Band Promotion Blog

One of the big buzzwords from the last ten years has been “Viral Marketing” because of its promise of fame and fortune. Viral marketing is a marketing technique that uses the various forms of social networking to generate increased brand exposure. The term was first used by Tim Draper to describe Hotmail’s practice of adding a signature at the end of a user’s outgoing email message to advertise itself, thus spreading the word via its users. Going viral (an Internet marketeers dream) is when the object of interest (usually a video) is quickly passed around by word of mouth (social networking in all of its forms) and brand awareness grows exponentially.

From a bands point of view, there has never been a better time to spread the word and market ones music with so many excellent networking applications and tools available. And going viral - the tantalizing, teasing lure that draws in hundreds of thousands of bands to overloaded sites like MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook - is still just a dream for the majority of independent bands who can’t organize themselves to set up an official website, let alone plan out a marketing budget. But, if you want to go viral and get noticed by the mainstream media, you will have to get your arse in gear and get your band a Music Video.

I was contacted by Caroline Bottomley of Radar Music Videos requesting a link from Unsigned Band Promotion (me) and I thought, “I ought to do a blog post about Radar Music Videos”. Why? Because I don’t know anything about making music videos, and Caroline is a doppelganger of my lovely niece Carly!

I start off my investigations by reading Radar and in Google. I Google:
“Music Videos”, “Music Video Production”, Music Video Production Companies UK, Music Video Directors, Music Video Promotion.

Here’s a sample of what I viewed/read (not in any order):
Music Videos on Yahoo, YouTube, The Music Video Production Association (MVPA), British Music Video Directors, Amstore - Music Video Production, Rupert Noble - Music Video Production UK, Happy Hour Productions, After Hours Films, The Music Video DataBase, Radar Music Videos, Radar Commissioned Videos, plus various inf. on Twitter and MySpace.

A music video is basically a “commercial” for the band, they are normally made for marketing and promotion. And along with a demo CD, a website and professional images (which normally precede), they are The must have for a band - venue managers, promoters and booking agents love a well made music video, they can get a much better idea of what a band is like if they can watch a live performance. A music video will not come cheap, I posted How should a band spend £300 of promotional money?, however, £300 will not buy much in the music video production world where the base/entry level costs would be about £1,000.

Put your heads together and work out your marketing and promotion budget and strategy - you’ll want a return on investment (difficult to calculate). I’d say an independent band needs to budget between £2k to £7k to be able to hire a music video director who will do everything for you - of course a much cheaper option would be to use a student filmmaker or someone just starting out in the industry. The advice Caroline gives bands and labels on Radar who aren’t sure about what budget to post: low budgets are unlikely to attract experienced directors, and experience really does make a difference to the quality of a music video. Higher budgets are much more likely to attract experienced people who you can be pretty sure will turn in what they describe in a treatment and probably exceed expectations. Less experienced directors are less likely to be able to turn in a video as described in their treatment.

If you are spending large sums of money I (Me not Caroline) would recommend that you use an established music video director with a track record to help cut your financial risks.

So, how does a band find a video production company? Enter Radar Music Videos an intermediary between bands & artists and a worldwide network of music video directors.

This is what they have to say about themselves:
“Radar Music Videos is a global network of music video directors, ranging from viral hitmakers and award winners to student filmmakers. Bands and indie labels use the Briefs board on the site to advertise their music video brief and invite treatments.”

“Bands/labels can click through to the profiles of directors whose treatments they like to see biogs and showreels. All directors who submit treatments are ranked according to their experience and nearly always, more experienced directors make better music videos. Bigger budgets and planned promo campaigns will attract higher ranking directors, bands/labels with very small budgets will attract treatments from newer directors. The site works best for budgets between £100/$150 and £5,000/$7,500. Above that, we recommend clients find a local production company, where they can go on shoots, into the edit and so on. If you’re spending more than £5k/$7.5k you probably want to get more hands on. The best music videos usually come from a brief that is ‘open to all ideas’ and which doesn’t need to be performance based.”

“Radar holds back 15% of the video budget and bills for that 15% if the client commissions a Radar director. There are no additional charges and nothing charged if there’s no commission. We’re also non-exclusive, so bands and labels can be soliciting treatments from their usual director contacts at the same time they’re advertising with us.”

