The other day I wrote a post called “Where are you hiding your band’s email address“. While browsing through the web in search of bands’ email addresses I realized that many unknown or unsigned bands seem to conceal them in the most awkward places on their Myspaces, Facebook pages and websites, not to mention that most of the time their email addresses just aren’t available anywhere.
For some bands who say that they “want it” (as in “some form of success”) , this can seem pretty paradoxal.
One regular reader of our doggy blog posted a rather interesting comment that we felt would constitute a nice little post that goes along the lines of “How much do bands REALLY want it?”
It’s interesting to me, but sometimes I don’t think bands are even eager for promotion. For a while I was doing interviews for unsigned bands that I liked on an unsigned band website. Curiously, some bands would not respond for weeks to a request for an interview. Similarly, after agreeing, sometimes they would not respond to the questions I email them for perhaps months. Often I’d have to follow up with them to ask if they’d gotten a chance to look at the questions. Sometimes I’d have to email the initial questions again.
Arrogant rock star comes to mind, but I don’t think it’s arrogance. I think they’re just clueless half the time. Heck, they’re unsigned nobodies (albeit talented nobodies imho) if I was trying to get in touch with them. I just think they don’t understand that it’s not always about the music, that there’s a promotional element to getting their name out there.
There’s so much good music out there, and it’s so difficult to be heard above the throngs.
Bark?
Gigdoggy,
It’s true that many independent bands are not focused on maximising their self promotion, but I definitely dont think it’s arrogance. In my experience working with independent bands and artists it comes down to a number of things.
Self confidence:
Artistic work is always subjective, and especially for new bands perhaps the confidence isn’t always there to put themselves in the spotlight, so they bury contact data and music on their site in the hope that no-one will find it and potentially criticise it. Addressing this with personal self improvement in the areas of self confidence are usually the key ways of correcting this.
Focus / Knowledge / Commitment:
Bands want to spend most of their time creating or playing, and most don’t want to spend their time learning the new promotion tools that are available. That’s understandable, but if that’s the case then the band definitely needs to get someone outside the band to handle promotion or provide promotion coaching in order to progress and correct the balance with this.
Music will not sell itself, it never has and it never will, thats the harsh reality, to be a succesful independent artist or band you have to accept that 100%.
I too am amazed at how many bands dont have their music and contact details on the front page of their website with so many easy to use tools out there, but again I dont think it’s their fault, they just didn’t realise or didn’t know how.
If i’m working with a band or not, I’ll always drop artists a line if I see some basic faux pas such as a missing music player on their homepage so they can be the best they can with what they have.
The majority of artists in the future will be indie, and in the new music terrain you have to work harder & smarter to cut through the noise and get noticed, thats a fact you’ll hear time and time again from pretty much every music industry professional right now, however because the tools are out there and available to everyone, with the right help and coaching you’ll be surprised what you can achieve….
Simon Adams
Co-Founder
MyMusicSuccess.Com
As someone who books lots of gigs and deals with lots of acts I have to say a lot of them in the UK are very clueless about running themselves in any sort of professional manner.
I’m lucky in the fact I come from a media background (20 years at a big local newspaper & website) and try to exploit as many avenues as possible for the gigs I run and venues I work at but its a full time job and I don’t think I even scratch the surface so a band who are playing for fun even though they may say otherwise will struggle.
What people say and what they mean are usually two different things and bands/acts are no exception, what is nice is when you do work with someone with a professional attitude from any genre of music, who promote from their end of things, have some merch/CDs to sell or giveaway and remind you one of the reasons you got into gig promotion by playign a blinding gig to a decent crowd with no problems.