I'm starting a new band and I know the myspace page is ubiquitous, but I was wondering if anyone feels like there are other websites or social networks that are helping you to get your music in front of more people or are actually helping you connect and stay in touch with fans.
There seems to be so many out there and it kinda of feels like a fools errand to create and maintain a page on them all, so I was just curious as to which ones you feel are doing some good?
Which websites or social networks are effective for bands
Which websites or social networks are effective for bands
Slider wrote:"we figured you'd want to use your drum samples and reamp through your amps anyway, so we didn't bother taking much time to get sounds".
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@?,*???&?
- on a wing and a prayer
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The internet will be 1/12 of all you should be doing.
Focus on booking shows in your region. Make sure you have a full-length recording and an array of merch to sell.
Get thee on college radio.
Social networking sites are little more than e-mail.
http://messageboard.tapeop.com/viewtopic.php?t=62067
That thread says alot about the reality of the internet.
Focus on booking shows in your region. Make sure you have a full-length recording and an array of merch to sell.
Get thee on college radio.
Social networking sites are little more than e-mail.
http://messageboard.tapeop.com/viewtopic.php?t=62067
That thread says alot about the reality of the internet.
I think myspace.
Myspace is like ebay. Many things about it suck, but they have you by the balls because more people use it than anyone else.
If I had to say, I'd keep real person to person contact. I ignore text all the time but ignoring a person is much harder. I want to go to gigs people I know legitimately invite me to, but getting a generic myspace notice does shit for me.
Think of ebay. for how much they suck, 10x as many people use ebay as every other auction based site put together. Love it or hate it, but that's the place where the most customers are. If you randomly meet someone on the street, the chances of them having some other account, vs a myspace one, are not that great.
Myspace is like ebay. Many things about it suck, but they have you by the balls because more people use it than anyone else.
If I had to say, I'd keep real person to person contact. I ignore text all the time but ignoring a person is much harder. I want to go to gigs people I know legitimately invite me to, but getting a generic myspace notice does shit for me.
Think of ebay. for how much they suck, 10x as many people use ebay as every other auction based site put together. Love it or hate it, but that's the place where the most customers are. If you randomly meet someone on the street, the chances of them having some other account, vs a myspace one, are not that great.
Real friends stab you in the front.
Oscar Wilde
Failed audio engineer & pro studio tech turned Component level motherboard repair store in New York
Oscar Wilde
Failed audio engineer & pro studio tech turned Component level motherboard repair store in New York
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kayagum
- ghost haunting audio students
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Find a local band you like, go to their gig, introduce yourself and offer to open for them (give them a demo). Repeat.
Sorry for being old-fashioned, but hiding behind websites won't get you where you want to go. They're great tools, but they only augment your work, not replace it.
Around here, there have been a couple of "internet first" buzz bands, but none of them have really taken once people figured out they can't play live.
The best bands (both for artistic quality and financial success) have toured their asses off for a better part of a decade.
Sorry for being old-fashioned, but hiding behind websites won't get you where you want to go. They're great tools, but they only augment your work, not replace it.
Around here, there have been a couple of "internet first" buzz bands, but none of them have really taken once people figured out they can't play live.
The best bands (both for artistic quality and financial success) have toured their asses off for a better part of a decade.
Why does everyone jump to the conclusion that I have no intentions of playing shows, making real friends, and trying to become an "internet buzz band"?
When I hear of a band mentioned in the context of another band, or see a name on a show flyer with other local/regional/touring bands that I know I usually do a quick search to see if I can quickly and easily hear one of their songs and see what they are about. I was just asking if anyone preferred any other sites besides myspace to facilitate such a thing due to ease of use or visibility.
When I hear of a band mentioned in the context of another band, or see a name on a show flyer with other local/regional/touring bands that I know I usually do a quick search to see if I can quickly and easily hear one of their songs and see what they are about. I was just asking if anyone preferred any other sites besides myspace to facilitate such a thing due to ease of use or visibility.
Slider wrote:"we figured you'd want to use your drum samples and reamp through your amps anyway, so we didn't bother taking much time to get sounds".
I agree with rwc, Myspace is it. From my experience, what it is great for is booking tours and out of town shows. You can do a search on a city or zip code and find bands in that area, listen to their music and approach them for shows that make sense. It's great for that.
As far as getting people to come to shows locally, I find it pretty much useless.
I don't thikn any other site even compares are far as actual people, msic fans and bands are concerned.
As far as getting people to come to shows locally, I find it pretty much useless.
I don't thikn any other site even compares are far as actual people, msic fans and bands are concerned.
[Asked whether his shades are prescription or just to look cool]
Guy: Well, I am the drummer.
Guy: Well, I am the drummer.
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chris harris
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Yeah... MySpace is really it. It's not so great for "social" networking anymore. But, everyone still uses it to promote their music. Almost every band in the world has a MySpace presence. And, the fans still go there to check out the music.
