Promoting the Band with Facebook
Well, my band, Rockhouse, has finally tiptoed into the digital world with a Facebook page. We just started it this past week and will be adding to it if we can generate any local interest.
Right now, we have uploaded a mix demo collage of about 12 songs in an 11 minute promo demo. We also posted 10 complete songs. All these recordings came from a live gig we recently held in our hometown. I don't expect anyone to get excited about listening to a cover band. We play some great songs, but not as well as the original artists - that's the life of a cover band. But if anyone wants to check out what we sound like, here is a direct link that should get you to our BandPage: http://listn.to/Rockhouse
More importantly, I'm wondering if anyone else on the forum here is using Facebook to promote, or generate interest, in their band. If so, what have you found successful?
Some things we are thinking about to generate interest are....
- Posting song recordings of friends when they come up on stage and jam with us. For example, posting a song with their credit \"Rock N Roll feat. Matt E. on lead guitar at Backyard BBB 2011-01-22\" where Matt E. is a guest performer with the band. That might make him - and his friends - more apt to come to our BandPage and check out his song.
- Posting pictures of friends and family on the page, and thanking them for coming out. That might encourage them, and maybe their friends to come to another show.
- Using the \"Events\" feature to send out announcements of upcoming gigs. Right now, we only have 25 friends, but we hope to start building on that and maybe sending out \"Event\" announcements to our \"friends\" will drive up interest.
Those are just a few of the ideas we have tossed around. In reality, the band is doing fine, we gig 1-2 times a month most of the year, and that is the pace we want to stay at. None of us want to spend hours on any web prescence if there is not payback. I'd rather spend my time practicing new songs than uploading stuff to our Facebook page. And we have seen lots of local bands have a great web prescence, but the band itself falls apart. So we have been slow to jump on the social networking bandwagon. But maybe we were missing something.
If you guys have any comments, ideas, or suggestions, about our \"Rockhouse\" Bandpage or just the whole social networking concept for promoting a band in general, let's start a conversation. Best wishes.
Right now, we have uploaded a mix demo collage of about 12 songs in an 11 minute promo demo. We also posted 10 complete songs. All these recordings came from a live gig we recently held in our hometown. I don't expect anyone to get excited about listening to a cover band. We play some great songs, but not as well as the original artists - that's the life of a cover band. But if anyone wants to check out what we sound like, here is a direct link that should get you to our BandPage: http://listn.to/Rockhouse
More importantly, I'm wondering if anyone else on the forum here is using Facebook to promote, or generate interest, in their band. If so, what have you found successful?
Some things we are thinking about to generate interest are....
- Posting song recordings of friends when they come up on stage and jam with us. For example, posting a song with their credit \"Rock N Roll feat. Matt E. on lead guitar at Backyard BBB 2011-01-22\" where Matt E. is a guest performer with the band. That might make him - and his friends - more apt to come to our BandPage and check out his song.
- Posting pictures of friends and family on the page, and thanking them for coming out. That might encourage them, and maybe their friends to come to another show.
- Using the \"Events\" feature to send out announcements of upcoming gigs. Right now, we only have 25 friends, but we hope to start building on that and maybe sending out \"Event\" announcements to our \"friends\" will drive up interest.
Those are just a few of the ideas we have tossed around. In reality, the band is doing fine, we gig 1-2 times a month most of the year, and that is the pace we want to stay at. None of us want to spend hours on any web prescence if there is not payback. I'd rather spend my time practicing new songs than uploading stuff to our Facebook page. And we have seen lots of local bands have a great web prescence, but the band itself falls apart. So we have been slow to jump on the social networking bandwagon. But maybe we were missing something.
If you guys have any comments, ideas, or suggestions, about our \"Rockhouse\" Bandpage or just the whole social networking concept for promoting a band in general, let's start a conversation. Best wishes.
Comments
One big thing to keep in mind when deciding whether to begin a web-based band promotion is that music industry has changed a whole lot from what it was 30 years ago. What worked before is no longer a sustainable business model, and web networking is a big way in the modern music scene to make your mark. This goes for both cover bands and original bands.
A critical complementary element to this, is in-person networking. Getting to know other musicians and their bands, coming out to their gigs (especially big ones), returning favors (we'll book you in our city if you help us with a gig in yours), and other similar types of activities have to match with what you're doing online.
While I do little more than play guitar in our band, we do have a fairly strong web presence for my band Make Love & War (see how I just did that?) For being a local act, you need networking tools that can help you within your area (hometown, local metropolis, major suburban areas) but allows you to expand, from hooking up with bands in neighboring states to as far and long as worldwide visibility.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/makeloveandwar/324219752394
One nice thing about Facebook is that, if you already use it, and you begin a music page for your band, you can easily shoot a simple message to all existing Facebook friends (each band member to his/her own) to join the page, which will increase its equity. Facebook also lets you create \"Events\" (gigs) and invite your FB friends to them easily, then add photo albums, sound clips, videos, etc as you expand.
http://www.reverbnation.com/makeloveandwar
Another nice thing about Facebook is that it, as of recently, is integrated with Reverbnation. This site tracks a huge number of factors, such as impact based on people listening to recordings and watching videos, fans joining, Facebook users liking, people signing up for e-mail list, people clicking through when you send out an e-mail through the mailing list, and so forth - to give you a ranking within your geographic area.
We chose a tricky area (Laurel MD, halfway between Baltimore and Washington, DC) so that our ranking reflects both of those regions. We're stronger in Baltimore, usually ranked between 3rd and 4th. The ReverbNation player integrates into Facebook as the MyBand tab, which each member can display as part of his/her Facebook page.
ReverbNation also sends you weekly updates, and provides detailed statistics on your weekly/monthly advances in the standings. Note that the Make Love & War home page redirects to ReverbNation - for a good reason.
http://www.twitter.com/makeloveandwar
I never figured out how to use Twitter, but a lot of people like it because it allows them to receive a brief update on a show coming up tonight. If you have nothing to do, and you get a Tweet saying, \"[my cover band] is playing Local Bar on 123 City Street in Anytown @ 9pm\" you might want to check it out.
One important thing is to advertise all these avenues, and cover most of them, even if just to reserve the name. I, for example, manage this one: http://www.soundclick.com/makeloveandwar although I rarely update it - I just check chart standings and move the songs around every once in a while. The reason to have it is that you can say, to a friend, or someone you just met, or on a radio interview: \"Hey, go to any social network 'forward slash make love and war' and you'll find us.\"
From there, the more sites (like this forum) have links to your stuff, the better off you are. From general-purpose search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) to specific music research applications (like ReverbNation), being connected to your fan base on the Internet is a valuable method of promotion.
One last shameless plug before I'm done: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/make-love-war/id384321721
One thing that comes to mind from the start, do you think there is a difference in the way you would promote a cover band like mine as opposed to an original such as yours? What I mean, for us as a cover band, we have been getting the gigs we need to keep moving forward without ever having had any web presence. We really don't expect people to come to our Facebook BandPage to check out our cover songs, or to listen to our audio tracks we upload. But I can see that for an original band that posting your original songs on your BandPage might be very valuable.
Right now, with our 11 minute demo collage, we were thinking mainly for breaking into new venues in the larger local area. For example, if approaching a new venue, we would say that you can find our BandPage at http://listn.to/Rockhouse and we have uploaded an 11 minute demo collage of cover songs we would play at your venue. We have also included full length songs in our tracklist, but we don't expect people to be flocking to hear our covers. We just don't.
Which is why we are thinking about uploading some of our performances when we have a guest musician come up on stage and either play or sing with us. That might be more interesting for others and get them, and their friends, looking at our schedule, friending us, and showing up to the gigs.
There are advantages to being a cover band. First of all, that's what the local venues want to hire around here. Original bands in this neck of the woods don't last very long. Also, since we don't play our own material, we encourage fellow local musicians to come up on stage with us and play/sing one of the cover songs on our setlist. No egos in my band and everyone of us has handed over our guitar, bass, or sticks for someone else to get a few minutes on stage. Although originality, or creativity are not a cover band's hallmark, our strength comes from being able to cover enough songs to make most local bar owners happy with our set lists.
I noticed that your band has all kinds of web presence. How much time do you guys devote to promoting and updating all those sites? One thing my band discussed at the start was that we did not want to spend too much time keeping our web presence updated. Unless, for some strange reason, our BandPage takes off and drives scores of people to our local gigs, we just don't see much payoff for all the effort to keep things constantly updated. Again, not to put us \"cover bands\" down, but I just am not personally convinced that anyone would want to follow a cover band that closely. If we update our schedule and send out events to our friends, that's about all we are hoping for at this time.
