A couple days ago I was asked why I became part of the team behind the “Tweet #metal Chart“. Well to be honest my entire purpose was selfish. I wanted a way to find my target audience. I have found that the best way to find a ton of people that are in a very small niche group is to provide a free service for that group of people. Give them something that they will really want and they will come in droves. It always works and almost always works well. So I continue to provide tools for the hard rock and metal community. Why? Because it is the best way to find the highest quality people within that category. Now of course they are using me as well. That’s the whole point. If I always do my best to make sure they get the most out of what I do, I get what I want. The Tweet #metal chart can of course be used by anyone who wants to find these high quality people just as well as it can be used by me, but it would not have been as useful of a tool if I kept it all to myself. Helping others helps me more than being totally selfish.

Now there are some that are always trying for the quick and easy. The local bands that are happy to play the same clubs, screw the same local groupies, get paid the same crap door money, drink the same crap beer, and somehow expect a record company to somehow find out about them and hand them the world. There are the promoters that will book bands, put up a couple flyers in a few windows, draw the same crowd, and pretty much go no where. Everywhere in every part of life you will find the status quo. You will find that the majority of people will either just be really lazy or they will go for the quick scam. All it takes is one out of every few million to gain from this line of thinking to keep people buying into it. Look at the lottery. My wife and I call it “The idiot tax” because you are being an idiot if you think you are going to win. We still play, but we at least joke about it being the “Idiot Tax”. So even we are guilty of this small minded way of thinking at times. Almost everyone is, but what can we learn from that and when should we go the extra mile to get out of this rut? How do we get out of this rut?

Well, I have found that just about anything you can do will put you above the majority. Take a look at how far everyone else is willing to go. Then go twice as far to win. If the standard local bands are putting up a few flyers and updating their MySpace page, then you should do that and then some. Buy radio and newspaper ads in the local area. A few thousand dollars investments will put you way above the pack. If your band members are all spending their hard earned vacation time from work to do a mini tour, advertise! You are on a national tour, so advertise as such. 3 grand at FixionMedia.com will kick things in high gear for an entire month. Two weeks before the tour starts and for the two weeks during you will be impressing local clubs around the country. Labels will start to wonder why they keep hearing your name. If you can afford a few thousand to toss at IndieClick.com as well you are getting close to pro level marketing for a tour.

In fact I will make a deal with any band out there. First UNSIGNED band to follow the following directions exactly wins a full year of advertising on all three of the sites I am connected to. These sites are MarkCarras.com, RockMyMonkey.com, and HeavyAsHell.com. I will give said band a banner at the bottom of all three sites (pretty much every page and at least the highest traffic pages) for the term of one year. They can change the graphic of the link connected to the graffic once per month.

Here is what you need to do to win:
1. Buy $3,000 of advertising from Fixion Media, $5,000 of advertising from IndieClick, and $2,000 from Blast Beat with all campaigns starting on the same day.
2. Have this all connected to a two week tour with two weeks of advertising before the tour starts.
3.Contact me before the ad campaign starts so I can track it.
4. Do this before June 1st of 2010 because after that this deal has to die.

Deal? Why am I doing this? Honestly it serves me if a band “makes it” because they followed things from this blog doesn’t it? What would happen to my traffic if some band makes it big and they go around telling people they made it because of advice from this blog? My traffic goes through the roof and my word is then respected. Now I could just go around ripping bands off, getting them to sign shady 360 deals, and probably make a quick buck and get out of town before anyone knew what hit them. This is how the music industry is done most of the time. But that is short term thinking and I would rather do what I love for a very long time. To do that I have to keep it honest. I have to actually help bands. That is the long tail vs the short tail. Call my bluff. I dare ya!

This weekend CNN posted one great article about the over blown hysteria over swine flu (along with probably 50 very irresponsible articles fueling the insanity). We have all seen people go nuts over this for very little reason. The World Health Organization said that as of the writing this article there have only been 20 deaths world wide! There are probably more people that die from a smack upside the head every day. This is proof that people have zero interest in facts. We have become so addicted to being controlled by fear that we will latch on to anything hyped at all. It’s as pathetic as a worst case heroin addict.

So how can bands use the knowledge on this to benefit their band? Well, like most lessons, it is something anyone paying attention would have learned many times before. It’s always about hype. When advertising something it is never really about just letting people know about the event. You can have millions of people know about your show and still have an empty nightclub. Why? Because if it doesn’t seem like an out of control hype of hysteria people just don’t care. People always want to be part of something big. On Twitter people are going nuts posting articles supporting the paranoia over the swine flu. Why? Because they want to be part of the big party of everyone over reacting to the swine flu hysteria. When you have a show you want to create as much hype about the event as you can. You want to make it look like it is the event of the year and the club will be packed.

I stopped reading press releases many years ago, because the press agents pile on the B.S. a mile high. It’s like the bands that keep talking about their livers going on strike because they are such wild party maniacs. The truth is that most of them barely drink at all. Not too mention that that line has been over used to pathetic level. The press agents for metal go on and on about how the cd they are promoting is the most brutal thing to be recorded since the dawn of time. They find several ways to repeat the same thing Ad Nauseam. They are trying to hype the band to the point of hysteria because they know what that is worth. So even the pros do it, so why don’t you?

Now of course the press agents do several press releases a day and get so bored with the project that it comes off with zero integrity. You have way more time and can put more passion into your campaign. This is also why you should not play a city more than once every three months. Part of making the event hyped as much as possible is to make it special. How is it special if you are playing the same clubs, in the same city, every weekend? In fact, I have seen bands do very well if they don’t play within an hours drive per season. Starve your local scene! The other thing you do is to save up as much money as you can so that you can advertise on radio, print, flyers, internet, and whatever else is available. Bands that spend their own money to promote a show end up with opening slots with the majors.

Like anything else, you will get out of it what you put into it. Expect things to just fall into your lap will get you no where. Work your royal ass off every second you can and you will see a difference. If you don’t see a difference you should have worked harder. Or maybe your band just sucks? That’s ok. I hear we will all die of swine flu within the week anyways if the media hype is to be believed.

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?