Discrevolt: How bands can promote their digital sales with download cards

In one of our merchandise topics, we had suggested that distributing songs in a digital format at shows could have some potential but the process was most likely hazardous since you would need a laptop handy and ask your fans to bring USB sticks. The idea is far-fetched but one company found the solution to spin it in the right direction.

Discrevolt is an online music store that offers a very cool distribution method for bands who want to level the field for their digital sales. They manufacture unique download cards that bands can sell at their shows, or simply give away for promotional purposes. This makes sense in the current state of affairs as CDs aren’t as viable these days. Digital music formats are making major head-way sales-wise but due to their intangible nature the product is not easily promotable in the offline world. These cards sort of make up for that as they are customizable. Bands can create and submit their own designs and have them printed. This encourages a new form of collectible items fans can relate to. When bands meet and greet with their fans after the show they could hand away these cards creating healthy post-gig buzz.

I find this to be a great solution bands should consider. Mp3s are rising very high but CDs are not dead and vinyls are still in the loop. People need to see and feel their product so cutting the cake in two gives you download cards. They very well may become the next big thing

Dashgo: Sell, promote and track your music’s performance on music stores and social networks

To all bands who sell music online, a neat new solution just appeared from around the corner. It’s called Dashgo and it will distribute your content to all online music stores and social networks plus let you have access to the statistics of your activity on those websites. When you have new songs their team manages the distribution and you get to see and compare where you sell best. Dashgo also caters to your exposure on those sites and draws the analytics in regards to your popularity. So if you actively sell music here and there, might be a good idea to send a mail and say mruff.

Mashable has more.

How some bands get booked at festivals and other gigs

Average good Festival gets between 1500 & 3000 submissions of artists looking to play them every year. So do your homework and research all the acts that have appeared on them previously and try to realistically determine if your act is really ready and good enough to compete with the likes of all of them or don’t waste your time and the festival’s time just because you have a dream of playing on festivals. I am of course talking about REAL FESTIVALS that actually hire and pay artists, who have a reputation and can draw enough people to buy tickets to see them to cover the costs of having them appear on the event.
Tom Wiggims -www.sonicbids.com/StGabrielsCelestialBrassBand

You have to do it with a year’s planning in mind. I mean when you apply, realize that it’s for next year’s festivals. Also keep in mind that many of those acts are chosen after trying to get in several times before. So the upshot is, get right to it ! The good part is that often festivals have acts signed up that suddenly can’t do the show for whatever reason, and they do call-backs on people who applied but didn’t get in. Many years ago this happened for me more than a few times. And once you slip in as a replacement act you automatically are ain’t better standing for getting in on the next festival. Go online and search out states arts festivals - every state I know of has several. You can either apply online or request a packet and they’ll send it to you in the mail. There are also special events like company sponsored festivals, or “theme” based ones like biker rallies, fairs and so on, so choose one that fits your band.

Get as many applications and packets out there as possible. With some effort I doubt you guys will be disappointed. Also if you need a sample contract (if by chance the event agreement is not sufficient) then you can download one at my site.

Your local Chamber of Commerce is an EXCELLENT resource for some potentially very cool gigs.

Irminsul - www.irminsul.biz

As a solo act, I’ve often used the Chamber of Commerce for lots of new towns that I wanted to access. The phone numbers are always easy to find, and they are always very helpful. They have lists of bars and other venues to play in, also names of large companies in their area that have summer picnics & Xmas parties and such. It got me a lot of work back in the ’90’s, when I kept my pro packet up to date.You do occasionally get into a situation that just feels uncomfortable, doing this, when you stumble into a place you’re unsuited for, but overall it was what kept me going musically for a few years.

If I had a band, that’s definitely one option I would look into for places to play.

Philbymon - www.bandmix.com/philbymon

In the past 7 years that I’ve been gigging in Montreal I’ve done pretty much most of the P2P (pay to play) scene. Some festivals, some open mics and some free acoustic loft shows. It’s all fun untill you realise that if you’re serious - all these local gigs are a waste of time except the stage experience. And you need to work more on your product (i.e.: music production, recording, design, band image, ect.) rather than jump on every gig offered to you and play 30 shows a year in one city
Den - www.myspace.com/templeofdush

How bands can manage their street teams online (1)

For all you bands who have very dedicated fans, dedicated enough to help you promote you shows, your releases and be part of your street team, here is a website you might want to look into.

FanCorps.com is an online street-team management system. Although there are other websites out there that offer street team features (i.e. Reverb Nation or Trafficonline), FanCorps is the first I’ve come across that really incorporates elements of social network, and makes you feel part of a team.

Fancorps offers management and communication tools to help bands centralize their street team tasks and activities. Fans can choose to-do tasks from a list of “orders” and earn points, redeemable for t-shirts, concert tickets etc.. The army theme is just over the top for me, but many people love that kind of stuff.  The “orders” depends entirely on the band, and can include putting up posters, distributing flyers or contacting radio station.

For print-promo related activities,  the band uploads all the artwork, leaving the responsibility of actually creating the flyers/posters to the fans. And if the fan is clueless and doesn’t know where to start giving out those fliers, he/she can consult the ‘Intel’ section, where FanCorps lists places where you could actively promote (locations of record stores, pubs and clubs, book stores, radio stations). Check out their promotional video to get a better idea of what they offer.

Membership for bands starts at $50/month,  which allows you to manage 250 street team members. Centralizing your fans’ activities can greatly increase your exposure, but does the service really pay-off? I think it’s pretty expensive seeing how Fancorps doesn’t actually take care of any of the logistics (other than messaging and task delegation): you still have to do all the work you would normally do with a street team, however if you already have an established and dedicated street-team, managing their activities through FanCorps might make your life easier.

Howl.

Online music search engines: where fans can stream unlimited free and legal music

For some time now I have wanted to post an article on all the streaming music websites I use as an excuse not to buy CDs anymore. Mruff!

Stumbleaudio: Just discovered this one today. It’s a Stumbleupon for indie music. Users can ‘thumbs up/thumbs down’ the songs so as this website will grow the recommendation feature might become very interesting making up for a great way to discover new talent.

Deezer.com: My favorite of all. Millions of songs and albums for free, good quality audio      and very easy to use due to simplistic interface. Truly a must.

Finetune: Like this one a lot due to the great audio quality and album artwork display.To use this site properly you must create an account, which is kind of a drag, but once that’s out of the way you get access to a pretty interesting model to discover music. You can create playlists of three songs minimum and push the ‘I’m lazy’ button. Finetune will automatically fill-in the rest of your playlist with music it recommends according to the artists you entered. Oh, and it’s got a great standalone player you don’t even have to download.

Songza.com: This is also a great playlist-based music search engine. 28 million tracks, online promotional adsense-type-model for bands and labels, they definitely have something planned in the long run.

Musicovery: Now this site you are going to use just to fool around with it’s interface. It displays music through a funky-type arborescence and it recommends music through a funky-type search module. So all-in-all you could say this is a pretty funky website, the funkiest of all. I won’t go into further detail concerning how it works, just hop onto the website to get the idea.

RadioBlogClub: Ahhh good old RadioBlog. This was the first search engine to my knowledge that delivered free streamable music. I discovered this one way back in June 2007 (seeing how crazy websites pop-up every day now, 13months ago does seem like ‘waaaaay back’).

GrooveShark: A social network for creating playlists and sharing music. Very innovative company, millions of tracks, complex playlist/sharing model, but I personally don’t use it because it’s a hassle to navigate in. Don’t take my work for it, I’m very impatient with websites and I want my content right away in an impeccable sober interface. GrooveShark just has too many features for me

TheSixtyOne: And last but certainly not least we have TheSixtyOne.com which acts as both a search engine and a social network for artists. Actually it’s more of a playlist search engine where users share their songs lists through a simple URL. There is also a sort of voting system where you ‘bump’ up the charts your favorite songs. Like Stumbleaudio, this webiste mostly caters to indie music and upcoming bands. Definitely worth keeping an eye on.

When RadioBlogClub came out I was amazed by what it offered, and never imagined that only one year later there would be 15 more of these sites. These are only the sites I use, but there are many others. Anywhere.fm lets you upload music on their servers to access your playlists from anywhere. We can’t forget Seeqpod, Streamzy, Skreemr and Jango.

All of these websites are flirting with the law because most songs violate copyright law. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depends if you try to make a living off music), as long as they don’t store infringing songs on their servers, they are allowed to offer their indexing service. Sites like Imeem and Pandora have deals with the RIAA that make them perfectly legit, but the user is limited in many respects (i.e: Pandora does not offer its service anywhere other than the US, and you can’t stream or skip more than a certain number of songs).

What does this mean for the recording artists? In my opinion, it just confirms that avoiding their music to being available for free on the net is somewhat of an impossible task. As hard as it may be for some to swallow, technology and legislation are quickly drifting apart. Everyone is tired of trying to make them go hand-in-hand anyways.

How some bands like to hack: MAX MSP and Guitar Hero unite

It truly amazes me how some people come up with this kind of stuff.

Incredible job by the ‘Guitars Zeroes’ on this one (apparently that’s the bands name. I couldn’t find a related Myspace page). Thinking about the whole process and going through the programing is one thing, finding the time, effort and motivation to put it all together is quite another. This maybe wouldn’t seem so complex if I knew a little more about the software they used, MAX MSP. The name rang a bell so I googled it up and found something I had badly wanted to get into a while back. MAX is a graphical development environment designed for the audio and visual arts. The first versions were created in the eighties to help composers and performers manipulate, patch and control different instruments with computers and weird outboard audio processing devices. Now many artists use MAX to do just that along with lots of other experimental stuff. Highly modular and customizable, the software allows third-parties to toy with its libraries of data and create new extensions to its features. So if you’ve got a band, you’re into programing and that image above doesn’t scare the hell out of you, then tweaking around with MAX MSP is worth a shot. I’ve never seen a band perform with it live but I’m sure it would impress the audience. Unorthodox setups and crazy sounds often make up for good shows and good buzz. I’ll leave you to this Johnny Greenwood video (Radiohead) jamming out on MAX.

Maximum mruff.

When bands, fans and venues meet online before the show: Ourstage/Live Nation’s music marketplace

Mashable, the renowned tech/start-up blog, brought to my attention that Live Nation is now in partnership with Ourstage to help bring venues and bands together (interesting Q&A with Ourstage CEO Ben Campbell). The resulting ‘Marketplace’  proposes gig opportunities promoted by Live Nation that bands can sign up to. For those of you who don’t know Ourstage, it’s basically a ‘hot or not’ for bands, where users vote between two acts of the same musical genre. At the end of monthly contests, the most popular bands win prizes ranging from money to being featured on famous online-music stores like AOL music. For it’s part, Live Nation have been engaging in distribution, marketing and promotion deals with major artists like Shakira, U2, Madonna, Coldplay, Jay-z and Nickleback in the past months. With this new deal, Ourstage seems to be aiming to establish a presence in the indie scene.

Since the dawn of online-music, social networks have been concentrating on music and band profiles, leaving the touring industry as an untapped market for web 2.0 start-ups. The Live Nation-Ourstage venture gives a boost in that direction. Seeing how Ourstage bands must be higly ranked for Live Nation to consider booking them, I think the majority of bands won’t benefit from this feature, but this is an interesting service that uses the power of social-networks to help bands get gigs. DeepRockDrive is about the only other service I can think of that does this, but they too have a model unfit for smaller unestablished artists. These still remain exciting times for the touring musician, and another reminder that fan-validation and web 2.0 strategies are key to innovative online-music businesses.

Bands and their gigs from hell: tour stories, anecdotes and rants

Every band has its stories. Best gigs, worst crowds, most awkward situations, craziest fans etc.. and we tend to recall the bad ones as they are often the most entertaining. Gigs From Hell is a compilation of gig stories that this doggy found particulary entertaining, and the beauty of it is that a big chunk of the book is available free on Google books. It’s a rare glimpse into what it’s really like to tour, record, and survive in the cutthroat world of the -music industry-no holds barred, full speed ahead, the most cringe-worthy moments fully intact. And it goes something like this:

The worst crowd - I used to think the worst shows were always the ones where no one showed up. Where the sound of one clap was actually a wish. I was in a five-piece, all-girl, whacked-out, surfy, garage band called The Amulets. We were asked to play a birthday party. Sure, why not, right? Parties are always fun. Yeah, well, they tend to be a little better when the audience appreciates sounds a little beyond Yanni and Barney, the ambiguously-defined dinosaur. That’s fucking A right. It was a birthday party for a one-year-old child. Yes, we actually set up and played a full set for Team Pampers. Humbling? Mind-numbing? Surreal? All of those plus a cherry of embarrassment right on top. The only hope is that we somehow got in and warped their little minds.

