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Online Marketing for an Indie Band?
nometa asks: "I'm working with an indie band, and despite excellent reviews, a great album (produced by Sylvia Massey of Tool fame), and excited responses by crowds whenever we play, it seems near-impossible to get past the 'gate-keepers' of the music industry. Majors (and several indies, sadly) don't see a pretty boy band, push for fluffy singles over good songs, and generally act like they still have clue about what people want. We've had great success, however, on our websites selling CDs and pulling in new fans, and would like to push online music marketing further. Do any Slashdot readers have suggestions for pushing our music out further online?" We all know the problem with today's music industry, this is not the place for that horse-pill. Instead let's focus on how an independent music group can go out there and make it on their own, and do so using existing technology (including the Internet), to its best potential. So what suggestions do you have for young, aspiring bands who want to make their music, and not sell their soul in the process?
Weasel your way onto the front page of Slashdot? :)
-Waldo Jaquith
Step #1.
Keep your website online by not having it Slashdotted to death
Give samples and distribution rights to University LAN stations. A lot of University campuses have their own inside-the-firewall Net radio and are starved for material.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Make your music FREE (for personal use)! If you signed, you wouldn't get much for your music anyway, sheer .1 cents on each CD. All of your money will come from merchandising and shows. Tour, tell people to dl your MP3s (they will) and spread them to their friends. Make sure you post when you'll be in an area on your websit.
You'll make it. This is the OTHER thing the labels are afraid of...
I would write up a reocmmendation on Emergent Music (or send them a CD so they can write one up). Word of mouth is great.
As both a musician and music fan, allowing your fans to trade live show bootlegs (and explicitly allow taping of same) can do wonders. Look what it did for Phish. In 3 years they went from playing college student centers to selling out Boston Garden. Before you mod me as offtopic, lemme get around to how this relates to online. Get listed on etree.org. Get on Furthur (http://furthurnet.com), which is a program for trading complete live shows in mp3 and shorten (SHN) format. Maybe get the ball rolling by posting a couple of soundboard recordings on Furthur. Don't worry about this cannabilzing your album sales. It won't. It very well may get people to buy more. I know I've bought over 10 Phish albums since I first downloaded a Phish show off Furthur.
TODO: Something witty here...
There are two EXCELLENT resources for distribution of music on the Net.
FurthurNET and etree
I *only* support, monitarily, musicians that allow the FREE distribution of their music to their fans...
etree relies on a mailing list and FTP servers to distribute music whereas FurthurNET relies on P2P (in a format much like Limewire, etc).
If you really want your music to go out and don't want to have to pay HIGH bandwith costs, I suggest one of these two methods.
If you really want to make it, follow these steps:
Please don't really do this--every talking head in the nation will be screaming the "Someone must be held accountable!" mantra, your band's potential career will be snuffed, you will all be sent to prison for terrorism, I will be labelled a terrorist ringleader for giving you this idea, and slashdot.org will be closed down under the USA-PATRIOT act.
Better get used to those college towns.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
A lot of bands which have enjoyed success on mainstream radio got their start in college radio. Radiohead is one great example (and, er, Tool is another).
There are organisations such as Team Clermont and Addsman who distribute albums for very small labels and independants who are too small to effectively handle their own distribution. Getting one of them to promote your CD is a good start.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
How about putting some MP3's out and including contact information in the id tag? This information can be a simple email address or web site address. Something like "for more info contact ...." or "to purchase CD ..." You could release it into the world of P2P networks or newsgroups. You can then see if these distribution methods actually help unlike what the industry tries to make us believe.
Linkin Park apparent got on appropriate IRC and other IM/Chat channels where music was being discussed, and pretended they weren't in the band and told people to go check them out. See this article, taken from Time Magazine Jan 28 2002.
Get some of your music on a p2p service. Some people think it helps.
Get yourself a Soundscan barcode, and start tracking sales with it religiously. Labels notice if your soundscan numbers jump.
Finally, ask yourself what's really important to you. Labels will try to make you famous if they think it's a good investment that fits with their concept. They'll take your art and most of the money from the resulting fame, though. If your desire is to be huge, go the label route. If your desire is simply to make music and make a living, re-read the article I linked to above. That artist is making a living in Utah, a place with nearly no real local music venues or radio support. Several others are too. They had something in them that appealed to a large enough audience, and word got out. That's the real trick.
