In a band everyone has a job to do

No, I’m not talking about the bassist playing bass. Sure that is important, but your bass player needs to get up off his lazy butt and do a little more if he wants to play that bass for a job. There are many social networking tools I have featured in this blog. Way too many for one person to really use to there fullest extent. So if a band is really hungry they need to work together on this. You people are a small army and you need to look at this like a war. Don’t be the private that just sits back in the barracks eating up the rations. Have each band member can take on one or two social networking tasks. Then you can focus on it and push it to it’s limits. You can even make it an inner band competition. These social networks are ranked. Each user is ranked by either the site themselves or by an outside service that crawls the data. So which band member can climb the highest on the chart for the social networking site they took on. It will soon be very clear if the bassist is actually the laziest band member or if it’s that drummer.

Now most bands have that one band member that really knows their way around a computer and that band member always ends up being the one to take on all these promotional tools. Instead have that one band member be in charge of teaching all the other band members how to use these tools. This way the band as a whole can work together to take over the world. Each band member already has their specialty, so why not get the most out of that knowledge? These social networking tools like Twitter, Plurk, and FriendFeed are just waiting to be used to get your band’s music out to more people. So why not use them, abuse them, and suck them dry of their venture capitol while the money is still there. And of course make sure and add me to all of them. I tend to work really hard to give away cool stuff.

Sometimes I’m full of crap!

No, this isn’t some lame “You’ve been punked” garbage. I just want to make it clear that you should never take anyones advice on anything without question. This is the music industry we are talking about here people! If anything is “voodoo magic” it is the music industry. I have watched bands get millions on promotions spent on them and they still fail miserably. Remember the band RockStar Supernova? They had a prime time television show behind them on a major network. Other than the singer it was a super group. They still failed to embarrassing levels. Then you have some goofy song put out on some YouTube channel that gets millions of hits and kick starts a career for some no talent hack.

So is all this advice and trying to help bands in vain? Not at all. Just like with anything in life you have to take everything everyone is telling you with a huge grain of salt. If something sounds too good to be true ti probably is. Many bands think it would be great to win some Battle Of The Bands style reality show and be handed a major contract on a silver platter. However, stop and think for a second. How many bands have had long term careers after wining a reality show? Or even being on a reality show for that matter. Not one band that was on the Ozzfest Battle Of The Bands has amounted to anything. They all have either broke up or are unsigned. Once you do that kind of thing you loose all respect of the fans of that style. So all the “advice” your friends give you that this is a good idea is obviously wrong.

Now, most of my advice doesn’t sound like a get rich quick infomercial. At least I hope it doesn’t. My goal is to point out that making it will take a ton of work, a little money, a little luck, and some talent. I like to make it clear that this will not be easy. If it is easy you are doing it wrong! But just because what I am saying isn’t the easy path, doesn’t mean you should take everything I say as gospel either. If I say something in this blog that you are 100% sure is wrong, don’t listen to me. However, what I’d like even better is for you to tell me why you think I am full of crap in the comments. This way I can either clarify or learn from your knowledge. Then we can all figure out this magical voo doo that is the music industry.

So this is sort of a follow up to yesterdays post. This is also going to be one of the very few “band advice” articles I will post that have nothing to do with tech. Instead I am going to talk about one of the biggest mistakes I have ever seen a band make. This is a mistake I have seen over and over again with no sign of slowing down. In fact this mistake gets more and more popular as time goes on it seems. This mistake is following trends. Want to know the worst time to jump on a trend? When it seems that style is unstoppable and has totally taken control over heavy music. That is when that trend is about to die and become next years “scarlet letter”.

Remember a few years back when Ozzfest had their Battle Of The Bands “reality show”? Some may not know this, but there was a little controversy that plagued the contest. Many say that is the reason the contest was not made into an annual part of the tour. The representative of the wining band was Ozzfest alumni! The contest was promoted as something to find new talent. Why do I mention this? Well, this guy has become the perfect example of why you shouldn’t just jump from trend to trend. Marc Serrano’s first band Unloco was a Korn & Coal Chamber style Nu-Metal band. Unloco played Ozzfest in 2003. They were playing a style that (at the time) looked like it was so big that it was never going to go away. Of course we all know this style suffered a backlash of hatred and disrespect shortly after. So Marc Serrano started a Metalcore band. That was the new style everyone was jumping on. His new band A Dozen Furies broke up about 6 months after they finished their tour with Ozzfest. From second rate Mallcore to third rate Metalcore. Marc Serrano spent so much time jumping from trend to trend that he never was able to get even halfway decent at any of them. This is why he failed!

Young musicians want to be Rockstars. They want to be “cool”. Their impatience is what guarantees they are neither. In 2005, Time named author Malcolm Gladwell as one of its 100 most influential people. In his latest book “Outliers” he mentions the “10,000-Hour Rule” many times. Basically saying that anybody can become and expert at anything if they put 10,000 hours into mastering it. How do you become a master at playing a specific style if you keep jumping from trend to trend? To make sure you can get your ten thousand hours in, pick a style you are passionate about and stick with it. However, if you are passionate about a style that is becoming (or already is) the next big trend, pick something else. By the time you master any new trend it will be too late. Pick something that has not been the hot trend in at least a couple decades. Either that or do something totally new and different. The best way to be the king of something is to be the only one doing it. If you master it after investing ten thousand hours you will be able to give it that extra something that only the greats have. You might be able to give it a fresh new spin that no one ever thought of. The trick however is to put in the time. So go buy a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers”, stop being impatient, and above all stop being lazy! Now get to work.

Does your band have “Local Band” Disease? What’s the cure?

When you have been doing this as long as I have, you start to notice why bands stay local. It has less to do with talent and more to do with paranoia. Sure there are very talented bands that do everything right and still end up nobodies (Forced Entry), but this is very rare. Most of the time it seems to be a case of “Big fish in a little pond”. In their local town they are the heroes. The local bar has their new cd in a glass case like they it went multi-platinum. However, in the big bad scary world they are no more cool than the bum on the street begging for change. It’s a brave step to totally put your self out there. The world is a cruel harsh mistress and she will eat you up and spit you out (again, see Forced Entry). So what should you do? I say stop being such a wussy and grow a damn spine!

Many of these bands will dip just a toe in the water, not become world wide famous, and then give up and go back to becoming nothing more than local heroes. They say, “Well, we tried.” They really didn’t but they tell themselves that. You have to try everything and everything every chance you get or you might as well not try at all. You can’t keep playing the same gigs at the same local clubs and expect someone to walk in one day and hand you everything on a silver platter. Sure that happens to 2-3 bands a freakin’ decade, but the odds on that are worse than the state lottery. Walk outside in the sunshine this summer and see if you get hit by lightning. If not, then you don’t have that kind of luck. Do the old school “get in the van” style tours when all the band members save up a couple weeks vacation from their real jobs. However, promote the living hell out of it too.

A band will think nothing of it to spend thousands upon thousands on all their equipment, but when it comes to promoting the band they spend nothing at all. Maybe they might make up a few hundred flyers and pass them around if they happen to be going to another metal show a couple days before their own show. What about putting an ad on Blabbermouth for your little mini tour? What about assigning one band member to find out what the local music rags are for the town you will be playing. Then buy ads from them as well. Another band member should be in charge of finding out what the local college stations are and if they have a metal show. If so see if you can schedule a phone interview a week before hand. Don’t just email them links to mp3 files and call it good either. Send a full cd with a cover and everything. Toss in a XX-shirt as well. I know all this costs money, but is your music worth it? How much has your drummer invested in his set? How much are all your practice amps worth? Did your guitarist pay more than $100 for that Marshal amp? How much do you all spend on beer and Denny’s every month? You spend all this money on buying the right equipment to get the sound just right, but nothing on getting people to hear that sound? You blow the money you make on playing shows with piss beer and crap food.

