Bands

When doing promotion some band’s can get very pushy. It’s to the point where it hurts them more than helps them. Take a look at the social profiles of some unsigned bands. It will be “Check out our MySpace at _____” Followed by “Check out our MySpace at _______”, etc. After they do that 5 or 6 times they give up because they are not getting anything out of it. Well DUH! You keep sending out the same message. So no one is paying attention!

Try being more strategic about it. Try posting a link to a download a day for a week. Get people in the habit of going to your website once a day. Also, don’t make the mistake of saying it’s a download when it’s just a stream on MySpace. People hate that. They expected to be able to download it and if they can only listen to it at home in front of their computer you will only piss them off and they might not come back.

You don’t have to release a song every day. What about having a friend record one of your concerts. Then post a song a day from that show. What about just news? You can announce that you have new merch, new graphics done, a new band member, describe a new song you finished writing that day at practice, etc. Just make sure and not be too pushy with one message. People will get bored and start to ignore you. The less strategic you are the less impact your messages will have. If you wonder why people are ignoring you, this could be why.

Think of it as a show. What would happen if you played the same song over and over again at every show. Please get pretty bored with that one song. They want to hear an entire set. Same thing goes for your online profile. Give them a show!  There are two bands that do an amazing job at this. One is a band called Mongrel. Adam is a social media master. He is constantly giving fans and friends new information on the band and almost never posts the same thing twice.  Go to http://www.myspace.com/mongrel to check them out.

The other band that really does this well is the band Pure Hatred. No they are not some racist band. But they are far from being “Politically correct” either. In fact one of the ways they engage their fans is to post truly tasteless (but really funny) jokes on their social networking pages. Actually this is one specific band member, but it works to promote the band because people keep watching his profile to find out what the next joke is. Then when he needs to push his band people are actually paying attention. Keep them entertained and they will keep watching. Go to http://www.purehatred.com/about.htm to find out more about Pure Hatred.

BadMusic

So I have to confess something. I worked on this post for months. In fact most of the posts I put on this site are things that I have been working on for months. That is why I find it so frustrating when someone gets offended because they think the post is something that they JUST posted to Facebook or Twitter.  However you can also think of it this way. What was getting under my skin several months ago is still current. It is still being done!  That just proves how out of control the problem I am talking about is. So this was originally supposed to be a “Top Ten List” because people eat that stuff up. Everyone loves top ten lists. So I tried as hard as I could to come up with ten. I just couldn’t. Shocking as it seems there is only three basic terms the music industry (or at least my contacts) get wrong on a regular basis. The problem is that they get them wrong so often and so badly that it seems that there are hundreds of things they are embarrassing themselves with.   Now keep in mind that these are not all the things they mess up on when technology is concerned. This is only the terms they use incorrectly.

1. Viral
What is the root word here people? It comes from the word virus. Way too often a press agent will send out a press release of the band’s “viral video”. Meaning that any video online used to market the band is viral. WRONG! The video might “Go Viral”, but you can’t announce that right out the gate. That’s like having a Mission Accomplished banner behind a president years before anything was accomplished. When it spreads like a virus and has had millions of views, then it has “gone viral”. You look like some old grandpa that doesn’t get the inner webs when you say other wise.

2. Download/Stream
If the band has a new song up on MySpace it is not “up for download”. Instead say “Streaming now for free at their MySpace!” A download means the fans can end up with an MP3 they can play when offline. Try not to confuse the two so often. It makes you sound like an idiot.

3. Leaked
As in “The Fartknockers just leaked their latest single. If it comes from an official source it is not a leak. The label cannot leak something. Someone at the label can leak it without permission, but those people get fired don’t they?

Name This Band?

I read way too many band bio’s doing what I do for RockMyMonkey. After a few decades of doing so I have ended up with a few pet peeves about bad bios. If you read enough of these posts you will learn quickly what those are. The one I want o talk about this time though is name dropping bigger bands. No one cares, so stop that!

The most popular version of useless name dropping is where a band drops all the big bands they have played with. This means nothing. It means you paid a big bag of cash to get on a bigger stage. Yes this will get you in front of a bigger crowd and I am one of the very few people who supports this kind of “Pay To Play” model. It gets a band in front of more people and that is a good thing. Especially if that bigger band might have some crossover with their fanbase. But it means nothing about how good you are or what you sound like. It tells the person nothing as far as if your band will fit their publication or if that music fan will like your band. So just stop it!

