Silvia Bluejay

Anyone remember that lockdown meme doing the rounds in 2020? "Stay at home, just like you do when your friends' band is playing your local". Whenever I advertise our bands, I do it through their respective band pages, not via my own personal account, and rely on some of our followers sharing the post to their own friends to make an evening out for themselves. That works fine with the rock 'n' roll band, as jivers like to attend gigs by good, tight bands, especially if the venue has a decent dance floor. We really wouldn't expect our non-jiving friends to attend every single gig, although frontman Damo does have some really good friends who will come to see the band every time we're in their area, to enjoy the music and also to catch up with him. This band is also the only one of ours to play a handful of originals, which are well-received and popular on the dance floor because they are in the same style as the covers in the setlist. Similarly, with the new soul band we'll try and attract fans of the genre rather than family or friends. After all, how many times can even a friend or relative willing to help make the effort to attend a gig with music they're mostly indifferent to, to listen to more or less the same setlist every time? Our long-standing covers band chooses not to rely on friends either. I post our gigs on FB, and hope that our followers, who have known of our existence for 15 years, will attend and spread the word to their own friends if applicable. Sometimes it happens - other times it doesn't.

The same prompt on the very same post now, a few hours later, reads: "Boost this post to reach up to 2580 more people if you spend £42". So they're admitting their initial estimate was a bit wide off the mark. No reduction in the boost price, mind! Considering that there's no guarantee the privileged people who'd see the post would be on the same continent, let alone country, county or town as the gig, this is getting more and more ridiculous. 🤷‍♂️ Needless to say, my credit card is sitting tight in my handbag!

LOL, case in point: I've just posted a video on FB of our previous performance at a club we're playing again tonight. The automated FB blurb only I can see under the post reads: "Boost this post to reach up to 4571 more people if you spend £42." HAHAHA!!! Yeah, right.

From what I understand, Facebook advertising reach depends not just on how much you pay to boost any individual post, but also on what it gathered from your preferences in general. For instance, I'm seeing an awful lot of suggested posts* on my feed, whose only purpose is studying what I click on out of curiosity; once I've clicked, that topic will be stored by FB as one of my interests, and possibly used as one of the parameters influencing the demographic that will see my advert - regardless of what I set up when i prepare and pay for the advert. I've only ever got to the point of setting up an ad - for research purposes - never actually paid for one. I absolutely don't believe in anything that FB tells me, including its own estimates of reach etc., and £40 is a stupid amount of money to waste on something that's almost completely out of your control, no matter what FB wants you to believe. Our band strategy has always been - create a page, don't pay for followers, just allow it to grow organically, and post nice, well designed posters before every gig. Real followers will actually be vaguely interested in your stuff! Paid-for Likes won't. Make sure you put ALL relevant information in the poster or in the accompanying post - complete, correct address, entrance fee, parking or train/tube station nearby, good dance floor (relevant for our rock 'n' roll band), etc. Be part of as many FB groups relevant to your band as you can, post that same poster and info on there a few days before the gig. Pay for an account on Lemonrock or equivalent in your area. A whole one-year's subscription to Lemonrock is currently only a tiny bit more expensive than that £40 ad we are talking about. Have professionally printed, good-looking flyers available at ALL your gigs, with social links, a phone number and an email address. All the above, of course, implies starting this work long before the gig, so it wouldn't help if you're in a hurry to promote that particular show, but you can still do some of it if the actual date of your gig isn't too close. *Thanks to Firefox, Adblock and Ublock Origin I don't see any "proper" ads in my feed - no multinational companies flogging crap for Christmas/Easter/Mother's Day etc.

Bear in mind that a lot of those comments will come from AI bots, not real people.

😱😱😱

Well, should we be booked by this pub, we'll update you all on whether we're welcomed into the premises by an android or a real person...

We're driving back from Thwaites right now! Update to follow once we get back home to a proper keyboard.

We're gigging the whole day with the Dynamites on 27th, Paul! Aston Clinton Beer Festival in the afternoon, and The Golden Bell pub in Leighton Buzzard in the evening. Have a great one and hopefully we'll catch you another time. Are you doing Richmond riverside this year?

The unsupported section of the fingerboard is what is curving upwards. I think that's also the part that's slightly twisted, no the neck itself.

You're more likely to get a targeted answer from the PA systems forum - I'm moving this thread there. 👍

You will soon get monopod, mini-tripod and clamp GAS - it's just a matter of time!

I use neoprene camera lens pouches for my Zoom Q2n 4ks. The smallest size fits it perfectly, they are soft and reasonably shock-proof and cost only a few quid each (or at least rhey used to). Of course they offer no space for extra batteries or cables, but on the other hand they take up almost as little space as the device itself.

Let this post of mine be the last that mentions politics in this thread, please. I was born in a country that has imposed caps to most rents for decades and has very tenant-friendly laws. Result: dire shortage of properties to let. The only letting activity that people are happy with is AirBnB. Why should a landlord let out a property if they can barely pay the mortgage with the maximum rent they are allowed to ask for? While at the same time throwing out non-paying tenants is almost impossible because the law defends them as opposed to the landlord? I certainly won't keep my parents' property and let it out once they're gone - that would be madness. I'll sell it straight away. So I wouldn't blame the Tories or indeed any other party for what happens in this country. In places like London, regardless of politics, one of the problems appears to be the marketing of all new properties under construction to wealthy overseas buyers even before those properties are made available to (usually slightly less wealthy) locals. And then many of those properties are bought as an investment and left unoccupied. Another problem is the lack of affordable housing - developers of new builds appear to use a very flexible definition of "affordable" and, even when a percentage of the new properties is described as affordable, what it boils down to is that some of the new flats in the build are simply less outrageously expensive than others, but still far from affordable to the majority of those who need them. There is no easy solution.

This topic has come up before. My opinion is, ditch the GoPro, it's not optimised for recording gigs, the results are usually dreadful. Get several Q2n 4Ks, and place them all around the band and/or on them! Mix the audio from the different sources and the results will be good. Even better if you can invest in a wireless PA that can record either its stereo output or each band member's channel individually. Check the PA section if you're curious. Definitely have a look at these threads: