James Moore's Blog, page 63

Firing Band Members – The Perpetual Struggle

Lineup changes suck and are something that every band has to deal with. They are the sort of thing that defines the career of a band and which can cause you no end of grief as you seek to find a way forward. A lot of bands don’t have healthy ways to deal with these issues and this leads to an unending river of problems. They get salty ex members who talk shit on them to the rest of the scene and they let these problems fester. Ultimately it can lead to the breakup of a band. No one wants to go through the stress of losing a band member, especially if the person decides to be a dick, give people a hard time about song rights and generally harass the band. While lineup changes should be easy, simply one person leaving a company and another joining, it’s rarely that simple and in fact usually turns into something much more intense.

First realize that getting a good band member is a very hard thing. Not a lot of people seem to understand this, but getting someone to put their life on hold in order to go play to fifteen people is a very rare thing. These people who want to spend money on their art and go out of their way to work with others in order to create something… that’s hard to find. Now you have to be able to get along with them when locked in a tiny van for twelve hours at a time as you proceed to all lose money at a terrifying rate. Oh and they have to be willing to learn your songs and be able to play them well. So when you lose a band member, realize how hard it is going to be to find the perfect person. The criterion needed for this is insane and will take a lot of work to find, so don’t think that you’re on top of it and you will find a replacement for George the bassist right away.

I think one of the scary parts of a band losing a member is that the hierarchy of the band really becomes clear. That is to say that the main dude really has to step up and it rapidly becomes clear if the member you lost actually contributed anything meaningful or if he was just some random shithead. It’s one of the few times when you need to make a really difficult executive decision and one that is going to have an impact on your band forever. Sometimes band members feel weird about how the firing of a different band member is handled and this can have a long term impact too. If you’re going to fire a band member try and make the decision unanimous, ideally also including the spurned band member in the process, otherwise you’re going to end up with some serious problems down the line. By losing one band member your are sowing the seeds to lose many more. Sure sometimes someone is just an asshole, but if you are firing someone because of creative differences… be careful.

One thing to be aware of that many bands do but which is always a bad idea (Except in extreme circumstances) is don’t break the band up and reform the next day without that member. That isn’t really doing yourself any favors and in fact is just kind of compounding the problem. Unless the guy you are leaving is a criminal or an extreme asshole then the rest of you are handling the problem in pretty much the least mature way possible and also hurting your brand. Word gets around, no matter what you think, and if people think that your band is a bunch of immature assholes do you think that people are going to really want to continue working with you? You need to convey professionalism in all that you do and by fucking up one of the most important things that you will do in the history of your band by corrupting it with infighting and immature attitudes then you are going to hurt your band for good.

When it comes down to it, as with everything else in the industry respect and honesty are the way to go. The more that you can keep everyone in the loop throughout the painful process then the more ease you’re going to have throughout. For example if you start off early trying to make the transition smooth then you are going to have an easier time of it then if you fire a key band member by text. It’s important to consider things from the fired members perspective and try to get things done as smoothly and with as little dicking around as possible if you want to have a productive go of it. You’re deeply impacting someones creative output by firing them from a band and you need to acknowledge that, you can’t just let it be, you have to respect where they are coming from or risk hurting your good name for years to come. So keeping everybody in the loop is only going to make sure you all get a little bit further along a little bit faster.

The music industry is a tricky place and people getting fired from bands often leads to friction that can define entire scenes, just look at Metallica and Megadeth. These are the sorts of things that make being in a band so goddamn hard and the kinds of things that if not dealt with properly are going to hurt your band for eternity. So realize what it means for you and then go from there. This isn’t something to be taken lightly, by deciding to fire someone from your band realize that you are causing some serious hurt and if you fail to embrace that then the potential to offend people for good is only going to keep growing. Watch out, it’s a wild ride out there.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

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Managing Drug Intake, Egos and Your Band

Man drugs sure are fun aren’t they? They seem to be the backbone of the very industry that defines us, informing all sides of the music, from the luxurious backstage parties, to the creative process itself. They make us ask questions and have once in a lifetime experiences, and yet when they get out of hand it ruins our lives. Yet time and time again we see young artists going over the top with drugs and alcohol because they saw their heroes doing it in a music video or read about it in an interview. So what do you do to circumnavigate these struggles and enable yourself to access a better future? Where does a band have to draw the line and at what point do you need to realize that you have ruined your life and your art becoming a laughingstock of the people you so badly wanted to impress. Understanding these things is crucial to long term success within the music business so let’s dive on in and try to find out more.

As most progressive drug policies suggest, drugs aren’t really the problem most of the time, it’s the attitudes of the people using them, just as we all know people who drink a lot but get shit done there are also people who do a lot of drugs but also get stuff done. You might want your music to be influenced by someone like Matt Pike from Sleep and decide to smoke a ton of weed to try and get those stoner rock riffs. Except here’s the thing, when you smoke weed all day you just sit on your couch and eat junk food. Matt Pike is out there reading books about alien mythology and jamming. He uses weed as a way to better understand the world and evolve his art, you’re doing it because your parents are mean to you and your job sucks and weed helps you not think about it. I think the key thing when trying to figure out drug use in the music industry is to retain a definition of the word loser and make sure that no matter what you do you don’t fall into it.