There is also the band that name drops every popular band at the time under their influences. Which pretty much makes listing influences totally worthless. I have seen bands name drop the band Trouble when they sound more like Korn. Listing your influences is a great thing, but only if you are honest about it and only list those bands that would have a crossover of fans. Would fans of Slayer enjoy your Limp Bizkit style band? Probably not, but they might give you the beating you deserve. So maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all?

The third style of name dropping in a bio that needs to stop is listing a quote from a member of an established band. “Dave Mustaine said o the band, “Awesome. I love it!” when really what happened was that a friend of the band got backstage, that friend played 10 seconds of the band from their phone, Dave placated them to be nice and said what he needed to so the person would go away without hurt feelings. When I read these quotes it means nothing.

Stop name dropping. Just explain what the band sounds like. Be honest about your influences. Stick to the facts. Unless you suck that is enough. If you can’t find enough to say without the B.S. maybe your band is more interested in what is popular of cool than what kind of music is truly in your heart. There is a local band in Seattle that played full on mall-metal for well over a decade. It was horridly painful rap-core garbage. They went nowhere! Then about a year ago they switched to this doom/stoner style and their fanbase is growing at an insane pace. The band is exploding very fast and all they did was start being honest about what music was in their souls. Try that instead of name dropping.

Domain

Most bands don’t start off as serious. But many bands start off as a joke to do on the weekends (or just something to do in college), but end up having enough chemistry to become a hundred times bigger than ever planned. So even if this is “just for fun” you should keep in min that it may end up being a curse that follows you for life. Most of the legendary bands were started as “just for fun”.

1. Dot com is best
If you can get the website with the dot com that is best. Net is good if a squatter steals the com. The squatter site will not rank as high because it is a squatter site. If you can spell your band’s (or company’s) name by including the domain sufix, that can be good as well. As in Carr.as because someone else (not connected to me) already has Carras.com. That is known as a domain hack.

2. The shorter the better
The shorter the domain name the better. So if you can’t get Slayer.com don’t use MySlayerWebsiteOnline.com instead. Find another band name.

3. No dashes
If your band name is Stupid Twats, don’t get the domain name Stupid-Twats.com. Stick with stupidtwats.com instead. If that is taken try stupidtwatsofficial.com or stupidtwatsonline.com instead. The dash is very bad.

4. Make it easy to spell
I once had the domain name AbrasiveRock.com I love the domain, but so many people were constantly asking how to spell it. Some of them highly educated. So I changed the site to RockMyMonkey.com just because it was easier to spell. I haven’t had a problem since.

5. Stay Away From Numbers
If your band name is Priority One you will have some issues. Is the domain priorityone.com or priority1.com? Also stay away from words that can be spelled in several different ways. It causes the same issues.

6. Is It Marketable?
If you passed a billboard with this name on it, how quickly would you remember it after you drive by?

7. Search Engine friendly?
When Raymond and Christian (both ex-Fear Factory) wanted to start another band they wanted a name that would show up on Google really well. So they made up a word. Almost instantly when they launched their website it got top ranking fo that search term. So try to stay away from words were there is tough competition for those Google search terms. You want top ranking when people are searching for you.

8. Make Your Band Name Your Website!
Ok, not everyone will be able to do this. Nevermore will never get Nevermore.com I doubt that Overkill will ever get Overkill.com, but if you can get your band name as the website address do your best to do that. If not, try to get as close to that as you can.

9. Stay Clear Of Copyright Issues
Don’t try to be too cleaver by using a known brand within your website or band name. This can cause legal issues later. Plus lame jokes like this get really old if the band takes off. Ask the band The Devil Wears Prada about this self inflicted curse.

10. Don’t be “Inside Baseball”
Do not use inside jokes. Do not reference things that the majority of people will understand. Many bands may claim when they are young that they don’t want to be some big sell out band. Well you can say you want to stay in the small dirty clubs all you want, but the truth is that bands that stay at that level too long don’t stay around as long. Your family (you will have one someday) will need to eat and they need a roof over their heads when you are on the road. So don’t pick a website name that will hold back the mainstream crowd from your band or website.

