Dave Vader Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 [quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1393546342' post='2381876'] a free pair of good shoes because they're made by a big company who likes to know how you use them. [/quote] I believe the new Nike Air "NSA" have trackers implanted in the soles to do just that. I have spent the last year realising that a proper website is no longer something I need, so I redirected my domain to go straight to my bandcamp page, which has links to the facebook pages etc. etc. Mostly because I am now working with a bunch of kids, and they just look for bands on FB or twitter or Soundcloud or Youtube, and are almost unaware that there is another web out there with actual sites on it. it has made my online life much simpler now I don't need to keep websites updated all the time. I appreciate that this is not true of all situations. Btw, if you do have a website with music on it, turn the &*(^ing autolaunch off, my boss might be in earshot, and he doesn't want to hear your band blast out of my office by mistake, and neither do I. I'll hit play if I want to hear it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Dyer Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 FB is essential I'd say. It's a great place for your fans to engage with you (they won't do it on your website), if you can get 200 - 300 likes on your FB page think what that says to someone looking to book you at their local pub/club/bar. It's a no-brainer! It's a great way to distribute ads for your gigs, most venues we deal with now download posters from our FB page to advertise the gig and obviously share the event on their page. All this from the comfort of your own living room, what's not to like? We are now in the process of selling t-shirts via FB. Twitter is also a good thing to get going, start following and Tweeting about all your fav gear, you never know, they might endorse you! Really, try it, I know a few lucky sods who have cut price gear and free pedals because they put some effort into it. I know money can be tight but if your can stretch your band fund to it, BandMix offer a dedicated service for musicians/bands that takes all the hassle out of building and organising a website. It provides a gig listing calendar, audio/video uploads, photo gallery, more templates than you can shake a stick at and an easy to use back end CP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neepheid Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 I reckon it's pretty much expected that a band will have a presence on Facebook these days. Expected by fans, expected by promoters, expected by venues. Also handy to have a secret group in FB to discuss band stuff, but that relies upon all band members being on FB in their own right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee Carter Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 I'm always available if you need website chats (or god forbid want one designed), tis what I do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bonzodog Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 FB also works the other way as well. We use it to contact venues who have a facebook page. We recently played a great support gig at the Roadhouse in Birmingham. I originally sent them a message on facebook, they replied the same day and the gig was booked. All without leaving my sofa. I now send countless introductory messages to venues through facebook with links to our page. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prosebass Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 (edited) Facebook is free Wordpress is free Soundcloud up to 90 minutes is free Twitter is free (if you like to pester people) The problem is coherent content, updating it constantly and making it visible. Looking after all this is time consuming and you need to be very strict about this. There is nothing worse than looking at a band page and seeing it has been 6 months since any content was added. If you go down the website route, I can thoroughly recommend Wordpress but ensure your site looks best on mobile devices. Although all this is good for getting bookings / existing fans, it can have the opposite effect as far as future fans are concerned. If you post all your music and videos on-line many will make a snap judgement on that content as to whether they want to see you live or not. We all know there is nothing better than seeing a band live and some web content I have seen posted would put me off seeing a band. Keep your videos and sound clips short and of good quality. Don't use the media as a library, use it as a showcase. Don't forget [url="https://www.skiddle.com/promotion/"]https://www.skiddle.com/promotion/[/url] which is also a good site for promotion and selling tickets for your gigs. Edited February 28, 2014 by Prosebass Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lozz196 Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 It can be very worthwhile, but I always remember what a mate of mine said, when Myspace was all the rage: "Strange how bands that have 97,000 online friends only get 6 people turn up to their gigs." Use on-line media etc as a way of communication, getting gigs etc, but use the actual gigs themselves as a way of making your fans and selling your product. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bonzodog Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 (edited) [quote name='Prosebass' timestamp='1393581391' post='2382108'] Facebook is free Wordpress is free Soundcloud up to 90 minutes is free Twitter is free (if you like to pester people) The problem is coherent content, updating it constantly and making it visible. Looking after all this is time consuming and you need to be very strict about this. There is nothing worse than looking at a band page and seeing it has been 6 months since any content was added. If you go down the website route, I can thoroughly recommend Wordpress but ensure your site looks best on mobile devices. Although all this is good for getting bookings / existing fans, it can have the opposite effect as far as future fans are concerned. If you post all your music and videos on-line many will make a snap judgement on that content as to whether they want to see you live or not. We all know there is nothing better than seeing a band live and some web content I have seen posted would put me off seeing a band. Keep your videos and sound clips short and of good quality. Don't use the media as a library, use it as a showcase. [/quote] Agree on the music side of this. Especially as bass players we know our sound comes off the worst when playing back through laptop of mobile speakers. Someone did a video of us at our last gig and when I played it back on my laptop the bass was none existent. I connected my laptop up to my surround sound and the bass came through really well, but like Posebass says, people will listen on a mobile and make a decision Edited February 28, 2014 by bonzodog Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FinnDave Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 A lot of the people who come to our gigs only do so because they hear about them through Facebook. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTUK Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 Well, you have to be reasonable and expect bass to be light on laptops and mobiles .... unless plugged into extentions. Anyone making a decision on the basis of that clearly doesn't have much of a clue and you could end up getting more problems off them that is worth the hassle. IME But there is no substitue for people checking you out live, it is just that online media is a short cut that some have/want to take. I think the 'tell it like it is' is the best way to avoid 'misunderstandings and we get more issues with 'agents' trying to keep our cost down, and presumably increase their end, and then turning up and thinking this is not a gig we wanted or should do. It is all comes down to knowing who you can trust...and that includes agents/promoters, P.A, engrs, lighters and venues themselves. So... FB is a tool to help but not to replace real legwork. You can BS to get the gig but you will get found out if your spiel is way off .. The number of status updates you get..'place was rammed, we smashed it' and the gig pics show the band rocking... but with a complete absence of punters in shot. We've all been to those gigs... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EBS_freak Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 Facebook works well for me... just taken a booking for 2016 through it infact. Contracts signed, done deal. It doesn't cost you anything, so why not? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KingBollock Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 Just listening to the Joe Rogan podcast and if you listen to the first 2 minutes of this one he talks about a website creation site called Squarespace. I haven't been to the site so I know nothing about it at all, but it might be worth a look. http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/kron-gracie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damonjames Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 Facebook only costs you the time and energy required to maintain your page, which realistically isn't a lot. In return you have access to everyone who has liked your page, in most cases now 24/7 if they have the app on their phone. You have the ability to inform them of new gigs, changes to gigs, new songs, or generally just talk rubbish to keep you in the minds of the punters. Small Price to pay really, you simply will struggle to get By without one now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
borisbrain Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 It can't hurt can it? And seems to have done us no harm... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikebass84 Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 We have a Facebook page, reverberation, sound cloud and a MySpace page (apparently). We are in the process of making a website. Our guitarist happens to do that for a living so it's free.. Apart from the hosting. Apart from the website ccosts it's free advertising so I don't see why bands don't have one. Not essential but uuseful Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dannybuoy Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 Quite often I'll look online to see what bands are playing in nearby pubs. More often than not the bands listed have almost zero online presence, and since I have no idea what they are like, I end up not going to see them. Having a simple FB page is not hard to set up, and may result in more people coming to your gigs. Simples. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scalpy Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 What should be on a band's FB page then? Tips and tricks please! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dannybuoy Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 (edited) Look at other band's pages to get ideas, but gig listings (as Facebook events so they show up in people's calendars and they can invite others), photos, audio links (Soundcloud / Bandcamp) and YouTube videos are pretty much a must. Edited March 2, 2014 by dannybuoy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTUK Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 The one thing that bugs me about FB is the 'likes' I will get requests to like a band I have no idea about..or just don't like anyway. The best you can do is end up trading likes... but that really devalues the whole thing anyway. In the old days...you worked cheap and often to get a following and it took a lot of time... Now, you approach a venue and they want to know if you have a following..understandably in these times, and people get loads of friends to come along and then they perform that favour less and less. so attendances may even go down for certains bands. In someways, it is better, to have a reasonable FB activity and build a proper following on the basis that people have seen you and actually like the band. FB is a banner page for us.... but I am not sure how much it actually gets people to our gigs.... I think most people would use our website to find out where we are playing. FB is a decent tool for that...... but only in those people want to come anyway. To have eleventy-eight million likes ( as Lozz says) and struggle to get people to gigs really defeats the object... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neepheid Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 (edited) I'm really trying to grow our likes naturally without any fake coercion or guilt tripping (my ironic sig aside ). It's slow going. Works the other way with me too - I went to a gig on Sat night. Really liked the last band, hadn't heard them before, so I liked their page, because I liked what I heard. Organic, innit? Edited March 3, 2014 by neepheid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Dyer Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 Before FB, Twitter, before Soundcloud, MySpace, before the internet explosion, how did we promote our gigs and our demos and songs? Pasting up homemade posters in the middle of the night in freezing temperatures, mocking up really bad leaflets on a photocopier, copying songs onto a cassette/CD and posting them via snail mail to venues and promoters... Yep, give me FB etc any day! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceChick Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 (edited) You mean you don't still post up posters, make leaflets and send songs to promoters?!? Blinking heck, I'm working to hard then as I'm doing all of the above (Although I nearly got thrown out of a Brit Floyd concert for putting a load of Ultimate Floyd Flyers around the bar! It did get us 20 more Facebook likes though! ) Edited March 3, 2014 by SpaceChick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
warwickhunt Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 I tried getting bookings at a couple of new venues for my covers band this weekend and despite being there in person with diary to hand, I was told to contact them through FB with the band FB page/account. I asked why FB and was told it was a very quick easy reference for the venue to see what sort of band we were and if we had any kind of following (pint glasses in hands for the venue)! As it happens we have a FB page but a bit sad that the number of band friends that 'like' a band page could dictate who gets a gig... no guarantee of quality, just of lots of friends clued up re. social media. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTUK Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 I've had gigs say we can join their bill if we can 'win' a likes competition..ie, we get to play if we get the most likes. I forget what other angle there was as I refused to get into a time-consuming war with student bands who will win this situation every day of the week and 58 times on a sunday.. it doesn't garauntee they can play and it doesn't mean they will bring peope who will buy drinks.. I actually think bands with a moderate number of likes are bands that have hard won them. I am pretty sure I could pay for 'likes' anyway...so it is hardly a worthwhile commodity or creditable currency. I was talking to a beer festival about the bill they are putting on and they said they were thinking about making one of the nights..( a typically quieter night ) a youngsters night. I questioned whether that night would have those people buying beer but since they have to pay a ticket price for the evening maybe they are less concerned. To me..a beer festival is all about deposable income..not student bands who haven't got a pot to pee in..?? But there you go........... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oggiesnr Posted March 3, 2014 Author Share Posted March 3, 2014 I have a FB page for my street trading activities on which I put when I'm going to be out and any stories that I collect along the way. I also sell a little through it as well as people who've seen me in York can't always get back if they need more names cutting. I also have an Etsy shop for which I have to pay, I actually sell more through FB than Etsy but it's getting to be expected that you'll have one. As far as likes are concerned, I don't solicit them from friends only when I'm out working is there a note on my price board inviting people to like me. Last time I looked, all bar 5 of the likes were from people who have seen me in action. FB does also allow a two way communication between you and your fans and I've had some great pictures and videos that have come through FB. Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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