So here is how a band can get the money needed to do all this stuff. What if instead of splitting the money you make from shows all the time you created a band fund. Then on top of that you all paid dues. Not a ton, but enough so that when you had a new cd you could actually promote it. If each band member put in $100 a month for two years, you would have enough for a very strong campaign with Blabbermouth, Brave Words, and all the websites in the FixionMedia ad network.

So be a brave little toaster and jump out of your small little pond. You can do it! Your strong enough, your good enough, and gosh darn it…people like you! Right?

So most of the articles I have posted here recently have been about giving advice to bands. That will probably continue to be what I write about the most. Today however I want to focus on metal bloggers. Many of the same rules apply. Use Twitter, Friend Feed, Google readers “shared” feeds, and by all means use a respectable blogging service. Sorry, but MySpace is not a blogging platform.

Now most bloggers use Digg to get traffic, but Digg users hate metal. So you are wasting your time with them. This is why I started HeavyAsHell.com You think I really care about Blabbermouth being on that site? Blabbermouth is great, but everyone already knows about them. They don’t know about you though. Your little unknown metal blog is far more important to HeavyAsHell.com than Blabbermouth. Nothing against Blabbermouth, but having their content linked does us no good really. We need to offer something Blabbermouth does not. This means you! My dream is to have HAH be the place where metal and hard rock bloggers all meet to support each other, post their links, vote for each others content, and let metal fans have one place where they can find the best content from unknown bloggers. A few hundred small bloggers are way more powerful in my opinion than one popular one.

So I created the tool with you in mind. So why are you not using it? I’m not asking you to here, I want to know what would make you more interested in using this tool to get more readers. Yes, you can self submit. I know that many of you are spread around the world and the contests may not be something you can be part of, but the traffic you gain from being part of HAH is something your blog will benefit from. This is like Digg, but for fans and independent journalists of the heavy music scene. Don’t forget to tell your favorite bands to set up a band profile on HAH as well.

So please reply in the comments if you have a good reason why you are not an active member of HAH. Otherwise CLICK HERE and get started!

CLICK HERE for the current version of this list

The hardest rocking music industry Twitter users & why you should follow them!

No, really. This list is outdated. CLICK HERE for the current version.

So when I set out to make this list my original goal was to rank the top 100 people in the heavy music industry. I wanted to list the people that were most likely to help a struggling metal or hard rock band. I recently saw some really lame list of several hundred so called rock bands and to be honest it pissed me off! The band’s on that list wouldn’t know rock if Lemmy from Motorhead kicked it up their backside with the end of his boot! Just like Digg is filed with nothing but a bunch of 3 piece suit band fanboys, Twitter was being made out to be the same thing. I knew there were some metal lovin’ geek out in Twitter land and they needed to be ranked. So I tried my best to find the top 100 of real rock and metal people on Twitter. The small problem was I couldn’t find 100. So for this list I rounded it down to the top 50, but in a few months I plan to try this again.

No, really. This list is outdated. CLICK HERE for the current version.

Please know that there are some that didn’t make the list because they hadn’t updated in about a year. Some very high profile metal industry companies that have left their Twitter accounts lay dead. This is also how I ranked this list. Does the person follow people back? Do they respond to fans or unsigned bands in a reasonable manner? Do they have the power to help unknown bands and will they? Don’t like it? Make your own list! Send me the link and I will send it out to everyone on my list.

No, really. This list is outdated. CLICK HERE for the current version.

If you have someone (including yourself) that should be on the list when I do make it the top 100, please send me the link on Twitter! I didn’t put myself on this list because you all probably already follow me. Plus I’m not sure I am as powerful as these people. Enjoy!

No, really. This list is outdated. CLICK HERE for the current version.

50. http://twitter.com/eveofdoom
Editor of Geeks of Doom, heavy metal-lovin’, headbanging, bass-playing, vegan chick

49. http://twitter.com/recsoftheflesh
An unknown band that is using technology to push themselves to the next level at all times.

48. http://twitter.com/plugola
PLUGOLA is a social music community & digital marketplace, for independent musicians AND their fans.

47. http://twitter.com/XTRMPromotions
He may not be too tech savvy, but he is learning and is the go to guy for “get in the van” tours for bands on a budget.