Facebook Events

Are You Training People To Reject Your Invite?
I follow a ton of people from all over the world on most social networks. So I get invites to things all over the world. The problem is that I loose money on my music industry related activities already. So there is no way I am taking a private jet to your local club show. I know, what’s the harm when all I have to do is take a few seconds to click ignore on the event that was mass blasted to everyone on that persons list? Well, it’s kind of like when the “Are you sure you want to delete that” pop ups that our computers give us before hitting delete. Does anyone even pay any attention to them at all? I am so used to hitting that ok button that even if a part of my brain is questioning the deletion, my hand has already deleted the item before I can even save it. The same thing happens with your events. When I see that question of “Will you attend this event”, I hit no before I even stop to check the location. I click that no button before I even look to see what that event is.

Why Did You Promote The Event On Facebook?
Because everyone just blasts everything to everyone, everyone is jaded to the event invites. So no one really pays any attention to them at all. Sure your best friend will click yes. Your girlfriend will click yes. Your bandmates will mostly click yes (sorry but your drummer is dumber than a rock and doesn’t get it), but will this improve attendance? Not one bit. You will be lucky to get one person to attend that would not have attended otherwise. Wasn’t that the point? To get more people to show up than who would have otherwise? Then stop blasting it to everyone because you are training people to reject your events without even thinking about it. It is a knee jerk reaction because of the constant blasts we all get from every band from all over the world.

Have You Ever Even Mentioned The State Or City?
Most band’s don’t even mention the state or city. So I have rejected events and found out later it was a local show at a club I had never heard of before. At least list the state and city or your event post failed right out of the gate.

It’s Not All Bad News
So is this nothing but bad news? No. You can stop it. We all need to do our part to stop people from blasting everyone for an event that only 10% of their followers are even capable of attending. Most of the social networks have a way of selecting only the people from your area. Can we start a campaign to not just click no, but to say why in the comments. When an online friend invites you to an event in another state or country, link to this article. Or you can just type “Stop inviting people from out of state, it hurts us non-spamming bands jerkface!” Ok, make up your own line if you want. I just think it would be funny if EVERYONE started using that one. If they don’t list the city and state post that you have no idea what part of the world the event is at and that is why you will not attend. It will take more of an effort than most will be able to muster, but if enough of us do this we can change the pattern and maybe a few habits. Or maybe this is just a way for your band to rise above the rest?

Middle Finger

Ok, to be clear I am not the least bit offended by people flipping the bird. In fact just the opposite. I’m bored. I’m jaded. I’m thinking it has become so standard that it is the uniform metalheads have tried so hard to avoid. It has become the proverbial “brick wall promo shot“. Think about how many bands take promo shots in front of a brick wall. It is the worst cliche and there have even been several blogs devoted to making fun of bands with brick wall promo shots. Why? Because it shows a major lack of imagination. How do you expect your band to stand out from the crowd if you are doing the same thing as every band out there? Doing a promo shot in front of a brick wall just screams “I don’t want to stand out from the crowd and my band has nothing new to offer!” Seriously, before you read the rest of this article, CLICK HERE and check out some great examples of what I am talking about.

Well, I say that flipping off the camera has become the same thing. One of the major rules I have learned in life is that if you want to stand out from the crowd you need to stop doing what every other band is doing. If the popular trend is stuck doing one thing, do something else. When the late Ronnie James Dio started throwing the devil horns at shows so many decades ago, no one was doing that. It made him stick out like nothing else. In the early 90′s there was a very select few bands that did the extreme vocal in metal. It was rare enough that the few bands that did it were able to find a unique way of doing it and they all stuck out. Now I could play 20 bands in a row and have extreme metal fans not recognize a single song. Why? They are all doing the same thing and they don’t stick out at all!

I get it, it’s a rebel thing. You are showing that you stand against the status quo. But that is the problem. You are following that status quo! It’s not a rebel thing if everyone is doing it. It is the status quo! It is that uniform we all claim to hate. Think about the legends that truly stand out in metal. I mean the ones that have lasted more than a couple decades and are able to earn a respectable living at what they do. Everyone of them have something in common. They were able to be unique enough to stand out from the crowd. So think really hard about the next time someone sticks a camera in your bands face. What will you do to make that image stick in peoples minds? What will make that photo stand out from all the rest? Make that one unique thing the first thing people notice when they see photos of your band. It is your new calling card. Leave the unimaginative cliches to the unimaginative.

Stop The Noise

I am still amazed when I run into websites that start blasting music at me the second the page loads. Are we stuck in the 90′s? Even MySpace has made it so the default for a band page is to not do this. They now make a band dig into their settings to make this happen. Why? Because it is just bad form. It’s rude and it turns people off. They also got tired of paying for the bandwidth for people that didn’t want to hear the music in the first place. It is why “Band Spam” on MySpace was getting such a bad reputation! For the most part it is looked down on, but people still do it. I recently made a post on several social networks ranting about this practice. Most of the people of course agreed that it drove them nuts when bands do this. A few wondered why it is frowned on.

