good Thing
- Martin Atkins At The New Music Seminar 2010 (Part 1)
- Derek Sivers On Perspectives On Value
- Oh Sleeper Explains Why You Can't Win As A Mid-Level Touring Band
- Nimbit Discusses Fan Interaction At The New Music Seminar 2010
- How To Tell How Loud Your Record Should Be
- Big Champagne Launches The Ultimate Chart
- Headliner FM Offering New Features To Promote Your Music
- How Bandcamp Will Handle Free Downloads Now That They Will Be Charging
- Planning Far Ahead Is A Waste Of Time
- Courtney Holt Discusses Future Of Myspace Music At New Music Seminar 2010
- Veoba Offers CD + LP Manufcaturing, Online Distro, Merch, A Venue Datasbase And More
- Metric Use Facebook Share's To Unlock Extra Content
- Ditto Music Launch 24 Hour iTunes Service
- MUST READ - Your Future in Music Depends on What You Know, Not Who You Know
- Who Are The Millenials
- MOG Launches Mobile App
- Finding A Good Manager - Avoid The Yes Men
- GuGuChu Launches It's First Generation Of Widgets
- Announcement - We Now Have a Forum!
- How To Get Your Facebook Band Page To Default To MyBand
- Bandcamp Announces It Will Start To Take A 10-15% Cut!
- So When Do We Start Making Money? - Touring Band Edition
- Make Your Facebook A Memorable Fowarding URL
- A Few Tips For Executing A Better Jango Campaign
- An Perfect Example Of How To Ask A Blog To Take Down Your Music
- Sequencing Your Record Pitfalls - From Best To Worst
- Fairshare Music Is A Philanthropic Music Sales Site Where You Choose The Charity
- If You Have Rough Mixes Put Them To Use
- Using A Jango Focus Group
- The Android App Inventor Is A Easy To Use Android Development Platform
- Thounds Is A Sample Collaboration/Online Music Recorder Type Thing
- Jeff Price Of TuneCore Slams Tom Silverman Of New Music Seminar
- Listen To Pomplamoose Talk About Making a Living Off Music Without Touring
- Reverb Nation's My Band App Gets Way Better!
- 10 Things You Should Know About Recording Drums
- Band Tip: Learn How To Set Up Other Members' Gear
- How To Get A Easy To Remember, Simple URL For Your Facebook Page
Yes, it's already that time of year and if you're anything like us, you're so busy that you almost forgot. Tuesday July 14th marks the last day for artists to register for CMJ, being held in NY, October 19-23rd. 550 slots are available and while it certainly would have helped to have registered earlier, tomorrow is the final day. One thing that is really pissing some people off is that you must register through the service SonicBids which requires membership at $6 a month at least to maintain (not to mention the cost of registering is $45 itself). Yikes. Despite that, for many bands, the "illustrious allure" and chance to get "noticed" is too great to refuse. So yeah, we'll probably see ya there. Most Popular Posts
Guide To Getting Your Band Somewhere
Esssential Music Business Knowledge
Esssential Songwriting Knowledge
Esssential Recording Knowledge
Recent Op-Eds

Esssential Knowledge for Vocalists
Essential Pro Tools Tips
Esssential Knowledge for Drummers
Esssential Knowledge for Guitarists
Blog Roll





