Now I understand that that might be a little vague, so look at it this way. I define a loser as someone who sits on their ass all day and doesn’t get anything done, works a dead end job and makes no regular progress towards their ambitions. Now I understand that some people have a hard time with this, but guess what? That’s the entire fucking point. It’s easy to be a loser, and recreational drugs facilitate that almost without exception, in fact I’d argue that psychedelics probably don’t help either after a certain point. So now consider that, and then consider the impact drugs are having on your art. If you’re doing a ton of blow after shows to honor bands like Motley Crue and to better understand the zeitgeist in which they grew up then you’re probably fine. If you are doing heroin all day because “Kurt Cobain did it” and you think that will somehow make your art more despairing then you are extremely misled and confused.

Something else that I think not a lot of bands seem to understand is that the situations in which their favorite seventies bands grew up are totally different than the ones facing bands today. For example, once the bands got signed they had a totally different set of expectations before them. Sure they worked just as hard if not harder than their peers do today, but they also had longer travel times and a slower pace of life. It was okay to zonk out on drugs for a while and not worry about things falling apart. Nowadays if you can’t be trusted to reliably respond within a few minutes then you are pretty much up a river of excrement without a means of locomotion. Also important to realize is that when high profile people are found doing drugs their lives operate on a totally different wavelength from yours. They do drugs because hundreds if not thousands of people rely on them for a job, not to mention countless emotionally invested fans. You do drugs because your job as an ice scream scooper stresses you out.

The rock star lifestyle has always been something of a myth. Even famous bands from back in the day spent countless hours in shitty little vans, much like their peers today. They were hot, sweaty and extremely tired, unwilling to have to deal with all the madness. Sure there were groupies and loose women, but those things are still around too, you’re just fucking creepy. The entire status of a ‘band’ in our society has changed. While it used to be something cool and unique due to a lack of musical training in the general public and relative scarcity of instruments now it’s something your sad neighbor does just as well as your stoner roommate, and that’s fine. You just need to think about what the long term effects that that attitude can have on your lifestyle and realize what it means if you get too deeply invested in it and ignore modern day realities.

When it comes down to it, if you’re motivated and have your shit together drugs aren’t really that bad for you. They can ruin your life really quickly if you let them though and that’s the issue. A lot of musicians deal with mental illness and when mixed with drugs that’s rarely a good fit. You need to remain realistic about all that your band and brand can do for you and try and embrace the future that this reality holds. The music industry isn’t one that allows for a lot of dicking around and using your fandom of certain drug addicted artists as an excuse for why you don’t get anything done isn’t going to help you get anywhere important.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

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How Your Bands Name And Logo Are Hurting You

A decent chunk of my job when setting up tours is determining other bands to go out with and bands to act as local openers. This usually involves a lot of time being spent navigating various forums and databases in order to figure out which bands might be worth asking and which bands are just going to give me a hard time or not reply at all. Now there are two ways that I can immediately discount a band, these two keys are the bands name and their logo. While this certainly isn’t a foolproof model it’s surprisingly effective and it can really impact the future of your band. It’s going to hold you back if you can’t get this figured out and if you can then you are going to find yourself able to access opportunities that you might never have had before just because this initial taste of your band lets people become aware of your professionalism.

So what makes a band name good? As a general rule I like it to be something that fans can chant, or at least have a chunk a band can chant. A band name like “Red Jumpsuit Apparatus” isn’t exactly something people can scream. However a band name like “Toxik” is perfect because it’s two syllables and lets people really latch on to it as something they can easily remember, especially because of the unique spelling of the word “Toxic”. Using the chant rule means that your band name remains fairly short and memorable which is always key. Remember, you want your name to be the sort of thing that your fans can talk about in a loud bar, since odds are, if you’re an independent band, then that’s where your fans congregate. If you have to explain stupid spelling, long words and what have you do you think that people are really going to remain interested? If you must have a long name then go for an acronym to preserve your legitimacy.

Simultaneously I think it’s important that your band name isn’t a reference to a major band. While it’s cool to make it a reference to an obscure track from your favorite artist (Like Lady Gaga referencing Queen with her name) naming yourself after an album from a key band in your genre is probably a poor decision. There’s a lot of bands who try to fuse other band names in order to show their influences and instead just seem like a lame pastiche rather than an innovative new act. It’s simply because the first impression is so bad. I know countless bands who will say of their band “I know the name is shitty but I think we’re pretty good” and that attitude is totally fucked. Why? Because again – it’s that first impression that matters and having a dumb name is not going to encourage people to check you out and find out that your band is in fact good. I don’t understand why this is so hard to grasp, but it’s a massive issue within independent music. Not all the good names are taken, you’re just not creative enough.

