The real answers to your questions about social media usually aren’t solved by learning about new services or techniques.  More often than not, the confusion and lack of direction in using these tools comes from a lack of a defined purpose or philosophy at the core of how you deal with your fans.  Once you know how you want to deal with people and what effect you want to have on them then you can view all of these tools through the lens of that cause.

For example, my goal here is to help musicians gain clarity and success.  I see all of these tools as a way for me to make that happen.  When I evaluate a new technology or social media tool, I look at it through that lens.  What I’d really like to do is to spread ideas and info to as many people as possible.  I’d love to have face-to-face conversations with every musician in the world and swap insights with them all.  Obviously I can’t do that, so instead I use the tools at my disposal to get as close to that as I can.

You might decide that you want to inspire people, capture their imaginations or entertain people and help them escape their mundane lives for a little while.  Whatever it is, know it.  Know what effect you really want to have on people and let that shine through in your communications and let it guide you in your decisions.

Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t have to be on Twitter or Facebook or Myspace or any other specific site or service.  You just need a platform or platforms that work for you and allow you to connect with people and make good on your purpose.  Seth Godin, one of my favorite marketing gurus, doesn’t tweet. He don’t feel it plays to his strengths and he prefers his readers digest what he has to say on his blog.

Do what feels right for you. Don’t do things because you’re ‘supposed to’. Know the outcome you want and trust your instincts.

Remember, you’re trying to connect with real people, not to impress yourself or anyone else with inflated numbers. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how many people are your friend on Facebook or how many people follow you on Twitter.  Only the number of quality connections and relationships matter. One way or another, that’s what you’re really after. Seth Godin tells it best:

So remember this when you’re out there in the technology jungle.  The real goal is to establish and grow meaningful relationships and to exchange real value.  It’s not about running up meaningless numbers.  It’s about exchanging more value.

So my message is this:  Know your purpose as an artist and what effect you want to have on people and then use the tools at your disposal to establish real relationships with real people.  Don’t get lost in the medium.  You’re not looking to connect with cyber people.  There are real people on the other end of your interactions.  Treat them as such and you’ll be able to get results that translate to the real world.

First of all, proper spelling and punctuation are imperative. Don’t have errors in your bio!  Have other people proofread your bio, especially if this isn’t one of your strengths. (I’ve been guilty of spelling and grammatical errors plenty of times myself – just make sure you don’t let yourself off the hook too easily. Proofread. Care. It matters)

Structure your paragraphs in a way that’s easy to read. Be digestible. Giant paragraphs and run-on sentences are amateur and make your bio difficult to read – not what you want!

As for the content, there are many ways to approach it. Here’s one of them:

First paragraph = Who are you? – in the present moment.

This is the first question on people’s minds. Hit ‘em hard with a good concise answer to this question. If you’re a kick ass yodeler from Mongolia with the worlds largest mustache, who is well known for his world renowned backwards yodeling technique, then don’t start off your bio with a story about how you took yodeling lessons at age 7 (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz). Start off you bio with some thing like this:

Joe Blow is more than just your typical man from Mongolia with a 5 foot handlebar mustache. He’s also quite possibly the best backwards yodeler in all of Asia.

Who is Joe Blow? Bam! There’s your answer. Compelling, no? Elaborate further with a few more lines about who you are and you’ve got your first paragraph.

The opening paragraph should do two things. It should set the context for the reader to be able to process the rest of the information – a starting point that answers their question, “who is this person?” – and, it should be compelling enough to make the reader want to know more.

If you can’t condense your story into a couple of tasty lines to open your bio, then you may have a bigger issue to deal with. You need to establish a coherent identity as an artist, otherwise you’ll have difficulty marketing yourself.

Take Miller Lite for example.  Remember the old “Tastes great, less filling” ads?

What if their message was: “Tastes great, will help you get chicks, goes good with hamburgers, the perfect beverage for football games, will make you more popular, less filling.” ? Would that work? Of course not! You wouldn’t remember that. Don’t try to market yourself the same way. Tastes great, less filling. Bam!