It is very frowned on for several reasons. Listening to the band’s music is only one of many reasons to go to a band’s website. You could be going there to check tour dates. You could be reading up on a new release. Maybe you are a music journalist just looking for a band photo. I could go on and on. The point is that blasting away at someone without giving them the choice is rather presumptuous and a little rude.

So why is it rude? What if I am in bed doing one of the many things that can be done on a band website other than listening to music. I forgot to turn my speakers off and the site blasts away before I can click the mute button. That band just woke my wife up because they assumed I could only be at their site to listen to music. Or what if I am trying to review a cd of THAT VERY BAND? I already have a cd playing. Now I can’t surf around their site without songs stopping and starting with each page load. Most people listen to music on their computers and your browser doesn’t have it’s own specific volume control.

I have lost count on how many times I have had to stop listening to a cd I was trying to review because I was trying to surf around a band’s website to check some facts on my article. I had to stop listening to the cd I was writing about so I could mute my volume while I surfed around the site! Now of course if browsers had their own volume control this would solve the problem, but the best solution is to leave it up to the person visiting your site.

Now it is not just bands that do this. I have even seen charity sites that have little to do with music inflict this on people. Bandwidth is expensive, so why pay for bandwidth just to annoy people and turn them off to your band? Not only is making people click the play button first create a better experience but it saves the band money. How hard is it to click a play button? Not too hard if the website design is done well.

So please everyone, do your part to convince bands, record labels, and everyone else to stop auto play websites. It’s just bad business.

Camera

I remember back in the 90′s when I first started going to shows and trying to take photos I understood that you had to have a special pass to take photos. There were many reasons, but one of them was so they could stop people from using flash and blinding the band. They also knew that these photos could be sold. Of course there was also quality control.

Then ten years later cameras started getting smaller and smaller. This was also when the first mobile phones came out with the ability to take photos. I remember clearly talking with a friend about how there was no way the annoying photo pass rules could stay around much longer when every single person at a concert will have a camera in their pocket. So how in the hell are there still such strict rules?

Most concert venues will not let you in with a pro level camera without a photo pass. So then only horrid low quality photos taken with crap mobile phone cameras are allowed. So much for your quality control. Same goes for many top level artists. Back almost half a decade ago Ozzfest was a full scale touring event that went coast to coast. Now it is a shell of it’s former self, but I’m sure the rules are the same. If you have a photo pass you can take photos of every artist on the tour except Ozzy. So the only photos of Ozzy are done with mobile phone cameras. I had a staff member for my site RockMyMonkey who fought to the front of the stage to get me photos of Ozzy. This girl did a great job, but I was asked not to use the photos. It was hinted that if I posted any photos of Ozzy that my site would never be granted photo passes again. So a great majority of the photos you see of Ozzy are low quality stuff that makes him look like crap. Does Sharron not want him to look good? If she let people with photo passes take photos it would help a ton with quality control. So if you want your artist to look like crap, make it hard for serious photographers.

Then there are dinosaur artists that just don’t get it at all. These are the bands who can barely pack a club and don’t tour the U.S. much because so few are paying attention any more. They could use some good press! They will get extra security to hunt down anyone that even looks like they are going to take a photo of the band with even a mobile phone camera. They also threaten and bully photographers to insane levels! Do they wonder why they have no draw?

So for the sake of quality control can we please set the cameras free? Otherwise only the lowest quality photos will be posted of your artists. Press agents, managers, performing artists, and record labels, you are only hurting your artists. It’s time to wake up and see that the horses have already left the barn. There is a local venue run by a large casino that wouldn’t even let me take photos when I had a media pass! In fact The Emerald Queen has the chairs so close to the stage that a photographer couldn’t take photos without getting in some fans way. The view must suck for those fans either way, so maybe it wouldn’t be so bad? The point is that even when the artist hired a press agent to make sure I was allowed to take photos, the venue security ignored the media pass!

Then make sure that only people with pro level cameras are allowed in the photo pit. It’s getting crowded in there. Too many people make it hard for the serious photographers to get a shot that makes the bands look good.

Social

This could also be titled, “What Have You Done For Me Lately?” I follow a ton of people on social networks. So many that there is always someone asking me to go vote for their photo in a photo contest, their baby in a baby contest, and of course their band in a battle of the bands contest. Why should I care about the thing you care about?