As you may have noticed, gigdoggy takes pride in posting band quotes. Most of our quote topics aim to answer specific questions, but we also encourage bands to share their own crazy stories - so if you’re feeling nostalgic about the good ol’ days and want to grant us and our readers some story-telling, please do so here.

Recording gadgets for bands and their iPods

Here’s a little post on some tech gadgets you might find handy.

Belkin has developed a nice iPod add-on, the goStudio, that will transforms your player into a portable recorder for $120. There is always at least one band member with an iPod, have him bring it to your rehearsal space and record your sessions. Recording jams is probably my number one source for inspiration. Turning on the PC, sound-cards and launching Cubase takes up to 10 minutes. Ideas can fade away by that time, mostly if you’ve just found a cool catchy rhythm that you know will go away the minute you let go of your instrument.

Still on iPod products from Belkin, the TuneStudio is also a neat little gadget that converts your iPod into a multi-track recorder. Though it’s $250 price tag is bit expensive seeing how most of you already have a home-studio, it still is a quick and easy solution to get stuff recorded.

There is a distinction to make between these products and your studio anyways, hence the term gadget. Event though I still don’t have one myself, portable stereo recorders are so helpful they just wanna make go buy one right away. But today I won’t for a series of reasons that are of no interest here (but soon i will !). Songs are like opportunites, if you don’t grab a hold of them a the right time they might be gone for good.

How some bands deal with booking agents and venue promoters (1)

I haven’t dealt much with booking agents and venue promoters, and for some reason I imagine booking agents resembling someone like that guy on the right. Anyways, I went about asking bands their experiences on the subject so I’ll leave you with two quotes on the matter. I’ll post up more of these in future topics. Please feel free to leave some insights . Mruff !

Q: Why do some bands have booking agents, while others depend on venue promoters?”

A: Some bands get paid enough to interest a booking agent. Others have to do their own booking, which means working with the venue or venue promoter. NEVER TRUST or DEPEND ON the venue promoter… he works for the venue, not you. But do politely negotiate with him to get what you want.

Q: I know venue promoters find the bands and actively promote the shows, but do some venues only work with their promoters to fill up the slots?”

A: A real promoter sets up a show, gets financing for it, books the talent, hires appropriate support (sound, lights, etc.), puts on the show, and pays the talent.

A “venue promoter” is just a booking agent for the venue.

You should always do your own promotion to the extent that you can. Posting flyers, mailing your mailing list, sending press releases to the press, are all part of this. If your cash flow supports it you might hire a publicist ($100-$250 / hr, ouch) to do some of this for you.

Most venues will do some promotion - at least to the extent of informing the local press of their schedule. But you’ll get better coverage if you do your own promotion.

Q: Should booking agents be promoting the show as well?

A: A booking agent’s job is get you gigs… but the more money you bring in, the more the booking agent gets paid, so most booking agents will do some promotion or at least give you some guidance on what to do.

Q: Whats the best way to deal with these ppl?

A: Build your business to a point where you have plenty of money for the booking agent to take a cut of and then negotiate the best contract you can (hire a music attorney to negotiate your booking contract - if you’re making enough to benefit from an agent you won’t have any problem affording the attorney)

David Smith- an acquaintance from the SonicBids website.

My groups always worked through agents…some were amazing…some sucked. My main guy ended up as a Las Vegas show booker working with the William Morris Agency out of L.A. - he’s a Chartered Accountant from Montreal by trade and last time we spoke he had become the Business Manager for Natalie Cole.
I worked with one agent who booked us into a hotel gig in Cleveland and then we ended up driving approx 1,500 km to Northern Ontario for the next venue. Or like being not booked for 3 weeks due to all talk - no action. I busted one Manager through the New York Musicians’ Union for attempting to defraud the group with personal and living expenses which he claimed were to promote my band. He’s known locally and elsewhere so I won’t mention names. Like if you’re going to screw me at least ask me to dance first…
Don’t even get me started on the dumb-ass club owners - many of them still don’t have the good business sense to put it in the Mirror, Hour, Gazette or whatever the local rag is anywhere.
Bartholomew - www.myspace.com/bartholomew3