Jon Con's Blog

From playing live for the past few years I’ve notice a common theme crop up when speaking with some bands about the gigs they play and how they want to move up the ladder, play the better gigs but have difficulty getting on any bills. They can’t comprehend how other bands, similar to them achieve more and get the better gigs. Instead of asking themselves: “Why are they playing those gigs when we’re better than them?” and then usually followed by “They’re fucking shit”, they could have asked “What are we doing wrong in the way we go about promoting our band and how could we improve it?”

What I see as the main problem with alot of bands in the area is that many are under the assumption that all they have to do for a gig is turn up with their gear, play their set and go home and see it as the promoters responsibility to ensure a decent turnout. In a sense, part of this is acceptable and hopefully a few people will come up after the set and try and find out more information about the band. Whilst this approach may be alright for some, you don’t really expose yourself as much as you could do. To expand on that you need to look at the gig in 3 sections:

· Promotion before the gig
· On the night
· Following up afterwards

Before the gig
The most obvious avenue for promoting now is myspace, its pretty easy enough to get over a thousand friends for your band just by going through and adding friends of similar bands (you can often tell which bands go through friend lists and add people randomly due to the amount banners promoting something else and have hardly anyone commenting on their music). Send out a few bulletins a few days before the gig and hopefully, a few people will turn up on the night. Since myspace is so widely used now, I’m not going to really spend too much time talking about this as most people know how do this and the benefits.

Because of the myspace “revolution” alot of bands overlook other aspects for promotings gigs. A few years back I remember Opium (now covergirl) turning up in Bridgend on the day of their gig at the tollhouse and going round town flyering to get people to attend, speaking to anyone who showed an interest in the band and the gig. Later on that night the people who they spoke to that day turned up to the gig. Another example I remember was Sean (xxxquincyxxx) at Tj’s after the Thursday/Coheed show a while back going round the crowd outside speaking to anyone who’d listen about When Reason Sleeps, shifting a few CD’s and trying to get people to come to their gig with the Kennedy Soundtrack. Whether you liked the band or not, you only need look at the numbers attending their shows before they split up to show that some of the ground work paid off (and has also carried over with the blackout). Bands who just hand out flyers probably won’t be as effective because the majority of flyers don’t even get looked and thrown away 20seconds after they were given it. By starting a conversation you are able to give the person more information about the band and they’ll probably be more interested in holiding onto the flyer and coming to the gig than a random flyer given to you by a nobody one day on the high street.

Newspapers and local radio stations are always up for plugging bands and artists or at least listing them and mentioning them and if you hadn’t realised already, sending off demos can also earn reviews which in turn raise the profile of your band. If possible I’d also suggest offering these people guestlist places over boyfriends or girlfriends because they could prove to be more beneficial to the success of your band. Buzz magazine (which you can pick up for free in cardiff) has a massive monthly gig list of all dates that are submitted to them at the back and Noel (the editor) has a column highlighting the gigs he feels are the ones worth attending for that month. You may not appear in that but you probably have more chance of doing so by getting in touch and submitting your information. Other places worth getting in touch with are local shops, some are more than happy for you to put up a poster or leave some flyers, it’s worth just going round and asking who’s happy for you to leave a poster of flyer to promote the night for future events and gigs (again if you don’t ask you’ll never know). On a national front the likes or Rocksound, NME, Kerrang! or even the Fly magazine all have listings for gigs for the month. Flyposting is another way that can also gain extra coverage but just be warned that it is illegal and can land you up in shit creek without a paddle and would advise against it.

There are thousands of other ideas you could probably come up with to help promote a gig. The more unique the ideas are, the more chance you have of standing out like a sore thumb and being remembered. Myspace is great, but it isn’t the start and finish of the the internet, Tom will still love you even if you go elsewhere.

During the gig
Obviously during a gig we’re not looking at how you go about promoting it because you’re already there and from a bands perscpective you could be spending the time promoting your band instead. Merchandise is probably pretty obvious to most bands, the biggest factor is getting the money together to pay for it initially but the returns give you some money to pay for . Setting up a merch stall is an obvious but easy way for people trying locate the band after the gig, get people to sign up to your mailing list or pick up some flyers and also make you some money selling the CD’s, t-shirts, bottle openers, branded condoms, absynthe, badges, bags, inflatable dolls or anything else you could have thought of making. All in all its a win win situation. The most common items found on a merch table/stall are usually badges, tshirts and cd’s and I’ve put some links at the bottom of this if you’re thinking about getting anything made.

What also seems to be overlooked these days, again which I feel is partly due to myspace, are mailing lists. They basically allow you to send an email to everysingle person registered on the list instantly, allowing you another avenue of promotion in the future. All you need at the gig is a piece of paper with a table for people to put their email down, put in another column for their myspace address and it’s 2 birds with one stone. The band I’ve just joined do this at all the gigs they play and we usually see about 10/20 people sign up for it at the gig, its not an astronomical amount but the lists is over a couple of thousand now. If you have any attractive female friends, ask them if they want to go around the room asking if people want to sign up to it. I’m not being sexist here, it’s just some men will probably think with their penis and sign up not thinking of the possible consequences.

Afterwards
After the gigs over, you should be looking towards following up any leads you get from the gig, thanking the promoter and everyone who came to the gig. It’ll take about five minutes of your time but possibly the difference between being called back or not.

I wouldn’t really say anything in this article was exactly groundbreaking but as I stated at the start of the article, most bands tend overlook the promotion aspect of their band and hopefully this will give some of you a few ideas for future events. Obviously I realise sometimes it’s not always possible to do everything leading up to the gig because of possible time constraints but I would try and get some form of merch and flyers together at least.

If you look at some of the bands who are relatively successful and touring the UK, they’ll usually have a merch table set up, their own website and mailing list for you to sign up in addition to their myspace, they’ll have had people helping them out flyering and promoting their gigs on their behalf and most of them make themselves accessible after they’ve played. A step up from there and you look at bands signed to major labels and these guys have teams of people working their ass off for them to spread their name about, which helps a great deal more. Everyone would want to be in this position but it’ll take some time and everyone has to start somewhere.

What I’d recommend doing now is look at how you’ve approached gigs in the past and then compare it to what I’ve mentioned here and see what you’re doing at the moment and how you could improve it. Obviously in some cases it’s not always possible to go out flyering to promote it due to your location but as you gain a decent fanbase you could ask friends to help out and sort out a street team to cover as many areas as possible, this could also help you out for times when you or the band haven’t got enough time to do as much as you can to promote it.

As a final thought, I’d suggest those who are really serious about being in a band to do more than just kill some time before you get a job or go to university, you might want to look into getting the unsigned guide or the music week directory. Both are practically the yellow pages for promoters, venues, managers and other industry figures that could help your band out because the majority of the time, you don’t really need to be musically outstanding, you just need to make contacts with the right people. I don’t get any commision off them but am of the opinion they are worth the money.



The Unsigned Guide
http://www.theunsignedguide.com/

Music Week Directory
http://www.musicweekdirectory.com/

Any other questions or comments, reply to the article or email me joncon@dragonninja.co.uk