The Sellaband success story: capitalizing on your online community

Sellaband has made amazing headway since it started over two years ago. I remember having posted a little update on its progress back in August when it partnered with sites like Youlicense and the CellFreak having already funded 24 bands, 14 of whom had produced their albums. Now 27 artists have reached the $50k mark. That’s about an artist a month generating tens of thousands of dollars thanks to online communities.

I believe one of the reasons they’ve gotten so big is their ability to reach out to their bands’ fans creating an all-powerful community and maintaining it.

Sellaband is everything but a static website and they could’ve done nothing else but just make the platform work and sit back. Fortunately that’s never what they had in mind. They’ve engaged partnerships with big corporations like Amazon, Heineken and The Orchard. They’ve created competitions like Sixpack encouraging the community to select weekly artists. They capitalized on believers who love to follow their bands by  centralizing blogs, podcasts and websites who report what’s going on. You can sign up to internet groups, participate in community writings, go into dedicated Sellaband chat rooms to learn all you need to know about the service, its bands and their development. They even have elaborated an island in SecondLife where  artists perform and meet-and-greet.

Now Sellaband’s latest little adventure is getting their bands signed up to huge summer festivals in the world’s biggest arenas (Yea, talk about entrepreneurialship). Based on a competition whereby bands will have to sign-up, meet certain basic criterias and go through different voting stages, the ArenaFest offers 180 winning slots for small indie bands to accomplish their wildest dream (hah! sorry for the cheezy catch phrase, but seriously that’s kind of what it is. There’s a difference between playing in a festival for instance where a drunken audience is wondering from stage to stage, and playing in a 10 to 30 000 seat arena where you’re the only act the public is focusing on).

First, bands will need at least 200 believers and/or at least a $10k budget in their ongoing Sellaband campaigns (which apparently isn’t that hard to come by :). Then they’ll be asked to perform somewhere and be judged by some Sellaband scouts. If selected they’ll have to play in front of another jury. Seems tough but seeing how 180 slots are available, I would think step one is probably the hardest to achieve. Check out how it works in further detail here.

Anyways, there has been a lot of talk about how the benefits of social networking and music 2.0 have been overrated, and the time-consuming tasks to make them worthwhile constitute an important obstacle to just composing music and concentrating on more important aspects of one’s musical career.

Well one thing Sellabands proves to us is that online community building can deliver outstanding results.

mruff, woof wouaf, miaou, roar, moooo, pwieek pwieek.

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The Rolling Stones’ Cocksucker Blues finally released on YouTube

In 1972 The Rolling Stones’ produced a documentary called CockSucker Blues during their American tour. Due to the very explicit footage (groupie-orgies and intense use of all sorts of drugs) the band decided to censor the film. Many bootlegs were released into the wild until finally someone uploaded the entire thing on YouTube.

Sex and drugs aren’t the only reasons this movie was considered inappropriate and misplaced at the time.

In 1969 The Stones were also followed by a camera crew as they engaged on a big American tour which culminated in a blood bath at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival in California. Members of The Hells Angels were hired as security, many of whom preferred to be payed in beer, and they caused havoc during the supervision of the event. The end toll was many injured and four dead. One of the altercations was lead by Meredith Hunter, a black man who got stabbed 5 times by one of the Hell’s for drawing a revolver near the stage. The Stones interrupted their concert a couple times due to the the apparent violence emanating from the audience but decided to finish their set, worried that the palpable tension would escalate into a riot. It is reported that Keith Richards got fed up and attempted to leave the stage only to be confronted by Hell’s Angel Sonny Barger who pointed a gun at his side and told him to “Keep on Fuckin’ playing”. The Altamont Festival turns out to be a very symbolic event viewed by many as the end of the sixties’ hippy era. (WoodStock was held only four months before).

The Stones waited until 1972 to return to the States for their second big american tour, with high hopes of making up for the 1969 fiasco, and it’s in this context that CockSucker Blues takes place. The controversial content was considered too inappropriate to be released to the public as The Stones wanted to consolidate a better image of themselves.

Thanks to YouTube we can finally see the documentary, that shows the backstage debaucheries and maelstrom of what is probably the most famed tour of the The Rolling Stones.

I compiled all nine parts in a WorldTV channel, which should display them in the right order:

http://worldtv.com/cocksucker_blues

The individual segments are here: part1, part2, part3, part4, part5, part6, part7, part8, part9.

Enjoy.

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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

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