46. http://twitter.com/RocmanUSA
Video editor extraordinaire! May not be the cheapest, but he is one of the best.

45. http://twitter.com/Mick_Shrimpton
Claims to be the former drummer of Spinal Tap. Legit or not he has a very comedic way of looking at the music industry.

44. http://twitter.com/Stickam
Ever thought of streaming your concert live for the world to see? This contact can set you up with no charge at all!

43. http://twitter.com/unsect
The official band channel. They play Hard rock with electronic elements and ambient textures.

42. http://twitter.com/metalextremo
Online Metal fanzine from Brazil. Very passionate!

41. http://twitter.com/HeavyAsHell
Official Twitter account for the hardest rocking social news site on the net!

40. http://twitter.com/nicefishfilms
He does a podcast that combines music and tech as well as blogs about music industry news a lot.

39. http://twitter.com/FTWM
Feed the world with a song! Altruism is great PR.

38. http://twitter.com/gladhandermusic
Great band using tech to get the word out on their music.

37. http://twitter.com/decepticrat
Not sure he wants it out why he is important to metal, but he is very powerful in social news circles.

36. http://twitter.com/MusicGoat
Podcaster, blogger, and music fan…a great part of which is metal!

35. http://twitter.com/polymath22
His major passion is a site called Ning. He is a heavy music fan.

34. http://twitter.com/Mortalwind
Very well known in social news circles. If you can get him into your music he might use his power to help you.

33. http://twitter.com/DarkNemesis618
Programmer for both RockMyMonkey.com & HeavyAsHell.com

32. http://twitter.com/SilentJay74
One of the top users of Mixx.com and a total heavy music fan. Part of the social news podcast Social Blend. Total smartass!

31. http://twitter.com/cGt2099
Another key member of the Social Blend crew as well as a top user of Mixx.com

30. http://twitter.com/metalsucks
The number one metal loving Word Press blog.

29. http://twitter.com/aversionline
Webzine

28. http://twitter.com/robinjection
Robert Pasbani of Metal Injection fame.

27. http://twitter.com/Sleazegrinder
Sleaze Grinder webzine.

26. http://twitter.com/deathisgain713
Death Is Gain webzine

25. http://twitter.com/metaledgeblog
Although not the Metal Edge magazine in the U.S. that recently went under, this one still seems to be active. Not sure what country they are from though.

24. http://twitter.com/censoredmetal
A Metal Webzine/Blog

23. http://twitter.com/MetalMartyr
Webzine

22. http://twitter.com/apeshit
APESHIT is an extreme metal webzine.

21. http://twitter.com/ThrashHits
Webzine

20. http://twitter.com/HallOfMetal
webzine

19. http://twitter.com/metalinjection
Watch br00tal videos or upload your own. Get your fix!

18. http://twitter.com/rnrgeek
Live podcaster

17. http://twitter.com/chriscornell
Ex-singer for Soundgarden not too metal anymore, but still worth a mention.

16. http://twitter.com/bumblefoot
Guitarist for the current Guns And Roses

15. http://twitter.com/sebastianbach
Ex-lead singer of Skid Row. Current band are the same guy Rob Halford from Judas Priest uses on his solo stuff. Amazing stuff!

14. http://twitter.com/victoryrecords
It’s a record label. Look ‘em up!

13. http://twitter.com/dillingerescpln
The band Dillinger Escape Plan

12. http://twitter.com/Download2009
The legendary music festival. Line up is always the best Rock, heavy metal, & punk of that year.

11. http://twitter.com/vurnt22
Remember the band Living Color? They had a few pop rock singles, but most of their stuff is closer to the Bad Brains. Check ‘em out!

10. http://twitter.com/HeadbangersBlog
The blog version of Headbangers Ball

9. http://twitter.com/Revolvermag
One of the few metal magazines still in print.

8. http://twitter.com/kerrangmagazine
One of the longest running print metal magazines in the world.

7. http://twitter.com/EaracheRecords
If I have to explain who Earache Records are I’m gonna have to smack you upside your head!

