So, in the words of Professor Piehead, "Another partial success...."
"Success" inasmuch that we turned up and only sucked a bit, and in places were actually approaching competence. As usual, the good bits are when Chris gets the freedom to let go and immerse himself in the moment and the songs. And that did happen in places. I'll write more about the gig itself later.
"Partial" by way of the fact that there were 30 people in the room. Match that to the fact that we know there are more people out there that want to see Dakota Suite play. And the worse thing is that we have noone to blame but ourselves. So, if you want some free advice on getting people to see your band, take it from the experts, huh?
To explain: I spent years working in music, managing bands, running record labels and international departments, organising marketing campaigns and teams (although as a Dead Kennedys / Bill Hicks devotee I didn't like the "m" word and pretended it was something else). Add to that the fact that I spent a lot of time helping out bands on the side, for love, little labels, indie schmindie artists with a niche to carve and so on. So you'd think I'd know better.
In fact, I'm crystal clear on why nobody was there - we didn't do the work. However much your art is a labour of love, someone somewhere needs to tell people where to find / see / hear it or it just dissolves into the ether. In our defence, we are old men with day jobs and not the kind of people who like shouting about ourselves too much (I think the music probably explains that).
Anyway, in the hope that last night isn't a complete loss, I thought I'd try and write a quick (non-comprehensive) guide to getting people to your gig. I am also happy for people to forward this to bands they know and answer questions from them and give advice. On last night's results, I'm clearly better at giving advice than following it...
1. Do people know you already?
If there's a group of fans out there, find them. The internet makes this easier - searching Facebook, Bebo, myspazz etc should reveal if anyone has put your band in their favourite music listings. Send them a message directly - it's better than just random commenting or pasting e-flyers. If they really love you, they'll help promote you.
Always make sure that you give something in return, even if it's just a little of your time to acknowledge them.
We did a bit of this - maybe 10 or 15 minutes. And the 4 people we found in that time showed up and posted about the gig. Perhaps if we'd spent a whole hour....
Additionally, you should be keeping a mailing list so that you can mail news when you've got it (please don't send out a weekly newsletter if you've got sod all going on - this invites deletion).
We, of course, don't have a mailing list.
2. Social Networks are not a panacea for all ills
You can't just create a Facebook event and hope all your "friends" show up. They won't. They may be Facebook friends, but most of them aren't going to take a bullet for you. Moreover, people say "maybe attending" because they don't want to hurt your feelings by saying "not attending." Count the maybes in the "no" pile.
For all internet "flyering" the ratio of success to failure is probably not vastly different to physically flyering. Years ago, I used to promote nightclubs - when we flyered outside other clubs at 2am, we knew that maybe 5 or 6 in a 100 that we gave flyers to would come to our night - that meant doing a couple of thousand flyers to get a hundred or so people in. The ratio varies depending on how good you are at targeting flyers. The same is true online.
If you have 5000 fans on myspace, you aren't going to sell 5000 records. In fact, the likely numbers are more like 50-100 if that. It's very easy to click a button that says "I'm a fan" or "I might come to your gig." It's considerably harder to get off your arse, get the cash together and buy a ticket or a record.
3. Don't rely on online alone
Mad though it may seem, the people that leave their homes to go to other gigs / clubs are much more likely to leave the house to go to yours. Whilst many live virtual lives, lived vicariously through a social life that only appears in the events column of Facebook, some people are actually living their lives "offline."
Flyers, however cheap, and posters (ditto) can be of much use. Dakota Suite are a difficult case study - try finding the club that plays our kind of music - but, for most bands, it shouldn't be hard to find similar music and thus similar fans. Try and find a "call to action," something people can do when they've got the flyer - then you can drive them to a website / page etc, but have something waiting - more details, tracks to listen to, etc.
In our case, pushing the news to certain record shops, bars and cafes would probably have found our fans a bit better. Total fail on that count - when am I going to have time to go trawling round record shops....? I can't imagine saying that 10 years ago... *sob*
4. Press Release
Well, this one I tried. Not hard, obviously, but a bit. I wrote one, got a list of e-mail addresses for people at music mags and sent away. There are 2 self-destruct points for this activity:
(a) I have a suspicion that my mail from gmail ends up in some people's junk mail folder - this means I kind of knew that people at big media with sensitive spam filters are probably not getting the message
(b) The personal touch always counts. I should have been phoning them first and *then* sending them the info. These guys receive dozens of gig notices a day, so why are they going to care about mine, anyway?
5. Use Your Contacts
OK, you either have these or you don't. I have no excuse - simply by being alive for marginally longer than others, I have friends who DJ on Radio 1, Radio 2, 6 Music, XFM and more.
Unlike most music types, I never bother them with stuff cos I know how annoying that is and they're friends rather than mere contacts. That said, I'm a complete dick. If I'd picked up the phone, at least one of them would probably have given us a shout. For the sake of being a bit less shy about it, we could have used radio - one of the most powerful media for music there is - and I completely failed to do so. Duh.
6. If you're going to try some stunts, be prepared to be a complete liar
See previous post re "Band marketing fail." What a chump. And worse still I roped in a pal to help and he only did so cos I think he was feeling sorry for me. I hereby completely absolve Rob the ginger fuhrer of blame...
Actually, if you do things right, and your band are good, there's no reason to go down this route. If you make good use of all the tools that are available to you then this kind of desperate roll of the dice shouldn't be necessary. I'm just not into the lying.
7. Time
Probably the biggest factor of all. What with work, family, laziness, etc. I didn't really do a thing about this gig until 2 weeks before the show. That's completely crap. Online campaigns need lots of time unless you're a big band for whom people are searching day in day out. Someone like us should spend 2 months making sure we're in all listings, event guides, music sites etc etc. And then a constant workflow of contacting different people and gently cajoling rather than waiting til 48 hours before and screaming at the top of your voice.....
Anyway, I could go on, but this is a blog not a book.
The overall message is simple - you can't just be an artist without you (or, in an ideal world, someone else) putting the effort in. If you don't, your audience will look like this:
hey, that's me in the yellow t-shirt!
ReplyDelete...the bottom line being that I suspect most of us attending ( myself included - 250 mile round trip, train tickets, petrol, day off work, etc ) came quite a bit out of our usual areas to see the show.
ReplyDeleteWhether that's 18 or 8000 of us, is irrelevant.
The only thing I'd say is that if you're putting on a gig - whether "marketed, facebooked" or whatever - people will come.
So with that in mind, at least *pretend* you want to play the gig.
...and I still say Mood Indigo is Skyscrape by Idaho, but no-ones mentioned it yet.
:-)
I agree re 18 or 18000 - and hence why Chris stayed on to play some extra stuff, I know it's never enough tho. If this had been 5 years ago, we probably would have played half the time. We had PA problems all afternoon and didn't get time to go through some of the new stuff. It's kind of why we invited people in the afternoon to hang out, just cos unless we do a show somewhere we can afford to / have space to do strings, etc then it's a bit limiting as to what we can play.
ReplyDeleteI remember me + Richard Formby sat in Vinita from Che's flat whilst she played us that Idaho record and we both were *convinced* Chris had ripped it off. Chris claims to this day that he'd never heard it before then and I do believe him. I still think MI is great thought - when those strings come in ahead of the chorus about 2/3 way through - chills the spine...