Now we break on to the contentious topic of logos. This seems to be the really hard one for a lot of people since they think that they can draw their own logo or that they shouldn’t have to pay someone to make a logo for a band who is going to be ‘so huge bro!’. I know that a lot of bands argue a lot over the contents of their logo and seem to have a hard time figuring out how to present themselves. Now I get it, your logo is one of the most important aspects of marketing your band and you don’t just want an obscure windows font as your logo text. You need to find something that makes sense for you and which is simultaneously legible and iconic. This brings up a lot of artistic questions and dealing with this can drive bands insane. So let’s talk about what really defines some of the great logos out there for a minute.

I think the key to logos is making sure that the logo simultaneously is legible and also suggests a key detail about the band. For example my clients in Echo Sparks have a great logo, it’s the band name in a handwritten looking font over top of a heart made out of barbed wire, hinting at both the Americana inspired delicacy of the groups sound with their darker lyrics. For a bigger band, look at a group like Metallica. Their logo is full of jagged edges but also remains impressively sleek. If that isn’t a metaphor for the bands sound then I don’t know what is! Obviously it’s not always easy to translate your bands sound into visual concepts but I find that if you take some of the broad strokes and then try and brainstorm what visuals fit the key adjectives describing your band then you are going to find yourself getting surprisingly close to an effective solution going forward. I know this isn’t easy, but having a good, legible and not corny logo is only going to help people take your band seriously.

I guess the thing that really fucks with me with band names and logos is that there are so many groups out there who are great at presenting themselves in every other way. That is to say that they have good album art, great social media presence and professional band shots, but their band name is too complicated and they fail to have a logo that looks good at all. So many bands have this huge blind spot holding them back time and time again. I think this is probably because usually what a band decides on first is their name and logo. It has a sentimental value and a band name change is never a good choice. So instead you need to figure out early on what makes sense so that the next steps can be as profitable as possible.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

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The Danger Of Sycophants

Sycophantic fans are the single biggest danger that your band is going to ever face. Now I know that to some of you-that may feel obvious, your singer practically needs a babysitter for Christs sake! But that’s not exactly it. It’s something that impacts every member of a band and which is the reason for 95% of the shitty second records that come after a great first record. The other 5% is because people are lazy fucks and can’t be trusted with everything and should probably just be shot for being bad. Bitter hatred for the human race aside the point is that your fans are the people who are going to ruin your band and bring you into being a useless husk of your former self, shooting yourself in the foot time and time again so that you can never have the success that you truly want and deserve. So how do you do that? Simply by sucking it up and accepting that there is a very real danger to the beast that is the sycophant.

Here’s the fundamental issue you have to deal with. The thing that is going to fuck you into oblivion and which is quite frankly super mean to superfans. Most superfans aren’t super educated. Look, if someone likes your band more than any other band in the world this essentially means one of two songs. The first is fairly obvious, that your band is the best of its kind and thus for very specific reasons can turn this person into a willing and extremely profitable sycophant. The other is that you’re not the best band of your kind and there is no real personal connection the fan has with this band and they just don’t know about the better bands doing what you are doing. So what does this mean about your average sycophant? Well quite frankly it means that they don’t have great taste and also that they value having a personal connection with some band.

Now that’s totally fine, some people don’t want their music to define their lives, but realize that just by being the biggest band in a subgenre doesn’t mean you’re the best and most importantly you should not let yourself get lazy. That’s where things become seriously problematic. You wrote your first record of post blackened folk rock for your band and people in your genre fall in love with you. You can’t just use that as an excuse to shit out your next record, unless somehow you are that good, and again odds are you are not. There are a ton of people out there who take the fact that they have fans as a given and not as a weird blessing, or curse in disguise. Sycophants aren’t really the fans that you want to be impressing, those people have already been won over, you need to be looking at figuring out how to impress industry people, the folks who hear it all and know everyone.

Here’s the thing with hardcore sycophants, especially in independent music, they are just thrilled to meet the band and if the band is nice to them they will never say a bad thing about the band. There is a whole subcategory of fan who are just thrilled to meet the band, eagerly wait at the merch table for the band to come out and sign up for meet and greets. That’s really cool, I totally get it and want to empower those people. This is what they are passionate about and we can profit off of it, so why not? Everyone is a winner. Regular readers know I’m a huge advocate for the superfan. But you need to look at what the average demographic for that sort of person is and the odds that you are really the best out there. The point being, they aren’t usually the most educated people in the industry, and while it’s certainly good to have them on your side because they make money realize that beyond their financial sway their opinion means nothing if you can’t go out and impress people who are actually movers and shakers with your music.

You can fool a lot of entry level fans with fake drums and digitally produced guitars for your rock band, but label people will know that you didn’t put a ton of work into your record and will call you out on it. And if you don’t have a legitimate excuse or way to balance that out then it’s only going to hurt you in the long run. Remember that these people are long in the tooth and see through a lot of your tricks. They have seen countless bands rise and fall and don’t have the time to spend on a band who can maybe do something cool one day if they get their shit together. The opinions of your sycophantic fans doesn’t really matter if you are not creating a truly good product. There’s a lot of bands that have sycophants but also a lot of good reasons to hate them and are thus going nowhere, IE: almost ever y band who is big on the local level. However there are some bands, a select few who have truly good songwriting and spend the time to create good records such that even if the music isn’t everyone’s thing they still demand respect.