Well, I have your links tabbed on my browser and I'll be checking out your sites today (got the workday off!) for more ideas. None of us in the band are social networking butterflys, but we don't want to pass up something that might work out to the band's benefit and build up more of a following.
Open to any and all ideas about promoting a band via the social networking. Anybody else got some ideas that work for them?
Therein lies the difference between an original band and a cover band.
Having played with several cover bands (in fact, Make Love & War has about two hours worth of cover material, in case we ever do hit the venues that look for cover bands) I can tell this much: when you're playing somebody else's song, you don't need to sell the song. Presumably people already know Centerfold and Gimme all your Lovin (in fact, most people probably know all of the songs you have online right now).
So then, what you're selling is your performance of the song. I personally love playing cover songs, and love hearing songs I know being covered. I also enjoy the reaction of recognizing a song someone loves when the band starts playing it. You want to give your potential audience (or employer) a preview of what it will be like live. In that light, a video in addition to the live recordings would be great.
The reason I like Reverbnation is that it gives you a ranking, that you can then take to a manager and say, \"Hey, my band is regularly in Top 10 on Reverbnation.com\" and even if this person isn't familiar with the site, it's a concrete metric. And it takes everything into account, ranging from audio and video play to the number of Likes you have.
My previous cover band (56kay) used Reverbnation for online exposure management pretty effectively.
Facebook is a great start, simply because it's so popular. All you have to do is say, \"Hey we're Rockhouse, find us on Facebook!\" In the age of technology, half the audience can probably do it right there and then on their phone, while they're hyped up.
That's why we decided to go the BandPage concept on FaceBook.
Yeah, we don't want to spend too much time or effort on promoting our cover band, which is to say that none of us wants to be tied to a computer updating pages of material that nobody really cares about. We are a cover band, we have fun, and people who come out to our gigs have a good time. But it's not more than that. We hope that this BandPage on FaceBook will be something easy to maintain, not take up too much time, and encourage local people to come out and see us if they have time.
As to the importance of promoting cover versus original music, I think you are absolutely right there, too.
Our lead guitarist in the band is a solo artist/vocalist. He is trying to get out his original songs and make something of it. But it's not easy for original artists around here, and he is in our cover band, and one other, to pay his bills.
Our drummer is in another band and they do original music, but it's not going too well for them. The local venues want cover bands, and originality is not much encouraged - at least at the venues that actually pay musicians for playing.
I can fully understand the need for original artists to be out there selling themselves and their music full time. I'm just a weekend warrior gigging 1-2 times per month and that schedule works just fine for me. I enjoy playing some great music with the boys, we have some fun, and at the end of the night we get paid. The original artists tend to only get booking at local coffeehouse gatherings, they mostly play for tips, and are lucky if they have enough to pay for their meal. So hats off to you guys for being on Rock Band and your other successes.
It sounds like in your area, it is possible to make decent profits from being in a cover band. That's actually the case around here as well, and the payoff is comes much sooner, but there's also a profit ceiling for cover bands that for top-notch original bands is much higher.
One mistake my last cover band made, was the manager invested large amounts of time and money in equipment, promotion, branding (stickers, business cards, flyers) before there was a narrow focus on purpose and direction, and before there was even a finalized line-up. We were going back-and-forth about what songs (and even genres) to learn/play, which venues/events to book, what all instruments we need and who's going to play them, how and to whom to market our services, and so forth. The end result was slow progress, high turnover, dissatisfaction, financial losses, and fairly quick dissolution.
It sounds like the path you're taking is more sensible, and takes into account the band members' time budget and availability into account. That makes playing in a band a lot less like work and a lot more like having a good time, and bringing good times to others.
One thing my band has going for it right now is all us guys are in the same frame of mind as to time to dedicate to the group, the type of music we want to work on, and how many gigs we need to keep going (1-2 per month). When I hit the stage with the boys, it's more fun than work. I've been playing long enough to know that gigging is not all peaches and cream. There is alot of work in the practice, travel, setting up equipment, packing it back up, etc.... But the 4 hours on stage, with the right crowd, can be a great experience. Sometimes, if the crowd (or lack of) is not with you, then it can feel like work. But we have more good nights than bad and that keeps us all going.