“Artists and labels say they appreciate:
The talent discovery.
The number of treatments they get.
That we make it easy to evaluate and choose directors.
They think they get much better music videos through us then they would commissioning on their own.
They often get great promotion - videos we promote have generated 3 million views and many features.“

If you want to go viral and get noticed by the mainstream media, get your arse in gear, get over to Radar, get a music video.

I took my son into Ben Sherman, Reading, last Friday to buy a T-shirt, while I was there I saw and picked up a card that announced, “Are you an unsigned band or talent?” and this is what it goes on to say:

“In February 2009 Ben Sherman re-launched it’s website. It’s bold, it’s beautiful and in the spirit of all things mod, we’ll continue to support the best British bands out there.“

“Put the scales of justice back into balance, and make your music heard.“

“Each month our Big British Sound page will shed the limelight on an unsigned talent. Your signature track will play automatically as our browsers click their way around the site, and we’ll even dedicate an entire page to you; band bio, gallery, media player with tree of your best, videos, links to your MySpace… the lot. Think of us as your musical pied pipers.“

“To expose yourselves (in the best kind of way) to thousands of new groupies, send an email to: unsigned@BenSherman.co.uk, along with a link to your MySpace, or simply attach three of your favourite tracks.“

“If you make the grade, we’ll be in touch.“

Nice one Ben Sherman

Do you want to infuriate your Mailing List and make them ostracize you? Yes! Then send out an emailshot using carbon copy (CC) instead of blind carbon copy (BCC). The CC facility in your email client will add a selected entry from your address book to an email message, and display their email address in the header information. The BCC does the same but hides their email address in the header information. So, CC shows the email addresses and BCC hides the email addresses - each method has its uses. If you are going to send out an emailshot, use BCC to hide the addresses and you will not annoy anyone.

I received an email from The Gigman the other day, with the subject advertising, “The GIGMAN is here to help your promotion explosion”! What method of carbon copy do you think they used? BCC? No! The Gigman used plain old CC, so about twenty important contacts now think The Gigman are not to be trusted with their personal information (even though the email addresses were freely available on the web). Have The Gigman violated their own privacy policy?

I’m looking and laughing at the dynamics and interconnections of The Gigman’s angry list of email contacts, and I’m wondering if they will heed the email’s footer note, “Please consider the environment before printing this email” or will they just delete it like I did? Hey, Peter Acklin, “Please consider others before pressing the send button”.

It’s also obvious that The Gigman have harvested the email addresses from sites like the Gig Guide - the words ‘email’ and ’spider’ come to mind!

Cutting The Crap,
Unsigned Band Promotion
UnsignedBandPromotion.com
~ helping musicians and artists get their websites noticed by fans, search engines
and the music industry in half the time they could do it on their own ~
http://www.unsignedbandpromotion.com/

This week I was lightly scammed by Jacco Wijnia of Positive Pose (a crap fusion band who I assume is from Barneveld, Gelderland, Netherlands) who is a 20y.o. music (muzikant) student at The Dutch Rock Academy which is fronted by finger lickin’ good Gerard Boontjes. Under the guise of doing an interview, Jacco Wijnia asked me some questions to help him with his homework - as if I haven’t got enough trouble with my eight year old son’s, we’re doing the bloody Vikings!

But, out of the darkness came light in the form of the words "Gerard Boontjes Official Website"!

Revival Of The Official Artist Website - Music to my ears (a good read). A digital renaissance by Martin J. Thörnkvist. Do you know, it’s funny how words seem to stick in ones head while surfing the ‘net - "Official Website"

Jacco Wijnia is doing Music Marketing and Promotion today, and had he been more up front with me I would have been able to tell him; at the heart of a band’s successful marketing and promotion campaign should be their website, a networking style profile page just isn’t good enough, plus, owning your own website demonstrates to the music industry professionals and your fans, Credibility, Control and Professionalism, and if that’s not enough, I’ve written 101 Reasons Why Your Band Needs A Website - I didn’t do that in a day.