6. http://twitter.com/digearache
Head guy at Earache Records

5. http://twitter.com/ChrisSteffen
Writer from Rolling Stone magazine. Writes about metal often for them.

4. http://twitter.com/thatmetalshow
Talk show on VH1 about metal

3. http://twitter.com/ianchriste
Author of the best metal encyclopedia Sounds Of The Beast, SiriusXM Satellite Radio dj, his band appears on the soundtrack to the cult film Gummo.

2. http://twitter.com/talkingmetal
One of the leading metal podcasts.

1. http://twitter.com/CotterCity
Not only does he run the most powerful ad network for metal websites, but he also started Blistering.com

No, really. This list is outdated. CLICK HERE for the current version.

Well there it is. What do you think? Please feel free to let the people on this list know about it, because it would look kind of strange if I sent 50 individual messages out myself. That would be bad etiquette. However, if everyone that reads this sends it to one person that would be a good thing. As always, if you need something sent out just let me know. Thanks.

This list has been moved, updated, and automated!

CLICK HERE for the current version!

How the power of Leo Laporte can help your band!

Ok, so maybe not Leo Laporte specifically, but getting plugs from higher profile people on the internet can help drive traffic to your band’s website. Now that you are all hooked up with Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, FriendFeed, and your band’s official blog, you need to drive traffic to it. However, be very careful on how you do this. It can hurt your reputation if you are too pushy or make yourself look like a spammer.

Now many of you may know that my wife does a blog about really cheesy b grade movies called QueenOfCheese.com. Well, she has been having a heck of a time trying to get her Webalizer stats to line up with her Google Analytics stats. It was driving us both nuts that Google was saying she had half the traffic that the internal server stats were claiming. We have called Leo’s live show The Tech Guy twice and both times we were able to narrow down the problem a little more. We now are pretty sure that no matter what anyone tells you, Google Analytics should be taken with a massively huge grain of salt. Always trust the internal server stats more. Keep both, but don’t be discouraged by what Google Analytics claims. It’s pretty buggy. Now let me make this very clear, the main goal was to get a question answered. However, we had a bonus prize. When the website was mentioned my wife had hundreds of extra visitors that day. On a weekend no less, which is normally one of the slowest days of the week!

Now the key thing to remember is that no matter if you are going on a tech show like The Tech Guy, a metal show like Talking Metal, or a morning talk show like The Howard Stern Show, don’t be a massive plug machine. You better not come off like the plug is the main reason you are there or you might not be invited back. It also might make people not take the bait if they think you are just a low life spammer. You must respect the goal of the show and what their listeners expect to hear. When I call Leo Laporte I take weeks to make sure my question is something that will help tons of his listeners. My wife’s site uses a CMS called Word Press. It is one of the most popular content management systems available. So I am pretty sure that my question was able to help, inform, and entertain hundreds of other people. So Leo shouldn’t block me next time I come on. That’s the goal at least to show him and his fans the respect they deserve.

How to get on these shows? Well, Leo is a call in show. So you just call in like anyone else. It’s a long wait and will take up several hours of your Saturday or Sunday. Talking Metal is on Twitter, they have email, and even have forums. Try them all, but make sure and include links where they can find your music easy. Those two don’t have a ton of time these days. Most morning talk shows have call in segments all the time and there is nothing like a local band giving a plug on a local morning talk show. If done right this can be a major help to your band. Again, respect their show and the show will respect you.

I hope to get my live show back on the air again soon too. If you ever want to come on my show please by all means contact me! I am all about helping others. That’s the whole point. Isn’t it?

So yesterday I talked about why search tags are so important and why you should never be lazy about them, but how often should you update your site? Well, first off you need to know one thing. Google loves blogs. Don’t think of a blog in the standard way. Think of it as a content management system. Now I must beg you to not use the crappy MySpace Blogs. They are not search engine friendly, don’t have good RSS feeds, and just suck overall. They are the worst blog systems on the Internet. If you are going to blog from MySpace then you don’t care enough to even read my articles. Just give up and enjoy your burger job you lazy piece of crap!