At the end of the day the opinions of your fans while helpful is not going to be as helpful as the opinions for the people who are trying to make a buck off of you and hopefully also make you a buck. You need to look at the creative process from all angles and realize which angles are actually generating money and which are just there to spend money on bands. Taking fans for granted will only kill you but so will thinking that their high opinions of you are correct. Instead you need to separate yourself from the art and realize that this whole thing is really fucking hard and anyone telling you otherwise is bullshitting you. Suck it up and create something worth listening to or go shoot yourself, what do I care.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

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You Are The Reason For Your Bands Failure

So here’s something to mull over. The single greatest reason that your band is not successful is you. Now this works on a couple different levels and is going to drive you insane when I break these things down. These are points I go over all the time but I’ve had a frustrating week and I think they are especially relevant now. See, the thing that made me come to this article is simple, a few weeks ago I put together a thrash metal tour on the West Coast for October. Things were coming together pretty nicely, everything seemed roughly sorted, I wasn’t too worried. Then one of the bands dropped off. Now that’s fair enough, we had most of a DIY tour set out, everyone seemed pretty pleased about it, I personally wasn’t too concerned with how things were going to shake out. Then I tried reaching out to bands. This isn’t a situation I’ve ever had before, but it seemed like a good deal. Not so much. I’ve had a stupid amount of trouble with this, and so we enter one of the great struggles of our age, bands don’t do things.

At the risk of sounding like an angry old Republican bands don’t want to work. They want to tour, but only if they get a bunch of money out of it and don’t have to do any work and have a driver. They want to put out an album but not if it’s going to require them to spend a year getting really well honed songs and spending two weeks and a lot of money in the studio in order to get a product that people are going to care about. They want to open for big bands but not if they have to sell tickets to their friends for a band that their friends probably want to go see. They want to get reviews of their music but they don’t want to bust their asses to make personal connections nor do they want to get jobs so that they can pay for actual music PR. These are all things bands don’t want to do. Things that pretty much no one else can do for them and which will are only going to compound the countless issues that this industry makes us run into.

On top of that, not only do bands not want to work, but they also don’t want to reply to your messages offering them work. This is one I seriously don’t understand. How can you complain about not having opportunities when people send you emails about opportunities and you just don’t take them? I get that you have a shitty job and your manager is an asshole and that’s fine, but do you want to go somewhere with your music or not? I get that it’s hard and requires you to figure out a unique living situation, but that’s just part of the perpetual challenge of this thing. Beyond that, yes you do need to keep in touch with people. I know it’s hard to write a two sentence email every day or two but guess what? That literally has a major impact on other peoples lives. When you’re in a band people are counting on you, and if you can’t deal with that go fuck yourself, no one wants to deal with your prima donna bullshit. I don’t care about your excuses, by being inaccessible you’re actively hurting other people. Think about that next time you wonder why your band isn’t getting anywhere.

Again, even when things are totally set up for most bands and they just need to step in they will find a reason to complain. They will go out and think “People should like my band because we work hard at writing songs” well guess what fucko. First and foremost, writing songs isn’t the hard part. Furthermore, if you think that’s why people don’t like your band then you’re clearly the type of person who thinks that you can write a record in a few days and your music is just not good. Sure it’s been done, and even done well, but two things. First and foremost, selection bias, your record is not going to be the next Paranoid and if you think it is fuck you. Second, the people who write those records in two days are geniuses. You are probably not a genius. That doesn’t mean you can’t write the next generation defining song, it just means that you need to *gasp* spend time working on your songs and developing your craft!

The point being, there are opportunities out there, it just requires you to be a little bit proactive, get a fraction organized, maybe apply some of the shit you learned in high school and use it to y’know, build a future for yourself. There is a potent and loving community out there for you to get involved in. I’ve written extensively in the past about main dudes and how compassion is the way to go, and it is, but you also need to realize when to draw the line. Figuring out these steps day by day is a process and one that requires you to sit down and grind. If you’re artistically inclined you probably are dealing with the fun of depression, anxiety and all the other twisted emotions that make so many people turn to the arts, but you need to use that to your advantage, I know you can do it, it’s a mountain to climb, but one that is always surmountable.