If you are in a band, get yourselves an official website, and make it your Hub. Setup accounts in: Bebo, Facebook, iLike, iMeem, Last.FM, MySpace, ReverbNation, Twitter, Virb and YouTube. Send your new found fans, friends and followers to your website - to gain more exposure, to ply your marketing acumen, to demonstrate your creative and artistic talents.

Go to the top of the class,
Unsigned Band Promotion
UnsignedBandPromotion.com
~ helping musicians and artists get their websites noticed by fans, search engines
and the music industry in half the time they could do it on their own ~
http://www.unsignedbandpromotion.com/

I was pleased Bill Slawski, of SEO by the Sea fame, Twittered a link to Colleen Jones’s article post Toward Content Quality, because it was an informative read - [read it for yourself here]. I wanted to leave a brief comment on uxmatters.com, but I didn’t want to sign up for a free TypePad account, so, I’ll post it here for you instead!

There is more to a web page’s content than meets the eye - while viewing a web page Right Mouse Click in white space and click on View Source in the pop-up menu to see the page’s actual content.

Content is a much bandied about word in promotional circles on the Internet, that’s because most website promotion techniques rely on search engines. For instance, if you’re looking for a band on the net, you go to a search engine, you enter in the band’s name, the search engine serves up its list of relevant websites. Exactly how the search engines do this, is a secret (their secret, not mine), but we all expect them to get it right and display our lost band in the top ten results. They do it by analysing Content, that is: Your domain name (YourBandName.com), header tag information (title, description, keywords), the textual content within the BODY of the web page (includes anchor titles, image ALT text and maybe comments) and how the website content relates to the websites it links to and visa-versa. We also think that the search engines analyse language, that is to say, how words relate to each other (e.g. flying lesson, rock and roll, beef jerky etc.), compound words (e.g. maidenhead, yourself) and compound phrases (typically found in domain names, e.g. newmusicstrategies, seobythesea, unsignedbandpromotion).

Content also means: ‘the quality of what the website has to say’ (that’s what keeps the fans coming back). Colleen Jones askes the question, "how do we know whether content is any good?", see: Content Quality Checklists for the answer. Does your bands website content come up to scratch?

The big question Is: "Does your bands website include enough quality content to be found in the search engine results?" You might want to give yourself an UBP Website Check

A couple of weeks ago Valerie King who is a senior contributor for the Atlanta online music resource The Silver Tongue contacted me regarding her blog post, The Art of Blatant Self-Promotion: A “How To Guide” for Artists and Musicians. She asked me if I’d take a gander and do an interview on what UnsignedBandPromotion.com is all about, sometime in the future.

I had The Silver Tongue interview in my mind when I read Ariel Hyatt’s Social Media & Online Marketing For Musicians - 10 Questions For an Expert in the Trenches on Music Think Tank, and I wondered what questions Valerie would ask me and how I would be able to respond? Have a read of the MTT post and see question 10. So in preparation I asked myself the question: How should a band spend £300 of promotional money? £300 is about $500! Of course, £300 doesn’t go very far if you’re employing someone in the UK for “social media networking services and instruction” - one day at best! But you might be surprised to see how far £300 goes.