As far as MySpace not being useful for marketing and promoting your band's local shows, I think that's nonsense.
MySpace is as useful as you make it. I mean, you can send out hundreds of "invites", which are usually ignored... or you can spam peoples' profiles with your html ads, which are usually despised... or, you can send out copy/paste messages to all of your "friends"... These things are the internet equivalent of going to a big show and just tossing huge piles of fliers at the audience, or leaving a stack at the door expecting people to voluntarily pick one up on the way out.
People who use MySpace to market this way are lazy and expect things to be too easy. Promoting a band effectively is much more hard work than that. Here's my proven effective method for promoting shows via MySpace:
I use a tabbed browser, so that makes it easy... I start on my list of friends... I do about 10 at a time... I open each friends' profile in a new tab. Then, I look at each profile. If they're from out of town and it's obvious that they're not coming to the show, I just close the tab and move to the next one. For each friend who is in my area, I take a minute to check out their profile. I find something, anything, that I have in common with them. Then, I send them a PERSONALIZED invite to my show. In this personalized invite, I use that thing that we have in common to both prove to them that the message is not spam and that they just might enjoy themselves at my show. This is the internet equivalent of approaching LOTS of people at a show, individually, and chatting them up and finding out a little bit about them BEFORE handing them a flier. And, it works.
It's a lot of hard fucking work. It takes forever. When I've used this method with my 4000 or so "friends", I've found it to take a couple of solid 8 hour days to promote a show like this. But, it works. I've done this a few times and have had a substantially larger draw from doing this than from any other kind of promotion I've tried. It's also a good way to get to know the people who actually go out and support bands in the local scene.
But, yeah........ MySpace is definitely still the go-to site for band promotion.
Facebook is waaay better for genuine social networking and keeping up with friends..... but, part of the reason it's better is because you don't get spam from shitty bands 38 times a day.
As far as MySpace not being useful for marketing and promoting your band's local shows, I think that's nonsense.
MySpace is as useful as you make it. I mean, you can send out hundreds of "invites", which are usually ignored... or you can spam peoples' profiles with your html ads, which are usually despised... or, you can send out copy/paste messages to all of your "friends"... These things are the internet equivalent of going to a big show and just tossing huge piles of fliers at the audience, or leaving a stack at the door expecting people to voluntarily pick one up on the way out.
People who use MySpace to market this way are lazy and expect things to be too easy. Promoting a band effectively is much more hard work than that. Here's my proven effective method for promoting shows via MySpace:
I use a tabbed browser, so that makes it easy... I start on my list of friends... I do about 10 at a time... I open each friends' profile in a new tab. Then, I look at each profile. If they're from out of town and it's obvious that they're not coming to the show, I just close the tab and move to the next one. For each friend who is in my area, I take a minute to check out their profile. I find something, anything, that I have in common with them. Then, I send them a PERSONALIZED invite to my show. In this personalized invite, I use that thing that we have in common to both prove to them that the message is not spam and that they just might enjoy themselves at my show. This is the internet equivalent of approaching LOTS of people at a show, individually, and chatting them up and finding out a little bit about them BEFORE handing them a flier. And, it works.
It's a lot of hard fucking work. It takes forever. When I've used this method with my 4000 or so "friends", I've found it to take a couple of solid 8 hour days to promote a show like this. But, it works. I've done this a few times and have had a substantially larger draw from doing this than from any other kind of promotion I've tried. It's also a good way to get to know the people who actually go out and support bands in the local scene.
But, yeah........ MySpace is definitely still the go-to site for band promotion.
Facebook is waaay better for genuine social networking and keeping up with friends..... but, part of the reason it's better is because you don't get spam from shitty bands 38 times a day.
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tubetapexfmr
- steve albini likes it
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Wow a lot of posts without anyone answering this guy's question. My favorite places that are NOT MySpace include Reverb Nation and Archive.org. Reverb nation is kind of like MySpace + Sonicbids + New Ideas all carefully fused together. Archive.org lets you present your material however you want in whatever file format you want. For both of these alternatives you will need to drive traffic there of course, but that is the case with myspace as well.
http://reverbnation.com
http://archive.org
http://reverbnation.com
http://archive.org
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kayagum
- ghost haunting audio students
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Sorry if my post was not germane and generally crabby... I'm probably influenced by a lot of people here in MN trying to be an internet presence only 
I guess the one thing I would add that's a little more on topic is that wherever you choose to make yourself home, make sure you show up on the major search engines. Nothing bugs me more as a fan than not being able to find someone via Google, Yahoo or whatever.
How to do that? I know a good chunk of books at your local megabookstore cover this... perhaps someone here can summarize better.