So what bog should you use for your band updates? Well, this site is done with Word Press and it is very search engine friendly. Google owns Blogger, so you know that is going to be logged into their search engine. Those are the two best for what a band needs. Now I must mention some advice I currently do not follow yet myself. I was recently informed by Pamela Weir that I was not using “search engine friendly urls”. At first I didn’t get it to be honest. It seems that in the control panel of Word Press you have the option of having either nice short url’s or search engine friendly urls. I picked the wrong one when setting this thing up, so now when I switch I have to set up a bunch of re-directs so links back to these articles work. So I will be fixing that this weekend I hope. So make sure you have search engine friendly urls. This would mean that the headline is part of the web address.

Now how often to post? Well, this is all about new people finding your band. Post often. In fact post as often as you can. If you can get into the habit of posting at least once a day it would be a good habit. Why? Because Google loves blogs. The more pages, the more words for the Google bot to log in. The more words Google has loggged into their search engine that are connected to your site the better the chances a search result will link to your bands website.

So it can do amazing things for your search engine results to run a daily blog. I know you think most will not care that the band didn’t practice today but instead just hit the local Taco Bell, grabbed some brews, and hung out and watched the football game together. However, think of all the key words I had in that one sentence alone! If you can post 300-400 words a day it will get your band a ton more traffic. More trafic means more fans. More fans equals pure awesomeness…right? So get blogging already!

Why is Google calling me names and how can it help your band? If you pull up the search terms “how do you know if your a poser” on Google about halfway down the second page of results you will see this…

I'm a Google Poser!

Why is Google calling me a poser? Well actually what happened is more my fault. On this site you can search for articles with specific “tags”. Each tag basically is given it’s own page. I was lazy on one article and only gave it one tag. That tag was “poser“. Google works by sending a bot around the web to collect data to base it’s searches on. That bot found the page of results on the tag poser for this site. So a search engine found a results page for the internal search feature for MarkCarras.com. Yes, that makes it a search result of a search result.

So why is this important to your band? Well, if you use modern website software (known as CMS or content management system) you will be asked to give tags to each update your band does on your site. Don’t be lazy about your tags like I was for this article or Google might start calling you names. Worse yet, people might not find your band’s website when they are looking for something your band sings about, does, or cares about. New people finding your band is important right? Your tags should be just as important.

One of the most important things to remember when using social marketing is target audience. In other words, why follow people that have nothing to do with music? There are tons of SEO, Internet marketers, and bloggers out there that are no better than the spammers that fill your email inbox with phishing scams trying to get your bank info. Not saying all of them are that way, but social networks seem to attract the worst of them like flies on crap.

The best way to find the music people you want is to first find just one legit music type. Then go through their friend list and grab the ones that look like they might be able to help get the word out on your band. As I have pointed out before, you want to follow back every legit person that follows you. It’s just good Internet etiquette. However, you should be careful about not following back the low life scum. These people will follow several thousand people in hopes they get followed back. They prey on your guilty conscience. You are better off without them in your circle because they are not your target audience. The band that has 100,000 followers on Twitter can get way less reaction than the band with 100 quality followers because if you have thousands of followers most of them really don’t care about your music. In fact it may be less than 1%. It’s like spending a few thousand dollars on a specific metal ad network like Fixion Media or spending thousands advertising on the Today show. Just as middle age housewives won’t care about your band, neither will SEO spammers. It’s all about target audience!

Now we’ve talked about reaching music industry people like the music specific bloggers, booking agents, record labels, and other music industry people your band should network with, but what about actual fans? Well you need to make sure and use the embeddable widgets on every website the band is part of. Both MySpace and Facebook have ways to do this. Put it on your main official website as well. Put it everywhere you can. This way your fans can follow you on all these social networks. Then they will bring in their friends and your fan base can grow. This is better because it gets you your target audience. Plus because of this you will end up with way more followers than people you are following. This makes you look more legit. Remember that a social networking profile that has way less followers than people they are following shouldn’t be trusted.

Of course a good start to finding that target audience is to follow me on both Twitter & Plurk. If always plug the music profiles I think deserve more followers.