At the end of the day, this is an industry like any other and one where you need to work your ass off to succeed. I know that you don’t see it, but that’s a key part of the fantasy that bands are trying to sell. Remember this too, just because you think that playing shows and writing songs is hard doesn’t mean that you’re doing all of the other stuff and when you start to do all of the other stuff is when you realize that this is a difficult industry to be in. Yet I would argue anyone who really wanted something had to fucking work for it. You make your own success, yeah we all have different starting points we have to deal with, but even bands like One Direction who had everything handed to them had to work, and so do you.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

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Quantities, Physical Formats and Your Band

So something I think that a lot of bands struggle with is understanding how much product to print. This is a really hard thing to get right, especially when you consider that some groups only get 200 copies printed and sell out within a week and other bands print 300 and barely sell 50, actually losing money on their CD release. So think about this struggle and how it fits into your band. While CD’s are still a great way for a touring band to make money, because you can easily sell them at a 1000% markup. That being said – it’s still a startup investment and one that can loose you a fair bit of money if you mess it up. Beyond that it can leave you with the humiliation of a ton of spare product you can’t move. Of course, CD’s aren’t the only physical way to listen to music, you of course have cassettes, vinyls and (I guess?) eight track players and the problem outlined above applies to every single physical format you might want to release your music on.

Before we delve into specific numbers I want to take a minute to look at the three main formats of release. Now, I know that they are uncool, but CD’s are still the most popular form of physical media for music. So you generally want to be printing those first and in greater quantity than anything else. This can vary if your band is one of those vinyl specific groups, but that’s fairly rare, and if you are one of those bands you would know because your fans would ask for vinyl. Speaking of which, on the indie level it’s probably wisest to limit your vinyl to 100-200 copies. You can always get more, after all the real expense is getting the plates done. After that you’re going to be better off. Vinyl sales may be growing but they are still a specialty item and most people don’t have record players. Meanwhile, cassettes are much more of a collectors item, so realize that printing more than 50 for most bands stops them from being special which removes the value.

Furthermore I think that it’s important to have the right mindset when selling merchandise. When it comes down to it 99% of your fans are going to consume music via Spotify, Soundcloud or Bandcamp, they aren’t going to slap your CD into their car. In fact the odds are that their car doesn’t even have a CD player at this point. So what do you think that means about their motives for buying music in a physical format? It means they are either buying for the concept of supporting a band, which is fair enough, or they are buying because the item is collectible or in some way going to be special in their collection. No one really wants another CD, CD collections aren’t cool Vinyl and cassette collections are though. Realize this and then try and use that to inform your decision. At the same time realize that a small minority of fans are collectors. The vast majority of people who just want to support your band by buying the music are going to want a CD, remember, it’s the memento that counts. That’s a huge part of why I make all my bands sign the CD before buying. It adds to the value.

So now that we have looked at the place of the individual formats in the world of independent music and how to best take advantage of them lets talk numbers. Generally speaking you don’t want to have to restock on CD’s if you don’t have to, simply because the markup tends to be so high and price breaks pay off dividends. Generally speaking when selling CD’s I look at the preorder and triple it. This usually means that I have enough CD’s for the preorder and release party and then a decent handful of smaller gigs along the way. By this point you’ve more than paid for your initial investment. That being said, if you know that your band is going to be gigging a lot and moving a fair amount of product then it’s better to buy a little too much than to not buy enough. Don’t overdo it, like never buy more than a thousand, but up until that point, if you’re a band playing a hundred shows a year then it might be worth to just say ‘fuck it’ and really go out and buy more than you think you need.

Rather similar logic applies to cassettes and vinyl. Now while yes you should be more ordering a bit more conservatively and relative to what you actually think will sell it’s often better to err on the side of caution, especially with vinyl since production time is so long. At the same time I think it’s important to realize the collectible nature of these products. It means that it’s best when every edition is a little different from the last and each edition gets its own little add ons. This can take the form of unique stickers, new art or something else entirely, it’s entirely up to you. This not only encourages fans to buy now, but it also gets people to spend more money so that they can buy every version of a product. The only thing you need to keep track of is how much of each product you have left, running out is always a problem and you need to make sure that you’ve got enough so you don’t need to be going crazy with it on tour.

Now this is never an easy task and it’s one that this article can only make so much easier. Every band has people who don’t want to spend any money on product and other members who want to spend a million dollars on CD’s that they will never sell. It’s up to you to figure out what a realistic sales goal is and if people are going to actually buy your record. Remember, no matter what you print, if the music is bad then people aren’t going to buy in. As much as this might be important having a good and well marketed product is even moreso. So yes this is a perpetual struggle, but be aware that by taking careful notes of sales and not getting in over your head you are going to find a actionable and sustainable path to the future.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

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How To Book Shows Without Looking Like An Asshole

So something that a lot of bands seem to struggle with is booking tours without making fools of themselves by posting all over social media. This is not the way to go, it means that people don’t take you seriously and that you’re not building yourself up towards success. Instead it just makes you look like a pretender relying on the charitability of your friends and friends of friends in order to get onto shows that they have no business being on. By the same token it reminds promoters and fans that you really aren’t at a point where you should be touring. In other words, you’re fucking yourself for the long run and fucking yourself hard. No one wants to do that, but it’s the grim reality that we have turned ourselves in for. So how do you book tours without going to Facebook a month out and asking about “If anyone can fill these holes” and “Guarantees are the ideal!” so that people think you’re a legit band and not a joke.