After you’ve answered the initial question in the first paragraph, you can add some depth with some of the back story. How did you get to be who you are? - and keep it interesting. If you don’t have anything interesting to say then either try harder to come up with something, start doing things that are interesting that you can write about in the future, or make something up – because if your story isn’t interesting, you’ve got nothing! ex.:

It is rumored that, although it had been outlawed in Mongolia since 1932, at the age of 8 Joe secretly began taking backwards yodeling lessons; Not from just anyone, but from the one and only Yohan Van Hosenstein – the worlds greatest backwards yodeler, who has been in hiding from the government since 1968.

Continue along those lines to bridge the reader into the present moment…..

Next, we answer the question, “what are you doing now?” ex.:

Today Joe Blow performs in yodeling clubs all across Europe and Asia. He has just released his critically acclaimed 12th CD, “¡Gniledoy Sdrawkcab!,” and he continues to enter and win various mustache contests while on tour.

Finally, we answer the question, “what is your future?” ex.:

Joe dreams of one day bringing backwards yodeling back to Mongolia. As the founder of the ‘Backwards Yodeling Action Committee,’ he will not rest until his children are able to backwards yodel in the streets of Ulan Bator. In the meantime, he will continue to bring smiles to the faces of backwards yodeling enthusiasts across the Eastern Hemisphere and to spread his message:

“¡Emosewa si Gniledoy Sdrawkcab!”

That’s it. Four paragraphs should do – one to answer each question:

1) Who are you?

2) How did you get to be who you are?

3) What are you doing now?

4) What is your future?

The important thing is to answer these questions in a compelling way. The worst thing you can do is babble on about things that aren’t interesting to the reader. You don’t have to tell your whole story – you just have to tell a story you can sell. Don’t include elements that aren’t interesting to the reader.

Josie was born in Exeter, Rhode Island. The Summers were nice, but the winters were cold. She started school at age 6 in Exeter-West Greenwich school district. Her favorite subject was math.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Hell no! Don’t do that! Keep the end result in mind. You want the person who is viewing your page to actually read your bio.  THIS IS RARE! You are not going to get many people who like to read bios – especially long bios! It doesn’t matter what’s in it if people don’t read it! Make it short and sweet. Be the exception. Be the 1 out of 100 artists whose bio actually gets read.

How do you get people to read a bio? It starts with how it looks. Litterally. Look at it, without reading the words. Cross your eyes a little bit if that makes it easier.

People have gotten very good at sizing things up quickly. Information is EVERYWHERE today. We’ve learned to make very quick decisions in which we weigh the perceived time investment on our parts against the perceived value that we’ll receive.

What percentage of bios do you read that you find compelling and entertaining? Most people do not expect someone’s bio to give them very much pleasure. Weigh that against the amount of information and stimuli in our worlds that are competing for our attention, and then again, against how long we perceive it will take to read a bio. It’s usually a losing battle.

If you’re like me, then when you look at a book of quotes, for example, you go right for the short ones. Bios are no different.

That’s why I advocate short but sweet paragraphs. You want people’s brains to say “yeah, I can handle reading that,” when they glance at your bio. Then you have a chance to be compelling enough for them to read it ’till the end and actually get to know a thing or two about who you are. If your bio is good, and people actually read it, then you are way ahead of the game. This is rare.

You can always make a longer bio available if necessary, but I wouldn’t recommend leading with it in most cases.  If you follow my formula and you’ve got people complaining that your bio is too short and they want more information then, a) write to me, because I’d like to see that , and b) consider that a very good thing.!

Hagop is a music industry consultant who’s managed and consulted numerous acts including the band Hot Chip.  He got his start as the guitarist for the band Symposium who went from playing to virtually no one (scroll down the page to see the photo!) to playing huge shows and opening up for bands like Metallic and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. On the call we talk about Hagop’s Niche Music System which is a method that he developed on his way to success with his own band and which he’s updated and refined in his experience as a manager and consultant for other successful acts.

Hagop gives some great practical and actionable tips on the call which you can use right away. So just click the play button below to hear the call.  All of the links that we refer to on the call are posted at the bottom of the page.

Hagop Tchaparian

Links from the call:

google.com/alerts

hypem.com

siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com

independentrockstar.com/worksheet.pdf

One very important thing that successful businesses do is to test their products and offers before they invest all of their time and resources into an unproven idea.  Smart marketers know that even the best of the best can’t predict exactly how things will go over with the general public until they do some testing and find out.

So how can you apply this to your music career?  Here’s one way that you can test your merch before you actually pay to have shirts printed:

Set up an account with Spreadshirt.com and sell print-on-demand shirts for a limited time.  This will help you find out which designs your fans want to buy.  It costs no money up front and you can offer a virtually unlimited number of designs for no extra cost.  This way when you want to get shirts printed in advance to take with you to shows and to sell online for higher profits, you’ll already know which designs have the most demand.  Here’s the step-by-step:

If you haven’t already, sign up for a merchant account at Paypal:
https://www.paypal.com/us/mrb/pal=B469PDSMKULAU

Click on the orange ‘Sign Up Now!’ link on the left hand side and then select either Premier or Business (if your band is registered as a legal entity).  Enter your information, follow the instructions and you’ll be ready to accept payments online.

Now go to Spreadshirt.com and click on ‘Sell’ in the main menu.  Then click on ‘Open a Shop’ and then ‘register now’.  From there just fill in all the info and follow the instructions and you’ll be ready to go in no time.  You can upload designs or just use the built-in text editor to add text.

Spreadshirt will take a fixed commission and you can adjust the prices of each shirt to whatever you’d like.  Depending on the demand you can likely make somewhere in the range of $10 per shirt.  Don’t be afraid to test different prices to see what will move more shirts.  Remember though, it’s easier to start high and have a sale than it is to justify a price increase later.

So there you have it.  Now you know, and knowing is half the battle – so set up some merch and make some money.  Then use what you find and get some shirts printed and make some more money!

For more on the idea of testing:

Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins

Behold! The last 5 Commandments of the Independent Rockstar:

1. 6- Thou Shalt Not Allow Negative Influences Into Thy System
2. 7- Thou Shalt Go The Extra Mile
3. 8- Thou Shalt Have an Excellent Mailing List
4. 9- Thou Shalt Not Release a Record Without a Plan
   
5. 10- Thou Shalt Have Fun and Be Excited

6 ) Thou Shalt Not Allow Negative Influences Into Thy System

Success isn’t a linear cause and effect equation.  It’s the product of a system.  It’s kind of like a car. When you put the parts together something pretty amazing happens.  You can drive.  The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  The interaction between the parts produces what’s known as an ‘emergent property’.  This is something that can only be produced by a group of parts working together.

It’s the same way in a band or a team.  If there are 5 members in your band then it might be easy to think of the value of each member as being roughly 20% each.  This is an illusion.  Important parts in a system have the power to cripple the entire deal.  What % is a car part worth to the system?  Cut the battery wire in your car and find out.

The same applies to your band or the team behind you.  Never underestimate the power of one negative influence on your system.

Another example is a cake.  A cake is also a whole that’s greater than the sum of it’s parts.  Ad 5% dog food in the next cake you bake and then tell me how well the other 95% makes up for the difference.

(btw I just spent 5 days learning material like this from Eben Pagan and Wyatt Woodsmall at a seminar called “Mind Control – How to Use Your Brain For Success”.  It’s going to be released on DVD.  Whatever they charge for it – get it.  Don’t even think twice.  It’s worth it.  Trust me.)

7 ) Thou Shalt Go The Extra Mile

You won’t be rewarded for doing things that are common.  You won’t be rewarded for doing things that are easy.  You’ll be rewarded for going above and beyond and for creating systems that generate tremendous value for large numbers of people.

You have to rise beyond the status quo.  You have to be willing to do what the next guy won’t.  This is a principle at the very core of evolution.  It’s how we got here and how we’ll get to where we’re going.

If nature rewarded the status quo then we would never evolve.  Nature rewards those who break new ground, push the limits of what’s possible and have the courage to lead.  So if you want to be rewarded then don’t be a clone, don’t be lazy and don’t give up.

“Success is a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don’t quit when you’re tired. You quit when the gorilla is tired.”
— Robert Strauss

8 ) Thou Shalt Have an Excellent Mailing List

Don’t gaff this one.  Take your mailing list seriously.  If you want a great recipe for disappointment and failure then conduct your career as though you’re waiting for someone else to come in and make your poorly run operation profitable.  If you want more money and to attract more people who actually want to help you and invest in you, then learn how to make yourself profitable on your own.

Your mailing list is key to making your band profitable.  I recommend that you google ‘Frank Kern’ and study some of his material.  You’ll learn more about running a profitable mailing list from him than you likely will from anyone in the music business.

Don’t ever be afraid to venture out of the music section of the book store to check out some books in the business section.  Wisdom comes from understanding multiple perspectives.

Here’s an old post that’s got some money making ideas for your mailing list:  http://independentrockstar.com/336/turn-mailing-list-money-enthusiasm/

9 ) Thou Shalt Not Release a Record Without a Plan

Back in the day I used to work in a record store.  I can tell you first hand that with few exceptions, a CD will never sell as many copies as it does in the first week it’s released.  If you gaff the release of a CD and just dump it out there without anticipation and without a plan for how you want people to digest it than you’re blowing it.  Straight up.

My best advice on releasing a CD can be found on the Disc Makers blog:  http://blog.discmakers.com/2010/02/cd-release-tips

10 ) Thou Shalt Have Fun and Be Excited

You can never hide how you feel about what you’re doing.  When you are legitimately out-of-your-mind excited about your new CD or your next show then people won’t be able to help but notice.  Sometimes the best marketing you can do just comes from being excited and doing what comes naturally.  You can’t fake it.  If you settled for less than your best on your new CD then people will pick up on this.  You can’t hide it, so don’t put yourself in that situation.

What would get you really excited about your career right now?  Write a list of 5 things that would get you excited about your music, your band and/or your career.  Maybe there’s a venue that you’ve always wanted to play.  Maybe there’s a producer you really want to work with.  Maybe a special guest or another band that you’ve always wanted to play a show with.  Write it all down.  Then get to work.  Make something happen.

What’s better than having fun and being excited?

I recently had the chance to ask him about what his approach would be to releasing a CD in 2010.  Here’s what he had to say:

Derek, how would you coordinate the launch of a record today if you were a modestly successful independent artist (a couple hundred true fans)?   What are the principles that guide your thought process on this?

Wait, stop, back up. Don’t launch a record until people are already freaking out over you.

The worst thing you can do is to take your first 12 songs, call it a record and spend a bunch of time promoting it.

Instead you should aim to write, re-write, and improve your first 100 songs, then throw 90 of them away. Save only the 10 that people are freaking out over.

And by “freaking out” I mean that friends and strangers are telling their friends about you not because you asked them to, but because what they’re hearing is blowing them away so much that they have to tell their friends, “Wow. This is amazing. Check this out.”

(You said “a couple hundred true fans”, but I wanted to make sure we had the same definition of true fans.)

Until you get to that point, don’t release a record or launch anything. Just keep improving and writing.

Leak MP3s to core fans for feedback. Ask people for critique, not praise. Ask them for improvement suggestions. How could your site be improved? How could your show be improved? How could this song be improved?

Eventually try selling MP3s directly from your site using PayPal. This will test your commercial viability. People say they like you, but do they like you enough to open their wallet? Better to test that with MP3s and PayPal before pressing 1000 CDs. Perhaps email your fans to let them know you’re doing this as a test, and if they really love you enough to pay, please go buy their favorite song of yours on MP3.

After this whole constantly-building process, the real answer to most of your questions is “Whatever the fans want.”

You’ll be in such close communication with these hundreds of true fans, that they’ll be telling you all about where they like to buy music, whether they wish you had a physical CD or not, whether they think a free single would help them tell their friends, or what the best timing is.

With the drastic changes in technology and the music business, how does that change what an independent artist needs to do to be successful? Is it much different, or are the principles basically the same?

As you can see by the above process, this is something that was almost impossible before 1995. Communication is so easy now, that you can really build a career on feedback from fans. Let the fans define your strategy. Do what your fans are requesting, instead of guessing what they might want.

For more from Derek Sivers visit his blog here: sivers.org

Follow on Twitter here: @sivers

My first thought is that you might get a better return on investment with facebook advertising. You can advertise your fan page on a pay-per-click basis. It’s pretty easy to set up. Right under your photo on your fan page you’ll see ‘Edit Page’ and then right under that ‘Promote with an Ad’. Just click on that and follow the instructions. Chances are that if these fans are going to give a good recommendation to other people, then they’d buy the CD themselves. Sell them the CD for $10 instead and then invest that money to gain 50 fans per CD via facebook advertising.

I do like the idea of encouraging fans to spread the word though. You might also consider doing a promotion for people who tweet about you. I’d suggest creating some specific content just for that kind of promotion. Your superfans are the ones who will make the best evangelists and give the most passionate testimonials for your band. They’re also the ones who would want your b-sides/ live tracks/ bonus videos etc.

If you don’t ask your 50-100 best fans to buy your CD then you might be giving up the money that would have paid for a new website, a professional photo shoot or new video. Your true fans want you to succeed and in most cases, would feel good about their $10 going towards a brighter future for your band.

Also, I would hesitate to advertise free CDs unless you ask for something of high value in return and/or you have a great plan to leverage the free CDs into something profitable. I’ve seen artists who think that the way to go is to indiscriminately give everything away for free or very cheap. I think this is usually because a) they have their own ‘issues’ with money and b) because they think that if they spend enough of their own money to give things away for free then they’ll get so many fans that they’ll somehow become successful. Instead they end up broke, burned out and disillusioned. It doesn’t sound like that’s what you’re doing, but it’s a scenario that you want to be aware of.

You really need to believe in the value of what you’re offering. If you have any doubts about the value of your CDs or anything else then you’re going to have a hard time selling those things. If, on the other had, you know in your heart that your latest CD is priceless, that it will be the soundtrack to amazing memories for those who buy it and that you, yourself would walk 10 miles to a record store to pay $15 for it then you’ll do a much better job of conveying that value to your fans. Anything less and you’re doomed from the start.

You want to assign massive value to everything that you offer, whether you give it away or not. If someone gets something from you for free then you want them to feel like they really got hooked up. If you don’t give much value to the things you give away then not many other people will either.

If you’re interested in other ideas about selling CDs then check out some more discussion from that post:

One of my favorite ideas for selling CDs came from Terry McBride of the Nettwerk Music Group. He was managing a band who sold an average of $300 per night in CDs. They would mention from the stage that they had CDs in the back for $15 and on average managed to sell about 20 of them. Terry asked them to change their approach. He came up with the concept of ‘everyone leaves with a CD’.

The band would talk about their CD (build value) and how much it means to them and how much they wanted everyone to leave with a copy. They asked people to pay what they could, but even if they didn’t have any money they asked them to take a CD. They made their pitch twice per show. Before long they were averaging $1,200 in cd sales a night! And the best part was that because so many people had left with a CD they had an enormous increase in attendance for future shows.

Brian Mazzaferri of I Fight Dragons learned about this idea through Derek Sivers. The band was selling a disc for $5. They started with the ‘everyone leaves with a cd’ idea and the results were as follows: The average price that people payed for the cd was $4.98, but the total number of CDs the sold per night doubled!

If you decide to go with this approach then my advice is to practice your pitch. Say things that build value for your CD, connect with fans on a level where you really want them to share the experience of your music, and keep your pitch simple. Don’t say things like “pay what you can, but if you can’t pay then just find Tenise and give her your email address and then Joe will give you a CD.” Make it super simple: “Tara has CDs – right over there – pay what you can, but PLEASE LEAVE WITH A CD.” etc. If you can, then have someone collect email addresses from people in line to get your CD, but don’t mention anything about that during your pitch. Give them one simple call to action at a time.

Click HERE to view the original post “CD Release Tips” on the Disc Makers Blog.

One thing that will virtually guarantee that people don’t spread the word about you in a meaningful way is being a good artist with good songs and a good show. Good isn’t remarkable. People don’t go to work on Monday and run around telling everyone who will listen about the ‘good’ band they saw on Friday night.

