Raising the Bar

When I work with musicians both professional, part-time, and amateur more often than not they all have something in common. That is they are not marketing themselves to the outside world. Sure, some carry their business card and a few have a website. There are a few with a demo or even a CD they have recorded. The real problem is that they do not have a cohesive plan for raising their profile to meet their own goals.

A professional musician does not automatically get playing jobs. The phone isn’t ringing off the hook for their services. More often than not the person hiring the musician has people that he or she works with and knows. Going with an unknown or a new player is often not the first choice for the music director or contractor.

A part-time or amateur musician can really benefit from raising the profile especially if they want to acquire more playing jobs or move from volunteer work to paying jobs.

Word of mouth has its place and can be very helpful. The bottom line is that the musician needs to take steps to get out there and make themselves known to the world at large. That means developing and implementing a cohesive marketing plan and implementing it.

And don’t forget BA is your free resource so if you need any advice or tips just get in touch!!
Till next time!

Tips on Flyer

A flyer is one of the most basic tools that a band has for promoting shows and improving name recognition. For many bands, flyers are the only reliable way to promote, so it's worth the time to design and print a really high quality flyer. Here are a few tips for making a great flyer that can get more people to your band's shows.

1. Use the odd. By putting weird pictures and words in your flyer, you can attract attention; remember that people will see your flyer in passing, and that they won't necessarily stop to read it unless something on the flyer gives them a good reason to. Draw peoples' attention with something interesting, and the easiest way to find interesting is to find he weirdest thing you can. Some bands use shocking images on their flyers. If you're in a metal band and that's your audience, it's fine, just make sure you're not going to offend anyone that can call off your gig (like the owner of a venue).

2. If your band is touring, you only have to design one flyer. Leave a large blank section at the bottom of the flyer with WHEN and WHERE written in black, then fill these areas in when you've got a show booked and send them out to the venues and bands that you're playing with. If you can put a few around town before you play, that's even better. Using a single flyer lets you order a ton of high quality prints at a fairly low price.

3. Get your flyers professionally printed. They'll be way more likely to catch the eye than cheap, grayscale printed flyers, and if you order enough online you can get them for a pretty low price. They don't have to be the huge flyers, but getting a few glossies will help your band promote its shows and get more people to show up to the gig, which is the point of the flyer in the first place.

4. Make sure the relevant info's on the flyer. You'd be surprised at how often this is missed. Get the right info on the flyer, including other bands playing the show and the myspace or website information for every band involved (and the venue, if possible). This can be written in, in marker, it doesn't matter, it's just all got to be there. Use a weird description for your band's sound, and maybe even include a few reviews. Give people a reason to show up

Is This the New Myspace?

This new site from NME (Well, it’s incorporated into their original site) is called NME Breakthrough. The whole point behind it is for up and coming musicians to showcase their material and get new fans. Although I only signed up yesterday and have been using it for a day and a bit, I’ve already seen enough to know what this site’s all about. Is NME Breakthrough the MySpace replacement everyone’s been waiting for? Unless they give the site a overhaul, make it more user friendly and add more unique features, I doubt it. Is NME Breakthrough worth using? Most defiantly! Let me explain…

Although the site is awkward to navigate (While I thought I was signing up for an artist page I was actually signing up to the NME site. I then had to sign up for an artist page separately afterwards, and when I signed in again later I found it hard to find my artist page to edit it) having a page on the site really does allow for mass exposure. How? Well, every now and then NME features artists on their high traffic home page. And I don’t just mean the NME

Breakthrough home page, I mean the NME home page! If you’re one of their featured artists on any given week, expect a flood of profile views and (If you’re good enough) potential fans.

While NME Breakthough is pretty much a standard “showcase your music and get thousands of fans” site, the fact it has the NME name behind it allows room for growth. The main reason I’d recommend signing up to this site is due to the possibility of getting featured on their main site. If it wasn’t for that feature I’d find it hard to recommend this site as it doesn’t offer anything new. The site layouts they give to signed up musicians are quite boring, and it’s all the same stuff you’ll find on other such sites (Stream your music, upload your pictures, show your tour dates etc). While you should still sign up and hope to be a featured artist, I wouldn’t pour buckets of time into this site.

Start the Juices Flowing

So I had a bit of writers block the other day and was talking to a good friend of mine about it. He recommended 7 “famous” chord progressions to play with. I don’t know if it was the chords or simply working within a frame work but I came up with some great new stuff which sounded really varied and separate from my usual writing.

So thought I would pass it on – let us know how you get on

1) C D/F C D/F C/E Am Dm G C

2) C A Dm G7 C

3) C F E7 Am D7 G C

4) C D7 G7 Am D7 G C

5) C Am Ab7 G C

6) C F F/A Ab7 G Am

7) C E7 A Ab7 G C

p.s – don’t forget there are only a few days left to enter our artist of the month competition – so let us know if you want a review!

The InterNOT!

So the Purple Prince of Pop seems to have woken up and 80’s legend Prince recently gave a tabloid interview regarding the death of the Internet. He stated:

“The internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it.”

“The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good… They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”

Surely these are the dribbling of a mad man. The internet is the device that finally brought the world together. True it has it’s bad points but from an unsigned musicians point of view it is the greatest leveling tool in the world. When I played in bands you had to build city by city now if you target and market correctly you could be no1 in Malaysia in 6 weeks! - Without ever playing there.

Also this sounds a bit like something my 75 year old nan would say!

What do you think? How are you harnessing the power of the internet?