1. £62 If you haven’t got one already, get yourself a website. £62 (per annum) will get you a free domain name and free setup, 1500 gig’s of webspace, 15000 gig’s of bandwidth, 2500 email@yourdomain.com accounts, blogs, forums, galleries, e-commerce software - a quick start online store, $75 in Google and Yahoo search credits, etc…
   Networking and online marketing needs focus, a strategy and a focal point. Your own domain name and website is the perfect focal point. For more inf. see: iPowerWeb
2. £125 One of the reasons a band should have a website is so they can collect fans email addresses and send out a newsletter and gig information. A well maintained mailing list is the one thing that will increase your audience numbers and boost your website’s traffic. £125 (per annum) will buy email marketing software (hosted is best) that will allow you to have up to 500 subscribers (more subscribers will cost more), and unlimited: email campaigns, website sign up forms, newsletters and autoresponders… A website and an email newsletter go together like rock & roll. For more inf. see: AWeber.
3. £62 A common free gift for a band to give away is an mp3 - the more people who listen to your music, the more music you’re likely to sell. A flash drive is an expensive free gift, handle with care, but it would make a terrific prize or lure for a gig. £62 will buy you, 20 X 1GB USB flash drives at an average low cost of about $4.99 from Amazon, eBay and Google Product Search - obviously you need to load it up with your music - and maybe earn some ‘extra’ (even pay for the whole shebang) by including your sponsors message. Ask the recipients to pass it on once they’ve downloaded your music.
4. £13 One of the most important ingredients in a successful marketing campaign is Your Contact Information - it should be on everything. £13 will buy you a self-inking rubber stamp that includes: your logo and 4 lines of text in black, red or blue ink. Include: your band’s name, telephone number, email address, website URL. There are loads of sellers on the ‘net. It’s very low tech but an effective and productive idea - stamp it onto everything!
5. £38 Give something away. Nothing on the internet is really free, there’s always a pay off: “We give you a voucher from the website and you get a free gift at our next gig” :: “You join our mailing list”. The problem is, how much to give away? £38 will buy you 100 x 25mm badges imprinted with band’s name and logo. Of course you don’t have to give them away, selling badges is an age old way of promoting your band’s name and making a few quid too.
   As with all ‘merchandising’ products, the more you buy the cheaper the individual item becomes. Here are some more ideas: bumper stickers, drum sticks, fake tattoos, greeting cards, guitar picks, imprinted pens, lanyards, lighters, matchbooks, portfolio of signed pictures (DIY version), stickers. There are loads of sellers on the ‘net. Make sure the free gift is easy to find and simple to get, and don’t forget the pay off.

Ciao 4 niao,
Unsigned Band Promotion
UnsignedBandPromotion.com
~ helping musicians and artists get their websites noticed by fans, search engines
and the music industry in half the time they could do it on their own ~
http://www.unsignedbandpromotion.com/

[NEW EDITED VERSION]
I have just received a most gracious and heartfelt email from Wednesday Night Coincidence which fully explains their faux pas, I am humbled. Of course like most bands WNC are “just a group of friends having a good time” and that is reflected in their brilliantly performed music.

Wednesday Night Coincidence have just launched their new and updated website “08:03:2009″ choosing our Website Template as a framework - thanx

My gripe is with bands (unlike Wednesday Night Coincidence) who hypocritically fight to protect their own work while stealing other peoples’.

I find it very funny, over the years I’ve worked with many artists from all disciplines (photographers, painters, sculptors, musicians, writers… often incredibly famous and All highly principled) and the one thing they worry about is copyright - people copying their work. …The music and film industries are almost obsessed with the problem because it costs them so much money, yet, if one looks around some of them are at it too, copying other people’s work and claiming it for themselves.

Unsigned Band Promotion’s Band Website Template is offered free under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License, which means: it’s yours to use and fuck around with freely and as much as you like, but Please Keep Our Link IN. Our Website Template is fully supported, if you have any problems with it just ask - it won’t cost you!

Out for kicks,
Unsigned Band Promotion
UnsignedBandPromotion.com
~ helping musicians and artists get their websites noticed by fans, search engines
and the music industry in half the time they could do it on their own ~
http://www.unsignedbandpromotion.com/

While UnsignedBandPromotion.co.uk is developing, I am giving UK bands the chance to advertise and sell their Albums, MP3s or Merchandise from the front page.

Of course I am doing it for free. If you want to add links to your album, MP3 or merchandise go to: Add Your Link to find out what information I need.

As usual I will be promoting the website organically - which means I will not be paying for the privilege of being in the top ten search engine results for my chosen keywords. It would have helped if I’d chosen some keywords!!!

In Conversation With Bands,
Unsigned Band Promotion
UnsignedBandPromotion.com
~ helping musicians and artists get their websites noticed by fans, search engines
and the music industry in half the time they could do it on their own ~
http://www.unsignedbandpromotion.com/

In September 2008 I set up unsignedbandpromotion.co.uk, it was going to be a forum for UK bands, but after much deliberation I’ve thought better of it and now I have other plans. And those plans will have to wait a while - I’m too busy. Have I got an under construction sign up? No! Because I couldn’t be arsed, see: Under Construction &/or Band Under Pressure.