So what does get them talking? Well the obvious answer is greatness. There is no real substitute for being a legitimately great artist and this is where you should focus most of your attention. The music however, isn’t the only aspect of your show that matters and it’s not the only opportunity to be remarkable. If it was then great bands would just stand on a plain stage with boring lighting and play their set.  So if you’re going to have a show, then why not make it an experience?

Grace Jones doesn’t need to change her outfit between every song and Gwen Stefani doesn’t need to make her entrance from a platform that rises her up from beneath the stage. They do those things because there’s more to the live experience than just the notes of the songs.

So what can you do to make your show more remarkable? Marketing guru Seth Godin talks about a brainstorming exercise called Edgecraft. Edgecraft is a process of systematically going through every aspect of what you do, coming up with the things that could make you remarkable and then imagining them to the absolute extreme.  The point is that being in the middle is not remarkable.  If you want to be remarkable then you need to be at the edge.

Here in L.A. there’s a band called Steel Panther who is a great example of this.  They’re about the most over-the-top, rude, crude 80′s hair metal band that you could imagine.  They do a mix of covers and originals with hilarious banter in between songs.  More than once I’ve said to myself “I can’t believe he just said that!”  Of course, more than once, I’ve told people about them.

They didn’t decide that they were going to be an 80′s hair metal band, they decided that they were going to be the extreme 80′s hair metal band.   They play the House of Blues every monday night and fill it every time they play.  For years they have owned Monday nights in Hollywood, with numerous celebrity guests and consecutive sold out shows.

What can you do that will be remarkable?  Why is your show going to stand out in people’s minds?  What can you do that will get YOU more excited about your shows?  There’s a world of possibilities.  Why settle for what everyone else does, only to fade into obscurity?

I’m not telling anyone to sell out and give up being true to themselves.  If it doesn’t feel right then don’t do it, because it’s not going to work.  Being extreme doesn’t have to mean being gimmicky.  The point is that thinking in extremes might help you come up with some ideas that you think would be fun or exciting and that your fans would too.  There are a lot of ways to be remarkable.  You’re just going to have to find the ones that work for you.

Here are some ideas to help kick start the imagination:

• For one show, spend the money you make from the door on pizza for the entire audience, or, if you’re on a budget, bake cookies for everyone.
• If you’re a band with slightly nerdy tendencies you could go to the extreme with it and wear pocket protectors and thick framed glasses and have chalkboards with mathematical equations behind you on stage.
• Donate your earnings from a show to a local homeless shelter or a friend in need.  Help get people involved in the cause.  Make your audience part of something bigger than just a show.
• Maybe you’ve got a drummer who sings well. Why not have him do a drum and vocal solo at the same time? You don’t see that every day.
• Play unusual versions of familiar songs.
• Play a Didgeridoo or a Keytar on one or more of your songs.
• Play at a remarkable venue – play on a rooftop or crash a political convention on a flatbed truck.
• Have a contest that people will talk about.
• Have a small invitation only show for your best fans.  Create a demand that the supply can’t match.
• Have legendary after parties.
• Put together a unique bill – have a magician and a comedian open for you.
• Tell an unbelievable story that people will remember and talk about.
• Dress like Santa Claus and give away unusual and/or funny gifts. On St. Patrick’s Day.

If you come up with something that gets you legitimately excited then you’re probably on the right track. You don’t have to stop with the music. The entire experience of your band can be a work of art. A work of art that people will talk about.

What can you come up with?

Here’s one way that you might turn those email addresses into money while helping to establish and sustain a win-win relationship with your fans.

First off, you’ll need to setup your mailing list through a company that will allow you to setup auto-responder emails. My favorite by far is AWeber.com. I got turned on to them by the big time internet marketers, people who make boat-loads of money with their mailing lists, like Frank Kern, Eben Pagan and John Reese.

For those who don’t know, an autoresponder is an email that’s sent out automatically to subscribers. It can be immediate or it can be timed to send out a week, a month or any other length of time after the initial sign up. Aweber allows for unlimited autoresponder emails. Constant Contact allows a maximum of 5 and Reverb Nation allows only 1.