First and foremost it’s key to be a part of your goddamn scene. If you’re not a part of the scene then how are you going to find people who want to help? Realize that these networks of people who can help put on shows are rather closely guarded. The simple fact of the matter is that promoters are often overwhelmed with requests from people to make shit happen and that just makes their lives more complicated than they need to be. So you need to look at it from that perspective. Now if promoters also want to focus on booking their friends then suddenly you’re looking at a serious conflict of interests because their friends don’t want to alienate promoters by giving them a million shitty shows. Rather they want the promoters to still like them. The point being – this is part of why people don’t post to those Facebook threads. They would rather have someone privately contact them so that they can put it together if they deem it fit.

This ties into something else – private messenger apps are really the way to go. Most people don’t like talking shop in a public setting, especially in the rather insular world of independent music. Yeah there’s no money and everything is shitty but the fans don’t mean to know that, the girls don’t need to know that. I know that’s probably sexist but you get what I’m trying to say. You want to be able to grow your brand, constantly posting on Facebook asking for shows you can ‘hop on’ isn’t growing a brand but rather just throwing everyone in the scene under the bus. If you can reach out to people who you think might have a hookup quietly and respectfully then they are going to be much more respectful of your desire to put together a badass tour. You just have to make sure that you’re hitting up the right people and not wasting everyones time.

I have a spreadsheet of my music contacts around the country. Now not all of them are promoters but all of them have people and those people are able to help me more over the long term. This is a key issue that we all have to confront. You need to regionally reach out to people. Maybe your guy in Detroit can hook you up with folks in Fort Wayne and Cleveland too because the odds are his bands play around there all the time. There is no shame in breaking out a map and then hitting people up with the goal of trying to find a routing that makes the most sense for you and which will hopefully generate you a little bit of profit. If you look at these regions and constantly act as a positive force, engaging in online groups within the scene, having real friendships with other people and grinding it out the proper way then you are going to start finding the sort of long term success that you have for so long craved and fought for.

As a final note, we have this whole illusion of ‘supporting the touring band’ but as many promoters have learned, the touring band often sucks! This is a huge part of why people are so reticent to take on tours. Yeah it’s a lot of work and it’s stressful and annoying, but beyond that spending hours promoting a show only to lose seventy bucks isn’t a good or sustainable thing. Maybe your band doesn’t lose people money but so many bands have lost so many promoters money that the general attitude is very leery eyed. Toss in the fact that a lot of bands act like entitled grumpy assholes and you start to realize that this entire scene is struggling under the weight of a broken ethos that very few of us will ever be able to understand simply because most people are smart enough to not lose a bunch of money every few weeks on trying to bring in a band literally only they care about. Think about it this way, if you have to humiliate yourself with a Facebook post begging for shows… maybe you shouldn’t be playing shows.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to who you know and the realization that the Facebook hail mary post rarely ever works and the people who can help you are probably people who you knew could help you in the first place but who you were too lazy to reach out too, further alienating them. So don’t be a dick, show that you have at least a fragment of initiative and then try and turn that into something real you can grow for the future. I know a lot of these articles boil down to the same points, but guess what? There’s a reason for that – because the deeper that you entrench yourself with your peers than the quicker you find success.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

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Spotting Fake Record Labels

So one thing that I’ve seen happen to tons of bands that I work with is differentiating between real and bogus record deals. Every day dozens, if not hundreds of bands think they’ve finally made the big time and end up signing a record deal that hurts their reputations, makes them lose money and generally leaves them worse off than when they started. The worst part is that frequently the record labels ripping them off don’t realize what they are doing wrong, which only serves to compound the frustration. So I think it’s important to look at what the signs are for bogus record deals, what legitimate record labels have, and what these scam record labels think they are actually doing as well as why people get involved in this in the first place. I say this as someone who’s seen both sides of the coin. I worked for a bogus label for a while, and now I work for a few real ones, the difference is astounding and it taught me a lot about the nature of the music industry.

So first and foremost you need to be looking at the reviews of record labels and who else they have put out. If the label is at all established then you are probably going to find at least some consumer and artist feedback on the label. This should be the first way which you go out in order to determine if a label is the real deal or not. If you’re not seeing a lot of feedback and not seeing a lot of releases from established bands that frequently suggests that the label is a scam. Now a lot of this ends up happening because artists ignore the most important part of being an independent musician starting out, they don’t know their scene, so they don’t have the ability to differentiate which labels are legitimate and signing bands that people care about. That being said, things can go the other way too, you can sign to a shitty label because it has all your friends bands and then realize you’re all getting screwed over. If you’re in doubt go to scene elders, those types of people love to help.

Furthermore with bogus labels you need to be wary if they ask for money up front. There’s a lot of labels who are not afraid to take the money and run. Or who expect you to front a ton of costs. Now some of that is within reason, sometimes labels do that because they are essentially a glorified distribution company, they perform label services, they help you with marketing, they get your record out there, they have their own PR people and they need to be paid, and that’s fine. However those labels need to be upfront about this, and if you are going to sign to one of them then you need to make sure that they have a good roster and aren’t just doing this to get your money. If they are chasing dollars then they clearly don’t have the big picture in mind. They just take your money, run your product through what boils down to a system and then put it out to minimal acclaim. While labels probably won’t share sales numbers with you they definitely will work with you to prove they are legitimate, it’s up to you to make sure that everything adds up.

