Sympathies to the band: Who are your real fans in the audience?

(click to enlarge)

Thought this might amuse some of you, an interesting portrait of an audience at a rock show. Not the most accurate of portraits you might think but it does convey some truth. You just gotta love that dude on the right, characterized as the only one who actually likes the band, left behind in the crappiest spot struggling to see them perform. Kind of makes you think about that whole ‘who are my true friends and fans on MySpace‘ debate going on. Bands need both audiences at a show: real fans and random peeps. Actually It’s those random people they should focus on because fans need no convincing.

Anyways this panel is brought to you by VirusComix.com who hosts weekly comic strips. Not all strips are particularly related to music but I would still suggest browsing through them from time to time. Funny insightful stuff, and great art work.

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How many of your Myspace fans are going to show up at your real gig?

I came across this great article called “Booking your band on your Myspace popularity”.

It suggests that bands (especially the smaller and unestablished ones) stop caring about the web 2.0 revolution, take a step back, and concentrate on the grass-roots approach to music, which is to play gigs, distribute fliers, attend other concerts, network and hand out CD’s to acquire “real” fans.

This sounds about right: the number of plays or downloads of your song on Myspace doesn’t equate to tickets and merchandise sold. Gigging is the only way to grow your local fan-base, and promoters adopt a 35/100 rule when it comes to your fans: if you say you can draw 100, you can draw 35 max.

I think that Myspace and other social music platforms become useful when bands use them to support the activities that make up a musician’s work in “real-life”: organizing street teams, promoting shows, collaborating with other musicians and booking gigs.  It’s not how many fans you have, it’s the quality of the fans, as well as the ability to get them involved in your activities as a band, that will provide the value to these social networking sites.

Would love to know what you think.

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