Tweet, tweet.
The Majors generally act like they still have clue about what people want.
I know everybody here likes to bitch and moan about popular music, but the fact is that the recording industry at large probably does have a pretty good handle on what "most people" want.
These guys sink millions upon millions of dollars into focus groups and various other forms of research to determine what music is going to be the most popular. Obviously you're going to have bands (e.g. Barenaked Ladies) that blindside these studies and turn into mega superstars. But for better or worse, the major labels have gotten pretty good at spoon-feeding the public just exactly what they want. It may be insipid, it may be uninspired, but chances are it's what most people want to hear.
Look at it this way - you and I may not be buying Britney Spears albums, but there's a hell of a lot of somebody out there paying for them.
I would have called the music industry a different horse product, myself....
Allow your audience to tape and trade your concerts freely.
The Grateful Dead did it. Phish does it. Dave Matthews Band does it. U2 does it. Radiohead does it. Metallica did it. Note that I just named six of the top grossing concert acts ever. Combine that with a heavy touring schedule, and assuming your band is decent enough to draw an audience, they will rake in the dough.
However, if your band expects to make their primary income from record sales, you're gonna have to bend to the will of the record companies. Fact of the business.
If you choose the Open Audio License published by the EFF, I would strongly recommending listing the music in the Open Music Registry (see link in my .sig). If you so choose, you can use that listing to request tips/donations from listeners.
(This is directed to nometa, not Milo Fungus, who provides an example of what I'm describing in the 2nd paragraph above.)
No Laughing Allowed!
Weezer.com keeps me coming back because they update their site daily. They put demos out all the time. All their videos are online. And tons of merchandise. Best Music Model i've seen yet.
Btw, Metallica.com charges $25 a year to look at their bulletin board. (They actually found a way for me to hate them. This coming from a hardcore fan from the 80's)
How about trying to meet some indie filmmakers and getting your music on the soundtracks for their films with a credit at the end, or maybe a bit part or cameo? Some indie films enjoy a lot of success, some don't, of course.... but it might be sort of a symbiotic relationship- indie filmmakers are trying to achieve the same goal as you.
The probelm behind online marketing is that its cheap enough for everyone to do it. So you loose the "unique" feel of conventional advertisement.
The truth is the reason behiond the success of traditional advertisement is that its very expensive. That guarantees that the customer will remember the few brands that manage to get a goot marketing campaign.
Having said that i would recommend you to leave traditional online advertisement (websites, p2p, slashdot, etc) as secondary, and focus on untraditional and innovative advertisement. Im not telling you to hack google to show your band as the result of every query, but to be smart and careful.
For instance, you could start a "music for geeks" campaign, giving away linux CDs in your shows and showing source code behind the stage, that would get you on the news, and from there (if you are good) you are done.
The key: innovation, do something nobody has ever done.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
My brother is in a situation much like yours. He's doing the garage band thing and trying to get discovered. Using the internet is the best thing he's done to get the word out on his band. Compile buddies on AIM, ICQ, newsgroups, message boards, groups, communities, whatever. This gives him a network of people. He meets people who know people who know people, and so on. It's all very Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Through the people he's met in chat rooms, communities, mailing lists, etc. he's made contact in very high places and his former band had some success getting signed to a label and making it onto a few compilation CDs. Get yourself known to people through communities, and never underestimate a person's curiosity. Put a link to your site in your sig, tell people where to download your mp3s (yes- use mp3s to get your music out there, you're not making any money right now anyway, so it's no skin off your teeth). BUILD A GOOD WEBSITE with your mp3s readily available and easy to download. This all worked for my brother and he has an incredible network of people that he can go to for things like website work (someone built him a great site for FREE just because they've kept in contact so long), gigs, a job writing music reviews, and even money to do things like start a small label (something my brother has recently started). It's all about building a network, and eventually the right person will hear about you. REcord companies get flooded with CDs from anonymous nobody bands, so the odds that anyone important will hear you is slim by going that route. Build relationships with people and you will eventually be heard by the right people.
