kyleigh__ Posted January 3, 2005 Share Posted January 3, 2005 Hi all, First of all.. a very HAPPY AND MUSICAL NEW YEAR to all of you ! I just signed up today hoping that with such a massive amount of members, someone would be able to help me. My hubby has just written, performed and produced his first cd. He is a multi instrumentalist but foremost a fretless bass player. It think he did a wonderful job up in his 2m2 studio but then again... I am biased. Anyhow, being utterly new to the music business we could do with all the help we can to promote our cd and this is where my request comes in. (I am not asking you all to buy his cd.. - although that would be wonderful and unexpected surplus -.. no just some help and advice) We have signed up with CD baby but due to postal services not working this festive season, our cd has not yet arrived... grrrr. Apart from that we would like to know if there is anyone on here with experience in sending cd's for review to magazines such as bassplayer. Although Ian is Canadian, we live in the Highlands of Scotland (very rainy this year..) and since Ian did all the work on the cd himself, he does not have a band to tour with. Well.. if anyone would like more information, please e-mail me on pellowgalore@yahoo.co.uk If you want to share your tips please let me know on the same address. And finally.. if you would like to hear what Ian's music sounds like ... visit his website on index Thanks for your time guys, Cheers Kyleigh__ Have a stroll around Ian's den at : http://www.ianpellow.co.uk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Basshappi Posted January 3, 2005 Share Posted January 3, 2005 Hello Kyleigh and welcome to the Lowdown! There are several of our members that self distribute. I believe that Clatteramy and CMDN use CDbaby I'm sure there are others using that service as well. You might also want to go over to the "For The Band" forum and ask over there. On another note, beng that your husband is a bassplayer we welcome him to participate here on the Lowdown. There are also forums here for guitarists, drummers and studio owners. There is a lot of valuable info here, I hope that you will find what you need as well as add to this resource. Once again, welcome aboard! Cheers! Nothing is as it seems but everything is exactly what it is - B. Banzai Life is what happens while you are busy playing in bands. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClarkW Posted January 3, 2005 Share Posted January 3, 2005 Hello there Kyleigh and welcome to the forum! I'll give your husband's music a listen in a bit but first I'll give you some of the advice that I've learned over the last year and a half that I've been with a more or less self-promoting band. CDBaby is good, but for most of the artists on there, CDBaby alone won't sell many CDs for you. They're really just a good distribution medium. They're organized and honest and helpful, but they don't have much of a marketing channel, and the one they have is fairly crowded. So as you've already realized, you've got a lot of work to do yourself. But don't worry, in this day and age, not being able to tour and play out isn't as big of a handicap as it used to be. 1) Identify your genre. No matter how weird or original or bizarre someone's music may be, there's pretty much always a genre into which it can be pigeonholed. Some artists don't like being lumped in with the rest, but honestly, how many people in the world know they like NeoProgMetal, let alone what it is in the first place? That's more or less what my band is, but more than half the time when people ask me what kind of music my band plays, I say "Rock." Sometimes I'll say "Progressive Rock" if I feel like they care enough to follow that up with "Who else would be considered Progressive Rock?" So, identify your genre. 2) Identify your market. If you play 30's and 40's Big Band and Swing, your market is the retirement community, plus the swing dance club down at the rec center. This is a pretty tough thing to do. For us, our market tends to be men in their 30's to 50's, and kids from 12 to 18. It kind of pains us that we can't capitalize on the roughly 40,000 college students that live in our town, but they just don't seem to be interested! Your market will dictate many parts of your approach - obvious things like which venues to target for shows, which radio stations to beg for airplay, etc, but also some less obvious things about what to say in your press kits and how to introduce your music to people. 3) Your website first, then everyone else's. I took a quick look at his site and it looks good, but make sure everything works and ask your net-savvy friends to give it the once-over to make sure there's no critical design flaws, like making it difficult to find contact info or get audio clips. THEN, you need to hunt down websites that specialize in your genre of music. After listening to a few of your husband's songs, I think you've got some great options here. You can hit sites for funk, jazz, and rock fusion, and any permutation of those three. In about 5 seconds of Googling, I found a site called http://www.attentionspanradio.net/ that seems like they would love to have your CD in their relatively small playlist, and could probably generate a few CD sales for you. Then I hit his links page here and saw that there's several good sites listed there that could review your disc or even sell it. Use the viral nature of the internet to find the resources you need as well as promote yourself. 4) Sit back and watch the accolades roll in. Seriously. Your husband is a fine musician and the music is good, so you're probably going to get some good reviews back after a bit. Collect them all and pretend they are printed on gold foil, because they are your golden ticket. Have a page of links to reviews to which you can link the next reviewer or CD distributor. Print them all out and mail them along with your disc to a record company or radio station. Busy people in the music industry don't care if you say your music is good. Some of them don't even care if they themselves think your music is good. They want to know that OTHER people think your music is good. And you accomplish that by getting lots of reviews, getting lots of people to come to shows, and so forth. Generate buzz any way you can, but don't even let any of the buzz slip through the cracks! 5) Get rich. Ok, I am just kidding about this step. Don't be disappointed when 3 months from now you've only sold 23 CDs. That's more CDs than 99.999% of the people on the planet will ever sell. Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kyleigh__ Posted January 3, 2005 Author Share Posted January 3, 2005 Thank you both Basshappi and Clark for your very fast replies ! Very much appreciated. Question for you Clark.. (by the way, like your website !), what do you put in the search engine to come up with the results such as the attentionspanradio. I am a big googler but would not know how to phrase it. Meanwhile, thanks for all the other tips.. we have tried the cd out on my mum (70 this year) and she liked 3 songs so maybe we'll have a go at the +60 centre near us ! Young at heart they say ! For now, I better get dinner ready for the boys, Take care and thanks once again, Kyleigh__ Have a stroll around Ian's den at : http://www.ianpellow.co.uk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClarkW Posted January 3, 2005 Share Posted January 3, 2005 I think I typed in "jazz funk rock fusion review" or something like that. Add in words like "radio," "magazine," "webzine," and "community" as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.