I think the final thing to be aware of with the legitimacy of labels is how communicative they are. Some labels will take your product and then disappear on you. They won’t give you royalty statements, they might not even give you a signed contract from their end. They will just put out your record, send you some copies and never speak to you again. This of course becomes a huge issue when you are trying to restock on CD’s and they have exclusive rights to produce your product and you can’t afford a lawsuit. Furthermore, when they are asking for money up front, if they aren’t super communicative then it means they are probably just going to disappear with your cash. You want a label that you can have something of a friendly and professional relationship with. If you don’t have this relationship then how are you going to build up to a better label or take advantage of your labels resources? That’s right – you simply can’t.

Now I also believe that a lot of these labels don’t view themselves as bad guys. While some labels I think are definitely aware that they are just a factory or have no problem disappearing with other peoples money I think that a lot of the scam labels just don’t know any better. They think they have a good distribution deal and that they have connections and when they tell their bands this they genuinely believe it. This is just because they don’t have the context to understand what it really takes to succeed in this industry and it leads to a very negative and weird environment. You have a label asking you for money for a task they can’t properly complete and this only holds you back and twists your band into oblivion. Simply put, if you set yourself up with an ignorant and incompetent group of people then of course you will be hurt. However it’s very rare that ignorant and incompetent people know that they are such, and that’s where things get hairy.

The music industry is a famously sketchy place and it can be hard to tell who is on the up and up, especially since the most successful people often have to resort to some sketchier methods just to get the job done. We are constantly working together to push for a better future, but that’s not always a future that’s easy to deal with. When you don’t educate yourself and buy into the honey tongued lies of so many of these industry scammers you are hurting not just yourself but the industry as a whole. The more that slumlords see these methods work then the more they are going to gout and do them. We need to team up and make sure that people who want to rip off bands have no place and that by paying careful attention to the signs we build towards better and bolder labels.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

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Dealing With Bad Press

Dealing with bad reviews is always a struggle. No one wants to have to come to terms with a bad review and how it reflects upon their band. However a lot of bands react to a bad review in the worst possible way and this only leaves them open to more negativity. I think that realizing the appropriate reaction to a bad review is key if you want to maintain a web presence that isn’t viewed as little more than a bad joke. This is an issue I see even fairly major bands having a hard time with and we need to take the time to look at this in order to properly understand where it’s coming from and what the best responses are. It’s always a pain when someone insults a record you worked hard on, so how do you deal with that and turn it into something positive? There are ways, believe me, they just take a little maturity and tact, two things that unfortunately a lot of bands in the underground scene seem to be lacking.

First and foremost you see the bands who respond in a shitty way and are explicitly angry against not just the writer but the publication. This immediately locks you out from the publication. Any chance you could have had to maybe win them back over with a stronger release in the future is immediately shot down if you talk shit. I see this happen most frequently with bands on their first record. This is especially a problem because, what most bands don’t want to admit, is that your first record probably isn’t that good. It’s your first time doing this after all! Yet, because the bands aren’t used to receiving bad press they talk shit and shoot themselves in the foot. Instead of doing something positive with the press like accepting the criticism or just flat out ignoring it these bands have to whine to the whole world about how this writer ‘doesn’t understand their vision’. Well guess what, odds are that writer listens to a ton of music, so maybe it’s not their fault they aren’t digging it.

Furthermore, whining often causes an internet shitstorm. Everyone likes to make fun of an entitled band who are constantly complaining, don’t let that band be your band. No one ever respects someone more because they whine. They only think they are weak, and in the case of a band, unprofessional. That’s a pretty big burden to have to be facing, especially when you are just starting out. Hell, that’s a burden to face even down the line. Look at the way the internet flares up when established bands put out an objectively bad record and whines about the reviews. They inevitably get made fun of as a result, it happens all the time and the artist always is hurt. You don’t want anything to hurt your personal brand, and you need to find ways to move forward with it in order to make sure that you’re not just ‘that band who bitch a lot.’ Reputation is everything, and calling out publications is only going to hurt yours.

So what are some good and healthy ways to reply to the naysayers? Well first and foremost I would encourage looking at any negative reviews and trying to understand what the critic didn’t like. Odds are if a writer finds something in his music he specifically doesn’t like other people have that issue too and it’s up to you to ameliorate it. Like I said before, these people listen to a butt load of music and their ears are often pretty refined. You might as well trust the opinion they are giving you. The other thing to do, in most cases at least, is to just ignore the bad press. You read it, digest it and then move on. There is no reason to be obsessed with a piece of bad press or to let it get to you. Just try and understand and don’t share it around. If the writer was truly mean and you really think he didn’t get where you were coming from then maybe send him a polite message. There is no need to attack people, that only is going to hurt you in the long run.

