How To Promote A Rock Band

Becoming a great musician is no easy feat. It requires an enormous amount of time spent learning, practicing, and mastering playing an instrument and / or singing. As difficult as this is, it seems that getting recognized is even harder to accomplish. In most cases, musicians fail to ever perform in front of a large crowd, develop an extensive fan base, our make a career out of it. On the other hand, there are plenty of well known bands who are absolutely horrible and lack the most basic aspects of producing quality music. Why is this? What can be done?

This guide was developed to counter this common issue. By implementing the following strategies, you will find that promoting a rock band can be done by literally anyone, regardless of past experience or know-how. You can do it at a very inexpensive rate, on your own, with a relatively small amount of your time being consumed. How is this possible? Simple. Most bands tend to rely on their "awesome music" to get noticed. They have fun playing their music while hoping for the best. This is the wrong way to go about it. In order to effectively promote your band, you must take action now!

Some simple things you can do:

• Play publicly often. This is probably the most important means of promotion. If you do not play your music publicly, nobody will ever know it exists.
• Play at different venues. People tend to go to the same places to hang out. This is because they feel comfortable there. Because the same people keep coming back, the more you play at the same venue, the less the percentage of new listeners per performance.
• Create multiple websites. That's right.....multiple! Every single band not only needs an official "dot com" website, but a facebook, myspace, twitter, blog, and other means of social media. Make sure you tell everyone about your website at the end of each performance.
• Update a blog on a regular basis. Write about shows you will be doing, how practice went, a new song you are working on, what inspires you, how you came up with lyrics, or anything else related to music. If you can't think of anything related to music, write about the city your band plays in, a road trip you recently took, how great a barbeque was, work you just did on your car, etc. It doesn't really matter. New content is better for search engine optimization, and shows dedication.
• Make demo CDs. Give CDs out to people after your concert. Don't try to nickel and dime people by making them pay for it. Keep in mind the point is to promote your music, not instantly make a few bucks. Make sure there are plenty of songs on there and that they are all good quality. You should also put the band's name on the CD case, actual CD, and intro track (just in case they burn it for someone else, forget the name, or the outside of the CD gets damaged). Remember, the more CDs you buy, the cheaper they are.
• Make t-shirts. You should always keep a box of t-shirts with you, or atleast close by. Since shirts are a bit more costly to make than CDs, it is recommended that you charge a fee for your them. Even with this said, you may find it beneficial to toss a couple out in the audience during each performance.
• Get a gig at a school, college, or university. Though this is a little more difficult than putting on a show at a pub, the audience will be much larger.
• Perform at a sports game. Playing at intermission, halftime, between quarters or periods, etc. If not, atleast see if you can perform before the game begins specifically for the early crowd.
• Perform in a mall. People are constantly coming in and out of a mall. With that said, understand that even if they see and hear you, they may not see or hear your band's name.
• At every concert, have something that says your band's name on it. Whether this is a banner, the drum set, a t-shirt, hat, flag, speaker, etc. You need people to take one look at you and know the name of your band. How many times have you seen a concert and then wondered to yourself...."What was their name again?"
• Get your music on youtube. You can make several videos for each song. Some ideas for videos are audio with lyrics, live performances, audio with slideshow, audio with homemade video, or even a professional looking video (more expensive).
• Allow others to use your songs for background music to their videos. Some things your songs may be good background music for are montages, slideshows, slow-motion footage, action scenes, etc. One way to get people to use this is to actually find them. For instance, you may like a first person shooter video game montage somebody made. So, in that case, email them telling them you are allowing your song to be used on their next one, as long as they give you credit in the video somehow.
• Wear clothing that stands out (and has your band's website on it) to events where thousands of people will be attending. Someone may even take a picture of you (even on accident), with your website permadently in that picture.
• Contact radio stations. Call them, email them, send them your demo CD,then do it all over again until you get a response. When doing so, understand how many other people do this a day. Try to come up with something that will allow you to stand out.
• Take plenty of pictures. These pictures can be used for blogs, flyers, CD covers, DVDs, slideshows, mail, flickr, etc.
• Enter contests. No matter if you win or not, this will help promote you. There are online battles of bands all the time. Even if you don't even come close to winning, you may have had a couple thousand people hear your songs.
• Get noticed by your community. The local newspaper is a great place to start. Tell them about your band, and where you will be performing next.
• Try to get your music in a movie or video game. Just 10 seconds of one of your songs will be great promotion - even if the movie or game is garbage, low budget, homemade, or independent. It may even be a homemade movie You can tell the producers / developers you will do this for free, as long as they allow you to use that clip for advertising on the internet.
• Keep copies of everything with your band's name on it. Your band's name may be on flyers, newspapers, articles, blogs, websites, credits, etc.
• Anything else you can think of that will help to promote your band!

Though this article is titled "How To Promote A Rock Band", the strategies previously mentioned can be used for advertising any band, musical group, or independent musician.

If you have any other ideas on how someone can promote their band, please comment!