Anyway, the basic idea is this: You want to set up a subscription service for your fans where you will periodically send them something valuable like a free download, video, pdf or anything else that you could send them in an email. One way you might do it would be to set up your an autoresponder sequence so that your fans will get something of value once a month for an entire year.

There are only two rules; you have to give them something valuable in each email, and you have to provide a link to buy your music, merch, and/or tickets in each email.

This way you can set up the sequence one time and then every single person who signs up for your list will receive 12 emails from you, spread out over the course of a year. If you do it right then they’ll be excited to open 12 emails that offer them a chance to buy from you. The goal is to enhance your relationship with your fans and to make money in a win-win scenario.

Another cool thing about AWeber is that you can send people directly to a specific web page when they first sign up for your list. One thing you might do would be to create a web page with an embedded video of you or your band thanking the subscriber for signing up and telling them about the cool things that they can expect to get from you. Get them excited about it. Make them laugh, play a song for them, use your imagination. The goal is to make yourself stand out. Give them one more reason to remember you.

Don’t be the band that collects email addresses just tries to ‘get’ something from the people on their list. Be the exception and stand out right off the bat. Give people a reason to want to hear from you in the future.

It’s also a good idea to package your subscription service with a cool name and/or concept. You could call it a ‘backstage pass’ or some kind of membership. Give it a good name. Be creative.

If you implement this or something similar then drop me an email through the contact form and let me know. I’ll sign up for your list.

Of course if you have any useful mailing list ideas or any insights on the topic then leave a comment and let us know.

The first thing that you need to do is to scout out at least one good venue. What you want to look for are venues that are:

a) inexpensive
b) fun
c) willing to give you the freedom to set up your own shows

The other important factor is bringing in other bands to play with you. You’ll know you’re on the right track when you start putting together shows that you’re genuinely excited about. If you’re excited about the shows you put together then that excitement will translate to your fans. When you consistently put together fun and exciting shows you’ll see the beginnings of a new scene. Other bands will want to be a part of it and you won’t have to beg people to come to your shows. You’ll just need to tell them when they are.

When you put on shows with bands who know each other and who have fun together then people will actually stay for more than one band! They’ll leave happy without having spent too much and the bands can actually make some money too. It’s a win, win for everyone if you do it right.

If you’ve got total freedom over the shows you put on then you can do some things that are outside the box. You can have a comedian or a magician open for you. Be creative. I saw a band once who had made a big wheel that they would spin that would prompt them to do all kinds of entertaining stunts in between songs depending on where the wheel landed. It’s your show. Have fun with it!

Before I moved to Los Angeles I played in a band in Rhode Island where there wasn’t any kind of established scene. There were a couple of no-name venues where we regularly played. One was at a restaurant/bar at the beach and another was a tiny bar in the suburbs. Neither one had bands playing there until we proposed the idea. We brought in bands that we wanted to play with and we played what we wanted to play.

Both of these places that we played at gave us 100% of the door and 100% of merch. One of them even gave us the door plus $100 and free drinks! The bar was a tiny unknown hole in the wall, yet we made more money per show there than when I played in a band that sold out the Viper Room. Those shows were some of the best times of my life. We weren’t trying to reach for something beyond us, we were just putting on the shows we wanted to play and that we thought would be the most fun for everyone. We booked the bands we liked to watch and that we liked to hang out with, so naturally our fans would enjoy the show as well. People would come back to see us again and they would bring more friends and tell more people, to the point that many of them would be turned away at the door.

The idea is to bring people together in a way that’s a win win for everyone. If everybody wins then everybody will want to be a part of your shows in the future. If you want to create a scene, forget about the big expensive venues that don’t care about you, book 6 unrelated bands a night, don’t pay you and that your fans can only afford to go to on special occasions. Instead, find a fun place that’s receptive to the idea of letting you come in and put on your own inexpensive shows. It’s an opportunity for everyone – the venue owner wants more customers, you’ve got fans and you know other bands who have fans (you just need a willing venue), and the fans have a few hours and a reasonable amount of money to spend, and they want good entertainment.

Bring it all together and you’re the hero. So don’t be one of the countless complainers. Be a doer. Amazing things can happen when you’ve got the vision to bring people together.