None of us make a living off our cover band. In fact, I make more money before lunch on my day job then I make gigging all weekend. The same with our drummer. So for us, it's totally for the enjoyment aspect, ours and others.
I think it would be great to be in an environment where original bands are encouraged and supported. Neither is the case where I live. I agree that cover bands make money now, but it's limited when you consider the potential an original band that breaks our might earn. We all know, not many original bands ever break out. So, I'm happy to be playing in a cover band, playing some great songs, and learning how to play better every year.
The first band I was in did original songs. We lasted one gig. I have been in the same cover band (name changed, however), for over 4 years now. We have talked about doing original songs, but under a different name to keep that project completely separate from our cover band. But, it's mostly just talk and maybe a long term goal for us.
Appreciate your thoughts on the subject here and offering up your experience.
Been there, too. Last weekend we played to a small, but friendly, crowd of about 20 people. Outside the temp was 20 degrees below zero, so lots of people just hole up and hibernate through those cold spells here in Minnesota. It is usually more fun to play a packed house, with people out there dancing, but sometimes the smaller crowds are more appreciative of the music and you can still feel the love. That's what is was for us this last weekend, small crowd, but they had a good time.
Also, we pulled a handful of new songs and tried them out for the first time for the patrons there. Our new songs went off much better than I had hoped for. We had worked on them in practice, and we got to the point where we felt they needed to be played live to see if we could pull them off as a band. You get a feel for certain songs and when they mature enough to try on stage. Anyway, our new songs all came together on stage and the crowd liked it. It's great to put another 4 songs into our rotating set list.
Well, we hope that our FaceBook presence will encourage a few more people to show up to our gigs. We just need to learn how to use FaceBook to our benefit and I hope some other guys on the forum will jump in with suggestions too.
1. Create an Facebook event page some time in advance. Do this 1-2 weeks in advance, unless it's a bigger gig or you need a bigger draw, in which case start earlier.
1a. Not sure whether this would apply to you, but since our singer is a hot chick and also a model, we generally use a provocative picture of her for the event graphic.
2. List event details: location, cover, age restrictions, drink specials, other bands playing if any, special circumstances (band member's birthday for instance). Also provide a link to the band page.
3. Each band member marks him/herself as attending event, and invites his/her Facebook friends to attend. Personally, I'm selective about this, so I generally select people who are likely to attend (i.e. not my mother), and ones who are geographically close.
4. In the days preceding the event, each band member advertises, or \"shares\", the event on his/her Facebook wall. Important: all the other members Like the post, this way it gets displayed on more people's news feeds.
5. Stagger the posting. For example, if our bassist advertises today, I'll click Like on his post, and advertise tomorrow. And so forth.
Taus- the more you network for the band, the better it is going to be. Not as many going to Myspace these days and FB pretty much rules the roost if you will. FB can also host your band photos, so these days it's not as important to have your own website unless you are promoting merchandise sales. OTOH, I think its best to have as many avenues for people to source band information.
Although we have our scheduled gigs listed on FB, I'm wondering if we should also be putting in our \"blackout\" dates due to committments our bandmembers have with playing in other bands, our work schedule conflicts (two of us work rotating weekends at the hospital), etc.... We have more unavailable dates then free dates on our calendar, but we have not been posting our \"blackout\" dates. However, if venues look at our confirmed gig dates, they might think our \"unbooked\" weekends are free. That's just not the case.
Maybe we should have a booking availability section listed? That way prospective booking agent would see which days the band is advertising as available. Don't know the best way to work around this issue. I can see it coming up more and more if we only advertise our confirmed gig schedule on FaceBook. We put a telephone number for contacting us for bookings, but I had not expected to get offers via FB where others can read this stuff. And yes, the venue asked to book us for a date that was not on our calendar, but that is because we have one member off playing with another band that weekend. They obviously could not know this by looking at our current schedule on FB the way we have it listed. Any thoughts?
Unfortunately, due to a dentist appointment, your drummer put down that the band is unavailable that day. Bummer!
To me, a blackout schedule is something that's internal to the band, not publicized to the whole world.
That's what we have been doing, keeping as much internal information as close to the band as possible. I was not ready to get a soliciation via FaceBook, either. We really only wanted people to see our BandPage and call our posted booking contact number for gigs. So that was a surprise when we get a message on FB asking about bookings.
Thanks for the feedback.