Push some of the songs via P2P. Better yet, release them under a license that ALLOWS redistribution so long as credit is given to your band. The idea is to push your band and get it greater exposure.
Give distribution rights to online radio stations, etc. Under the same terms. The idea is to make people *fascinated* by your band as well as liking the music.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
On the internet it's much easier to distribute your music, so there are going to be a LOT more bands using it. In some ways, it will be even more difficult to get your band exposed in this new model.
:o)
My advice is to throw away any rock star visions and concentrate on making music. Be happy playing music for whatever audience you do have. It's really about having fun making music and expressing yourself. You say you have great audience response, good album reviews, and you're happy with the album. Sounds pretty good to me.
I tend to think it takes either a stunningly brilliant musical innovator, selling your soul, or dumb luck to hit the big time. It sounds like there are plenty of people like Tallman. But listening to an MP3, I can tell that while it sounds good, it's not stunningly innovative. However, you've sure had some good luck by being posted on Slashdot!
To answer the posted question: I've joined online art and music communities with people that do similar music to my own. And my friend sends free CDs and tapes to his friends in various cities and has them leave them at record stores for people to take. I guess what really sums it up is: that I think it's a lot more fun and rewarding if you forget about the business and making money, and just make the music you enjoy making.
-Paul
Michael Loves Me!
Suggestion #1: Don't make people click through layers to get what they want
Make that #2.
Suggestion #1 should be: DON'T BE A 'TARD AND REDIRECT SOMEONE TO WWW.MACROMEDIA.COM IF YOUR BRAIN-DEAD JAVASCRIPT DOESN'T DETECT A FLASH PLUG-IN - ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ALREADY HAVE THE PLUGIN INSTALLED
To the Band:
I'm always looking for new music, especially independant bands (that's where most of the 'innovation' in music comes from today), and I buy direct from indie band's websites frequently.
I tried going to your website, expecting to see what you're all about, and maybe being able to sample some of your music - if it was good I'd have no problem buying some CD's, and if very good, some other merchandise.
Instead, your web site tells me that you don't want me as a customer, because you sent me to another site, which has NOTHING to do with you
If you're looking to become more popular, don't send people away from your website.
No market research, just raw ownership of the airwaves and, by extension, the markets.
R.I.P. Rev 105 in Mpls. We knew not what we had.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
I went ahead and downloaded the two full tracks that "Tallman" has to offer on their site. After listening to the bland formulaic dated head-banger crap, I think I realize why this eager to sell out band hasnt been picked up by any major studio: they suck. (IMO,YMMV)
Artists who wish to make their music/code/prose/whatever are supposed to do it because they like to. Becoming a consumerist success is NOT nirvana.
What a waste of bandwidth.
Back around 1993, I was a guitarist in a local band put together by an older friend of mine - who was aspiring to be a musical success for at least 10 years before I met him.
He had written literally hundreds of songs, and from the sound of his old cassettes, had a pretty good band together for a little while in Chicago.
Anyway, the only "marketing" we did was an investment in flyers and a couple batches of t-shirts with cool artwork on them - plus mailing tapes to any underground paper or local newspaper that would accept them for review.
The rest was just plain old "word of mouth". The most effective thing we did was playing for free at house parties. Pass the word around that there's a kegger at such-and-such a house on Sat. night - and collect "donations" for the beer at the door when people get there.
After a year or so, we developed a following of fans/groupies. Did we ever make any money from it? No, not at all... but it was a lot of fun, and I'm really glad we did it.
I think it *could* have become serious, but if you don't have money to sell yourselves (or cater to a record label who will provide that funding), you just have to do it the hard way. That is, win over fans one at a time - until you've built up a "critical mass" of fans.
Basically, I think the trick is, get a day job - but don't lose track of your long-term goals. Keep playing gigs. Above all, keep writing your own stuff and putting it out there. I see bands in this area that are musically very talented, but they keep playing everyone else's stuff. Sure, the dance party/nightclub crowds love hearing that - but in the end, the credit keeps going to the original writers of the songs, *not* to you! That's no way to become any more successful than what you earn playing those weekend nightclub gigs.
Keep on doing whatever it is that makes your fans like you. Rinse, repeat!