Understand what you are asking me to do. Most of the time I have to register to some site I don’t care about, give them my personal info (so they can sell it to some spammer), and then vote for this thing I couldn’t give two shits about.

Now it may seem like I’m saying this just to be an asshole, but I do have a point. Keep in mind that people will feel like they have to go vote for that “cute” baby picture if you have voted on their stuff. Have you been active on their site? Have you shared a link of theirs? If so they will probably be active on the stuff you want them to be active on. That is what social media is all about. So go post a comment on their blog. Spread a link to someone else’s site on your Twitter and Facebook. Scream it loud and proud. Make sure to make a big enough deal about them that they want to return the favor.

Oh, and if you want me to feel the need to help promote your stuff just be active on HeavyAsHell.com. That is what I’m passionate about. If someone was to start submitting links there and spreading the HAH link around to get votes, I would have no choice but to do everything in my power to help them with what they needed help promoting. I say this only to make a point. In social media, cheerleading begets cheerleading. If you work your ass off to promote others, they will work their ass off to promote you.

In closing, if I didn’t vote for that thing you wanted me to vote on there might have been a reason. If I go out of my way to help someone and they do not return the favor, I don’t do shit for them until they do. Most won’t admit it, but they are the same way. So don’t forget the social part of social networking. I don’t give a shit about your thing, but I’ll pretend to if you pretend to care about my stuff. Deal?

Crush It

So I don’t read a ton of books. I have a book beside the toilet that I read a few pages from every time I end up in that location for a few minutes. It has taken me years to get even half way through. I have too many things to do to spend the amount of time most guys do in there reading. When I was in school I was like a crack head though. I used to drive the librarian nuts. I was in there all the time looking for my next fix. Over my 3 years I spent at one school I read pretty much every story they had to offer. In 3rd grade I had a kid tell me I couldn’t read the entire volume of Encyclopedias the teacher had in the classroom. I said “I bet I can!” So I did. No joke. I read every page. Yes I was even nuts as a kid.

So despite my insane lack of time, I really miss books. Well I found a great new dealer. It’s this website called Audible. It is owned by Amazon. They do audio books. I remember the first time I heard about audiobooks. It meant a huge stack of cassette tapes. A book was just one book, so I kept with the print version. Now audiobooks mean one file on a tiny media player. So I have started listening to my books instead. It has let me bring back my former addiction. My first purchase from Audible was a book I had heard about from several people. Now let me first say that I think that motivational speakers are a bunch of annoying parasites who are more full of crap than television preachers stealing grandmas Social Security check. But Gary Vee is not really a motivational speaker. I despise motivational speakers, but yet I found him inspiring. I think that is because he is just a guy who tells a good story and has had an interesting life. The book Crush It has been called a motivational book by many, but I think that discredits the book and devalues it. It is just a guy that was born into a very poor immigrant family. His dad came to America expecting streets paved with gold. Instead he ended up being a stock boy for a liquor store. He then worked his ass off until he had used the contacts and knowledge he gained from that job to open his own store. By this time a very young Gary started helping dad with the family business. Gary has now taken over the family business and turned it into something so powerful it is changing the wine industry. He signed a 10-book deal with HarperStudio for over $1,000,000 and I think that this book is just the beginning.

Now I have only listened to the audiobook and I have to say that I have zero interest in the print version. Why? I think the audiobook is the better deal.
Gary goes “off script” constantly while doing the audiobook. Does he do that in the print version? I don’t think so since that is the script. The audio has things in it that are missing from the print. So even if you get the print, buy the audiobook and do a “read along with Gary” thing. Otherwise you are missing out.

Now many might wonder what the hell some wine guy has to do with a blog that talks about music, music industry, and advice for bands. Well, a lot! Because the book makes the point that it is all about passion. It is about how to focus your passion into a profitable business. If you don’t think that has to do with your band and it’s struggle to succeed than please stop reading this blog. If you can’t make that connection than you will never get it and you will never make it. Every musician that reads this blog must go buy a copy of this book “Crush It! Why Now is the Time to Cash in on your Passion,” now! Just stop, go buy this book, and when you are done tell me I’m wrong. I dare ya!

CLICK HERE to buy the book!

To Gary Vee: Thank you for your inspiration. It is a big part of why my passion and life long dream has been turned into HeavyAsHell.com Can I get a phone interview? Also, ever thought a Metal podcast would want to interview you?