I guess the one thing I would add that's a little more on topic is that wherever you choose to make yourself home, make sure you show up on the major search engines. Nothing bugs me more as a fan than not being able to find someone via Google, Yahoo or whatever.
How to do that? I know a good chunk of books at your local megabookstore cover this... perhaps someone here can summarize better.
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DrummerMan
- george martin
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Just to continue on with the MySpace suggestions you didn't ask for, my only one would be to send out whatever mailing (show/cd release promotion or whatever) from your regular email, or band's email, instead of through a MySpace invite, when possible.
It's possible that this is just me, but I usually at least open and glance at a show announcement from john@awesomebandIknow.com with a subject heading of AWESOMEBANDYOUKNOW PLAYING IN BALTIMORE TONIGHT!!!, whereas every single myspace message I receive gets deleted. Friend requests, event invitations, and general spam from the myspace folks all look so similar that I don't usually feel like looking past the fact that it's from myspace to see who's actually sending me something. Maybe I'm lazy, actually I'm pretty sure I'm lazy, but so are the majority of people online.
Also, when I get 2 emails back to back, one from the band itself and one from their myspace page, I'm less likely to look at either because, again, the shit just kinda blends together somehow and I don't usually feels like taking the time unless there's a really good reason.
I'm not saying I'm a good person for doing all this, it's just my idiot's approach to generalizing psychology.
It's possible that this is just me, but I usually at least open and glance at a show announcement from john@awesomebandIknow.com with a subject heading of AWESOMEBANDYOUKNOW PLAYING IN BALTIMORE TONIGHT!!!, whereas every single myspace message I receive gets deleted. Friend requests, event invitations, and general spam from the myspace folks all look so similar that I don't usually feel like looking past the fact that it's from myspace to see who's actually sending me something. Maybe I'm lazy, actually I'm pretty sure I'm lazy, but so are the majority of people online.
Also, when I get 2 emails back to back, one from the band itself and one from their myspace page, I'm less likely to look at either because, again, the shit just kinda blends together somehow and I don't usually feels like taking the time unless there's a really good reason.
I'm not saying I'm a good person for doing all this, it's just my idiot's approach to generalizing psychology.
Myspace for talking to bands.
Facebook for talking to fans.
It seems like all the musicians are gradually migrating to facebook too (to keep in touch with their fans), so soon myspace will be completely redundant.
Facebook for talking to fans.
It seems like all the musicians are gradually migrating to facebook too (to keep in touch with their fans), so soon myspace will be completely redundant.
Making Efforts and Forging Ahead Courageously! Keeping Honest and Making Innovations Perpetually!
can't wait for myspace to become redundant, but it still seems pretty necessary - I agree with a previous poster, in that anything I get from myspace is regarded as spam. Facebook is a little better, and a little less spammy, but the "band pages" and "event pages" seem a bit kludgy and ill-conceived to me. Hopefully they'll sort that stuff out.
Having said that, I've seen facebook promotion work really well, especially for all-ages shows. This type of thing is all the better if you can have a couple fanbois/fangrlz do the facebooking for you.
Learn about your region, and what blogs / forums prospective fans might be watching. A mention in the right blog can really help promote a show, or just drive traffic to your website. You can somewhat selectively target your audience this way.
Not social network related, but I use bandcamp.mu for hosting songs, and it works great, I dig pretty much everything about it.
Having said that, I've seen facebook promotion work really well, especially for all-ages shows. This type of thing is all the better if you can have a couple fanbois/fangrlz do the facebooking for you.
Learn about your region, and what blogs / forums prospective fans might be watching. A mention in the right blog can really help promote a show, or just drive traffic to your website. You can somewhat selectively target your audience this way.
Not social network related, but I use bandcamp.mu for hosting songs, and it works great, I dig pretty much everything about it.
I buy most of my music through myspace channels. What amazes me is that half the bands that I contacted that didn't have buy links to their album (!!), didn't get back to me (!!).
I have scored some great music by surfing myspace or by listening to Pandora and Last.fm and going to myspace to score the album. I happily paypal cash directly to indie bands for their CD, rather than spend it at Best Buy or Amazon....
I have scored some great music by surfing myspace or by listening to Pandora and Last.fm and going to myspace to score the album. I happily paypal cash directly to indie bands for their CD, rather than spend it at Best Buy or Amazon....
"Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact." William S Burroughs
Ahh, I knew we could get some meaningful discourse on the topic. Thanks for all the great ideas everyone!
I've noticed people becoming "fans" of bands on facebook, but can you put your music up there to hear too?
dynomike wrote:It seems like all the musicians are gradually migrating to facebook too (to keep in touch with their fans), so soon myspace will be completely redundant.
I've noticed people becoming "fans" of bands on facebook, but can you put your music up there to hear too?
Slider wrote:"we figured you'd want to use your drum samples and reamp through your amps anyway, so we didn't bother taking much time to get sounds".
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