that’s right, I’m back from tour and getting back into the music and online marketing game in a big way, because I got bills to pay.
So first up how was tour?
Well let me just go over the lessons we can pick up:
Touring can be gruelling. It’s mainly gruelling because tours are attempted by people who are not prepared to tour - both professionally and personally. By professionally I mean that they don’t have some kind of media traction (print features, radio/video play) or proven sales record driving their promotion, so there’s no reason why any one wants to see you, even if you are playing with . . . well, the same local band that plays all the time. And musicans are not personally, emotionally ready. Yes, you’re having a good time, but the idea is to get to and through the gigs and do decent shows. That means keeping it together and not losing the plot.
This is where it helps to be organised. Because as soon as one thing goes wrong and it’s not dealt with, it can spiral into a chain of issues.
Doing 4 gigs in 4 towns in 4 consecutive nights sounds like a lot of fun. And it is. But when you’re travelling and performing and partying, it’s easy to get burned out. The afternoon siesta can become de rigeur.
What it comes back to really is that touring and travelling around playing gigs when you don’t have an album that’s charted is something you do for the love and to gain experience and contacts in the industry.
If you have a great time, avoid major disasters with transport, accomodation, performance, and stay within your budget, you’re doing great. Maybe everyone will have to pitch in a hundred dollars or something to pay for the experience.
But the important thing is to leverage the opportunities that you do have to get maximum return for your music brand on your investment of time, energy and money.
What are the best ways to leverage the opportunites of a touring artist?
Dealing with Venues/Promoters:
Now the idea of touring as a relatively unknown artist is that you ask for a performance fee and let the venue set and collect revenue from the door, although my approach is that I try to encourage the venue to make the gig free and make up the fee in the increased volume of alcohol sales from curious people who would not have come in anyway.
So if you are lucky enough to be securing a set fee from a venue who has a regular budget for live entertainment, delivering to a professional standard becomes your priority, because the most important opportunity that you wouldn’t want to squander is having easy access to paying venues, and you create that opportunity by delivering a professional show to be the best of your ability under the conditions, and creating a good relationship with the venue’s management and staff.
Fans and Music Contacts
Now I’ve played plenty of gigs to a dozen or so people - or what seemed it - to be surprised to run into someone later who was actually one of those few people or who heard sbout the show from someone who was. The point is you never know who is coming to the show or who the people you don’t know are. It’s your professional duty to perform as best you can.
The people in the gig maybe the local support acts and a few of their mates. But connecting with other musicians in a digital era will will create new possibilities. Where more artists are building personal brands independent of traditional labels, they’re free to pursue associations based on the value it creates for fans.
What can you look to gain by connecting with other musicians on tour?
- A back link with your anchor text. Explain that this will help both your bands get found by more people in google, hopefully the get the idea. Or, for advanced users, ablog swap. If you’re both bloggng musician, you could either swap reviews where you right about each other, or swap guest postswhere you right about yourselves on each others blog.
- Collaborate on the fly. If you can jam, remix or record, why not. Why not team up with some local musicians for a podcast, or a mixtape, add some personal favourites in with your own, interview each other. Two microphones and a PC. It’s not about attaining perfection if you’ve got 3 days to kill in Wellington, it’s about making content available with which to engage fans.
The idea is that you’re not looking to fade these guys with your awesome style. You both want to take your music forward, so you’re looking for easy ways to help each other out.
Bar staff, support acts and punters, you should have a strategy to connect with people at the gigs. Mine is I give out promo CD’s with my website and email on them, but as long as you’re building connections, collecting emails, or giving out business cards, you’re opening a door for valuable connections to grow. This IS the 21st century and this is how you build your fanbase now. One by one.
Video
Video to me is an important part of the tour now. You see, when you’re an unestablished act, touring for the love, this is the story that the fans want to hear. Stories help fans engage with your music’s brand, and tour footage gives you the opportunity to create a lot of video content on the fly, and then edit into a short video piece. Unfortunately, when you’re not organised, and everybody’s busy looking after their own gear and sorting out their shit, getting the footage you want can go by the way side. Again. It’s great to go on tour and party, but it can be a much more rewarding experience for your musical brand if you stay focused and stay organised.
Maybe you’ve got to think about it this way. In years to come when you can earn a full time living from your body of work, this early footage will provide authentic reference points to the journey you’ve been on as a musician. That’s the story fans want to hear.
{ 0 comments… add one now }