Ok, I know we all like the net and it really neato to download files from P2P, but lets all face it, a butt-load of people still get a lot of their music from the store, hear it on the radio (then download it), word of mouth, etc, etc. My suggestions, for what they are worth--
You say you perform live. Great! SELL CDs (if you don't already). Really, it's not hard to record and burn a master then copy 5,000 either through yourself (heh) or pay a third party to do it. Yeah, the latter option requires you to shell out some cash, but what you do sell, you pocket. I've seen street performers do this successfully.
Radio. Somehow, some way, get air time. Even if you have to buy it. I won't claim to be a marketing genius, but radio is the best way to reach a lot of people. Buy a commercial slot. Play a condensed minute-thirty version of your most popular song and where you'll be playing next. Heck, some DJs might even give you a free shot or two.
Find a way to slip it into the format of popular internet radio. Yes, I remeber what I said at the top, but that doesn't mean it isn't without use. Winamp is hella popular, as is WAR. Find the most popular channels and hook up with their directors, slip your song in with a blurb about you. A few of them are revenue starved. Pay them. They'll like you. A lot.
I know, most of my solutions revolve around fundage. I'm also assuming you have jobs other than the band. Unfortunately, it's a nessisary evil, especially if you don't want to sell out. That's the big trade-off. "The Man" provides you the capital and as such, has lots of influence over you. In your situation, it's the opposite. You don't want his influence, but you still want to reach as many ears as possible. Unless you catch some extrodinarily lucky breaks, money is part of that equation. I'd hope there are easier ways, but these are the best I can think of. Unlike a previous co-worker mine who had a band thinks, success rarily jumps out and bites you on the ass while you sit at home, unemployed and play at a bar twice a month. I wish you the best success.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Is it so hard to accept that you have found your niche and in a market with thousands of indie bands that your band is extremely successful. It really sounds like you want to be on top-40. Find yourself a savvy mainstream producer and run with it. Most bands, even very talented ones, don't get your level of success.
Numerous scientific studies have proven focus groups ineffective at determining things like this. Reason? The people want to please the interviewers and give them answers they think they want to hear. This goes double for image-heavy industries like music. Who would want to be seen by the interviewer and the other participants as unhip? Maybe some snooty slashdot readers, yes, but not most folks. So they lie.
And we get crap.
Besides that, do you think these focus groups are shown a true range of choices? I think it's more like, "Do you prefer boy-band A, B, or C?"
Garbage in, garbage out.
And really, what choice do we have? All 250 million of us here in the States including Gramma and Grampa Beefy-Midwesterner are going to jump on the internet, spend the time finding the music we like, and download it?
Someday, maybe, but in the meanwhile, the music industry has us by the short and curlies, and they know it. Most of us will buy their crap and like it because we have no other real choice.
Which brings us around to the poor poster, who it seems has been locked out of the big-time. Kind of like the diamond industry: diamonds are in fact so damn common they have to lock most of them away and heavily control all sources to artificially prop up the price.
Talented musicians are that common, too. Human artistic talent is that common in general, and it would be recognized, utilized and appreciated more often if oligopolies like the music industry didn't have a vested interest in suppressing it.
<rant mode="capitalism" position="con">
Free market types are the worst hypocrites in the world. Leave aside the fact that the whole concept that ' the invisible hand of the market will guide us to efficiency' has been proven to be true only in very limited situations.
That's just ignorance of modern economic science. What strikes me as true hypocrisy is the fact that those who scream the loudest for 'free markets' are usually the ones doing the most to squelch any true competition in those markets by raising the barrier of entry so high that only ruling class people with interests in common can compete. Thus, ologopolies and monopolies quickly come to dominate the supposed free markets.
Which, I suppose, is what those bastards meant by a free market all along. Free for them, that is.
</rant>
That being said, turning a trick from the evil capitalist's own book and using Guerilla Marketing techniques to get your product listed in popular underground journals could work.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
These guys give you a nice, professional front end for selling tunes, they create sampler discs, host music samples, and what's more - they'll even help you set yourselves up to take credit cards for your merchandise (and/or ticks) at your gigs.
They're 100% RIAA-free so far as I know, and there's a LOT of good stuff there.
On the down side, they're making me go broke.
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!