What are you doing to promote?

[JoeBannon]

What methods do you use to promote your music or band? I've had great success with using vinyl (car wrap) on my SUV. Also, handing business cards offering 50% off CDs if they come to a show. I have other methods too for getting over 200K people to your website in one day. I'll share my methods if you tell me yours.

[mjr]

Hey, you might want to check out http://www.musicbizacademy.com.
They have some good articles & books on there on how to promote your music. CDBaby's sub-site, CDBaby.net/promotips is also a good read.

One thing I'd try as a start is to come up with a good signature with your name, URL, contact info, and a link to a sample MP3 or something like that, and use it whenever possible (message boards, email when appropriate, etc.).

One of my other ideas is to take one song, burn it as a single, and distribute it (along with web site, contact info, etc.) whereever possible.

Another (possibly cheaper) alternative is to print up promo shots, go to places where you think people may go who would listen to your particular genre, and ask if you can leave a few promotional photos there. Again, make sure you've got contact info on EVERYTHING.

[JoeBannon]

Originally Posted by mjr

Hey, you might want to check out http://www.musicbizacademy.com. They have some good articles & books on there on how to promote your music. CDBaby's sub-site, CDBaby.net/promotips is also a good read.

One thing I'd try as a start is to come up with a good signature with your name, URL, contact info, and a link to a sample MP3 or something like that, and use it whenever possible (message boards, email when appropriate, etc.).

One of my other ideas is to take one song, burn it as a single, and distribute it (along with web site, contact info, etc.) whereever possible.

Another (possibly cheaper) alternative is to print up promo shots, go to places where you think people may go who would listen to your particular genre, and ask if you can leave a few promotional photos there. Again, make sure you've got contact info on EVERYTHING.

CD Baby hasn't sold one of my CDs. They base all their sales on referrals from bands. It's nice to see they get a commission for work done by bands.

I've had great success doing my own promotion and your last suggestion has really worked for me in the past. I have thousands of posters, and granted I may not use them all, I do keep them in my car and when I'm out and about, I'll ask places if I can put it up. Places I know will get a lot of potential fans, I'll pay to get my poster up.... and it pays off.

[Yippee]

Lots of tips on promoting your music here -
Music Promotion Online and Offline

Hope that helps!

[JoeBannon]

Originally Posted by Yippee

Lots of tips on promoting your music here -
Music Promotion Online and Offline

Hope that helps!

BUT I want to know what YOU are doing.

[songwritten]

I've spent NUMEROUS hours reading all types of music promotion ideas for atleast 3 years. Best thing still is playing live. No better promotion than playing. If a person is good they're in, if they're not...practice the music more.

Another thing that works well is burning 3 song sampler cds and giving them to people along with a flyer when you're promoting a show. Therefore, a person doesn't HAVE to go on the internet to hear your music. (A lot of times people don't care and won't listen). If they have the cd, they will ALMOST always atleast give it a spin. Once again, if you have the goods.....

[Bloodsoaked]

I think it is really easy to promote your music/band or whatever. You just need to know your product and your audience. I ran a Death Metal Promotion web stie and then a Death Metal record label for a few years and promotion was easy. I took out small ads in zines, magazines, posted in every metal forum I could find on the web, traded links and got a good mailing list together. You also need to be very, very , very persistant at it. You can not jsut put out one ad or put your link on a web stie. Keep promoting everyday. My music is and was extream so I would not waste time promoting on a pop, rap or country site, zine, forums and so on. Just keep driving your music down peoples throuts till they know your name.

Promotioning is a very fun part of it if you make it fun. Keep at it dude!!!


Peter

[JoeBannon]

Originally Posted by songwritten

No better promotion than playing.

I don't know if I would agree, but it is near the top.

[JoeBannon]

Originally Posted by Bloodsoaked

I think it is really easy to promote your music/band or whatever. You just need to know your product and your audience. I ran a Death Metal Promotion web stie and then a Death Metal record label for a few years and promotion was easy. I took out small ads in zines, magazines, posted in every metal forum I could find on the web, traded links and got a good mailing list together. You also need to be very, very , very persistant at it. You can not jsut put out one ad or put your link on a web stie. Keep promoting everyday. My music is and was extream so I would not waste time promoting on a pop, rap or country site, zine, forums and so on. Just keep driving your music down peoples throuts till they know your name. Promotioning is a very fun part of it if you make it fun. Keep at it dude!!!

I know my product and I know my audience. I've had great success, and as you say, it's really easy. I'm at that point where I'd like to know what other methods people are using and share some of mine.

[songwritten]

Joe, I don't know what you're looking for...whatever people do to promote has been posted in here many times. You may already be doing them, but if you are doing more, and doing more in a creative way then obviously we don't have much more to offer. I know how to get people to websites really well. Put in better meta-tags on every single page of a website. Put ALT tabs on every picture on the site. There are also ways to "steal" other band's mailing lists. I've never done it because even though there is "technically" wrong with this method, I like to feel like I worked my ass off to get names onto my mailig list. Start a website based around your style of music. Find bands that play the same music, feature them on your site. Put a nice add on every page with your band on it. Ask the bands u feature to send you their mailing list so that you can send them all the website. Or you can tell them to send out an email telling them about the site. People who go to the site will atleast see your link. If you have a good slogan or catch, they may try to go to your site.

Want better street promotion? Get a hot girl to talk to the guys, and a dude to talk to the girls. Have them both flirt but make sure business is being done.

MTV commercials for 30 seconds are DIRT CHEAP! Look into it.

I don't spend ALL DAY promoting.....I make music, and I play out. And no matter what anyone tells me ANYWHERE...playing out is STILL the best music promotion. I see catchy adds all the time for bands...then I listen to their music and its a HUGE HUGE HUGE disappointment. I've found very few interesting bands this year...Jealousy Curve, American Minor, The Trews(decent), and Peppers Ghost.

You can spend one month doing awesome TV adds and getting a couple more hits to a website. But you can go out and play music in live venues all over the country, make a few contacts and keep going around and making more and more fans as you go along. I for one would rather spend my life playing live shows and continually making fans, then spend one month getting 100 more fans because I put an add on MTV in the local region.

Just my 2 cents....take it for what it's worth

[JoeBannon]

It's not "looking". As I said in my first post, I'd just like to hear what methods people are using. Brainstorming is great too, but I'd like to hear what people are doing, how, etc. The point is so I can see what they did right, mistakes, lessons learned. IF I AM going to using any thing people post, I'd rather do something people have done.

[songwritten]

Originally Posted by JoeBannon

It's not "looking". As I said in my first post, I'd just like to hear what methods people are using. Brainstorming is great too, but I'd like to hear what people are doing, how, etc. The point is so I can see what they did right, mistakes, lessons learned. IF I AM going to using any thing people post, I'd rather do something people have done.

But you haven't contributed much at all. Some of us have put in the effort so you could "hear" what we're doing already and what we've had success with.

[JoeBannon]

Originally Posted by songwritten

But you haven't contributed much at all. Some of us have put in the effort so you could "hear" what we're doing already and what we've had success with.

Did you miss my first post? ... "I've had great success with using vinyl (car wrap) on my SUV. Also, handing business cards offering 50% off CDs if they come to a show." If you want to know more, just ask. I also mentioned I get 200K a day to my site.

As for effort, most of the replies have been suggestions, not what they've been doing. Two posts were to check out other sites.