I was dumbfounded when I saw a MySpace profile today with an under construction notice up. Why would a person do that? Isn’t life short enough without wasting time writing “Profile Under Construction”? And how long does it take to set one up so its not under construction, two hours, three? How about 61 days? …I don’t know, I’m sorry guys, I just found it funny. It probably loses a little in translation.

It was a cold and windy autumnal night in 2006 when I came across mycampusguide.com. MyCampusGuide.com was a database of upcoming shows and events that college students could use to find out what was happening on their campus or promote the said shows and events themselves. I say Was, because it is now defunct! But what I liked about MyCampusGuide.com and why I took note of the discovery was the way they used the Google Maps API, plus, it was the first time I’d consciously seen it in action!

At the time I thought the Google Maps API would be a great way for bands to promote their gigs, but, I couldn’t think of an elegant way to do it myself. I am often asked if I can get gigs for bands (because of the name Unsigned Band Promotion) and I always say NO because I’m a website promoter, but the thought of the Google Maps API reappears in the back of my mind each time I’m asked. Then there are websites like the Gig Guide who do the job much better than I ever could. So I didn’t ever go down the gigs road.

So, I take my dog out for a long walk on a cold and windy night down the path of band promotion and to my amazement, about two and a half years later I discover Gigdoggy’s Gigs List. And I know, this is what I’ve been looking for. And I know it’s going to be successful because Gigdoggy is where you can network and collaborate with other local bands.

"Local! On the Internet!" I hear you say, well Gigdoggy is all about organizing, sharing and promoting gigs with other bands and "local" is normally where bands can get the most positive and productive results - that’s what I say anyway. Of course it doesn’t have to be local, if your band is going on tour and you need contacts in another town, collaborating with other bands is the perfect way to go.

"Sharing your gigs with other bands makes it easier to plan and promote your events, and provides you with a network of bands to play with in the future" says Gigdoggy.

www.gigdoggy.com is a work in progress - beta launch Feb. ‘09 - all bands are welcome to request an invite - and any invited bands can send invites to any other bands of their choice. Read more: The www.gigdoggy.com beta launch and gigbloggy for up-to-date news.

Rob from Gigdoggy was kind enough to answer a few of my questions …is this my first interview?

UBP: What is the advantage of using Gigdoggy over a sites like craigslist, myspace etc., since there’s a lot more bands reading those sites?

Rob: "Craigslist is great for making announcements, but it’s not equipped to help bands do much more than that. MySpace and other band social networks are powerful tools to get your music heard and get the word out that you band exists as they primarily concentrate on ‘band profiles’. Gigdoggy.com does not compete with those websites since it focuses on ‘gig profiles’ and on the management of gig activities. Bands can see Gigdoggy as a supplement to their usual social networks: if they have created a gig opportunity, they can post the link to that gig’s profile on any other website where they interact with other bands."

UBP: You mention "tools", in what sense is Gigdoggy a tool for bands?

Rob: "Gigdoggy enables bands to take care of all their gig’s details in one single gig profile (like how the promotion for the gig is going to play out as well as delegating promotional tasks for the event, organizing couch-surfing issues, determining compensation, fan draw, ride-sharing, gear-sharing etc.) instead of having to send emails or spending time on the phone. They can freely use our platform as a tool to manage their gigs."

UBP: I can’t see ‘Reading’, it’s all Canada, why doesn’t my town appear in the list?

Rob: "We have been getting this question a lot since we launched The towns and cities that appear are the ones where there are gigs. Since we just launched last week, and are growing the website organically, we are basically promoting the site where there is activity - for now in Quebec and Ontario. Gigdoggy.com being a collaboration platform, any band can put its city on the map by creating a gig opportunity there. Inviting other bands to their ‘Network’ and letting them know that there is a gig opportunity in their area will get the ball rolling for that city."

UBP: I noticed that bands can’t just post their availability for playing gigs, and why do they have to create actual gigs?

Rob: "We think there is more value for everyone if the content of the platform is ‘actual‘ gig opportunities with concrete information, as opposed to more vague ‘requests‘. There will always be more ‘demand‘ for gigs than there is ‘supply‘ - which makes each gig opportunity that is shared on gigdoggy more valuable to everyone."

Thanks Rob, Gigdoggy really is the dog’s bollocks, this is going to be big.