A lot of bands who get their first bad review don’t understand because they’ve only gotten good press in the past. This is the part where I unveil an unfortunate industry secret: there is a systematic issue with PR that means that writers are incentivized to write positive reviews. It’s not because the PR companies are paying the writers, that’s largely a myth. Rather it’s the sense that if a writer writes a lot of negative reviews he’s going to stop getting material from a PR person, so if that PR person is working big bands the writer likes then he’s not going to trash talk smaller bands. This means that often times its only really established writers are going to go out and actually write a critical piece. Now I know that sounds really awful and biased but that’s the way the news goes. We need to accept that and move on. I know that this kind of pours salt into the wound of your bad review, but it’s just another important reality that is far too often ignored.

Long story short, bad reviews are just a part of life, even the greatest records get a few bad reviews here and there. Even the worst records get a few glowing ones. The world of music PR is an extremely tricky one and it’s something that is going to take a while for any band to figure out. Part of the issue is how particular it is to each subgenre and even individual band, so I can’t give any umbrella advice other than try to be mature about any feedback you get and embrace it for what it is. If you can’t accept that not everyone is going to like what you do all the time and that some of them might express that opinion on the internet then you might as well go and find a new hobby. Might I suggest underwater basket weaving?

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

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How To Follow Up

So I’ve discussed before in passing the importance of following up, but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten into the nitty gritty of it and how to really show people what you are doing and what you want without coming off as a rock star or a poser. There are a couple basic rules though that you can follow in order to make sure that people come through for you and that your relationship ends up on a positive note rather than finding yourself getting browbeaten into oblivion because everyone thinks that you’ve bought into a fantasy that can’t possibly come true. I want to help you figure out how to stay on peoples radar without being a dick and instead being the kind of person that other folks want to work with, and furthermore, how to establish this sort of relationship exclusively through email rather than any of that other stuff.

First and foremost is the struggle of persistence without being annoying. This is one that I think everyone struggles with because everyone has different expectations and in the context of chatting with someone over the internet it is really easy to be misunderstood and that’s only going to hurt you in the long run. Yet if you go out of your way to be painstakingly clear then people are going to think that you are some kind of super anal maniac. Sop you need to find a balance between being OCD and being friendly and approachable. I usually go for friendly and gentle reminders. A “Any word on that show my guy?” generally gets the job done. If they willfully ignore you then they are an asshole but if they step up and do the fucking job then you got what you needed. It’s helpful, I find, to use terms of familiarity too. Things like that serve to make people a little more eager to work with you because they imply that you are friends.

Moreover when following up you need to make sure that you are being realistic. Realize that a lot of people have a lot going on. If you were getting a couple of hundred emails a day you would be probably fairly hard to access too. So you need to look at that and appreciate it for what its worth when you try to move forward. Not only that, but this sense of realism means that you need to take the time to figure out what is reasonable to ask for and what isn’t. Countless bands hit me up and ask for thousand word features on their band… that simply isn’t going to happen. Other bands hit me up and think that I can get them signed to a major record label. This too is not going to happen. What I can do is maybe do a several hundred word article, or give you the tools and advice to get to that point. Likewise, when you are hitting up promoters don’t ask for a ton of money and be surprised when they ignore you, these people don’t have the breathing room to mess around.

Another key part of being realistic is being willing to reach out to anyone and everyone. People on the other end know that there are other folks doing what they do and they are going to be willing to shop around. Shopping around is what bands are supposed to do. If you don’t get the deal you want in one city, don’t just give up. Buckle down and try and find a different promoter to go through, maybe in a slightly different town. It’s fine to do things like that. It’s how you end up getting your name out there. You can’t just hit up a small string of people and then go home with your tail tucked between your legs. You need to stand up and look at the scene as a whole and then try and drive forward from there. Promoting your band is hard, if it was easy then everyone would be in a big band. You need to be able to grind away at it though and realize that it’s all part of working towards a greater and more productive vision.

Finally, it’s important when following up to somewhat incentivize the other person. I’m not saying you should offer them money or goods but you definitely should make it clear that you can rerturn the favor in some form or another. If you are part of a larger scene then you want to be able to take advantage of that and become someone who helps the other bands out. Remember, in independent music EVERYONE is in a band or works with bands they love who need advice. So if you can be the guy going out and hooking bands up with cool opportunities even before they help you out then you are going to go far. I’m not saying you should do a ton of stuff for free, but you need to find a balance. It’s sort of like marketing anything else in 2017, there needs to be a free tier to get people to buy in and then a paid tier where you bring home the bacon.

At the end of the day, this whole thing sucks and even if you do everything right some people are just going to be assholes and that’s the long and short of it. So you need to find the people who aren’t assholes and who want to work with you in order to craft something greater. I know it’s hard to find those people, but as I’ve discussed before they have this weird tendency to all know each other. If we all are destined to sacrifice our lives for rock and roll then we might as well do it as a group, right? There is a very real struggle as we move forward in this industry, but embracing it means that we can all profit. So be reasonable and friendly, try to stay realistic and maybe just maybe your follow up emails will work out.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

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