Stop gigging! Seriously, think about what you're doing!!!

nobody@vox.com(Indieboy) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:13:24 +0100

When unsigned, every gig you do should serve a purpose.

Now initially that may sound stupidly obvious. However, if it is why as a band would you aimless play toilet venues in London to f**k all people for no money and at a cost to yourself? Plus it looks terrible.

This is what thousands of bands do every week. I've spoken to lotsa A&R types, both at Sony BMG and further affield and it's a very rare occasion that an act just happens to be discovered because an A&R guy happens to be at a venue. The whole Frankie Sharp scenario doesn't happen very much. I rarely see an act I haven't planned to see, I don't have much time usually. :-(

There's you

Also, gigging a lot in London and not increasing a buzz around you is actually detrimental to your career. As an act can get stale, or seen as old news if on the radar of the various labels too soon. I'm guilty of it myself, with the hundreds of acts I come accross if I hear something that's ok, then see them still gigging the same circuit 6 months later with no increase in profile I'm less likely to see them again. Simply because I'm trying to find what's breaking. That is unfair to a degree as said band could have come along leaps and bounds since the first time. Though if they're amazing then they should create a buzz anyway.

So, why gig in London? Showcases are the first obvious reason. If a label, publisher, PR co. etc etc want to see you, then doing a gig near their office is a wise move. Stick to smaller venues off the beaten track, somewhere with a decent PA (it's amazing how many people don't think about that). If they're really eager only play your hometown with loads of support. (People singing along always impresses me)

Building a following? In London? You must be kidding. It's possible, but gig-to-%-fanbase ratio is pathetic when compared to playing other parts of the country. Simply because there is so much music, and other things to do in London there is no novelty, little passing trade and promoters are shite when ,well, promoting. To to acheive the Fanbase increase of an 8 date tour around the country at the right venues would probably take 3 or 4 times as many gigs in London to achieve the same effect. Don't get me wrong, the truly exceptional will win people over everywhere but some acts are born great, others achieve greatishness and others have greatishness thrust upon them. Plus any of those of you who've done both know how hard the crowd is in London to get to do anything other than talk over you.

You should only do a flurry of London gigs when you are at the crescendo of a promo campaign, when all your hard work as culminated in a co-ordinated campaign that has achieved some radio play, bits of press and interest here and there. Before I start getting the PM's whinging that that's impossible without loads of cash, record deal, pluggers etc IT'S NOT! Don't be such a whinging have-not and pull your finger out. It just takes a bit of thinking and knowing what bits and pieces to capitalise on as they come your way. When you're not in the sights of any of the labels, you've got breathing space to get everything the way you want it, think about it that way. Rather than feeling under pressure to 'get out there'.

Blow your own

So you've got good activity on your myspace, you've just got into the top 8 friends of some big pages, your name (& blog!! ;-)) appears everywhere in google, then you should start gigging London as you've got about 6 months to make a serious impression that would warrant investment. Of course there are exceptions to the rule as I know a band that was looked at for a year before anything was done.

However, I've seen that the bands that create the most excitement are the acts that seem to come from obscurity to everywhere in a short period of time, this is often luck or good placement. But if you get your house in order, build up a good head of steam as regards your promo material, fan building, online stuff and make sure your 'demo' could be something you'd release yourself you're in good shape to really pop out amongst all the good music being looked at.

Also consider when you're going to shop yourself to radio, the labels and such. For example, during the period of the summer festivals mainstream radio is saturated with all sorts of new things that were planned earlier in the year, a lot of new acts are being broken by the labels and trying to get shelf-space in the minds of those who provide opportunities for new music is really lacking. Plus I'm all over the place trying to keep up with stuff I've picked up earlier in the year. Try and get a feel for a bit of a lul in the sort of stuff your doing and then launch your little PR offensive.

So, if you've simply been rehearsing, gigging, rehearsing, gigging, recording, rinse, repeat... maybe stop and think why you're doing it? Ultimately these are the considerations of a manager (a good one) but if you're without management you should really think about when and how you're going to be perceived.

Anyhow, quick rant. Saw a really good band that had literally no clue, about anything.

Hope all is well co-ordinated with you

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"Fair Play to Those Who Dare to Dream" "Make Art"

nobody@vox.com(Indieboy) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:31:57 +0000

Live at Sundance

For you Oscar fans out there I'm sure you're familiar with the film 'Once', which is an indipendent production, filmed for about 100k which has subsequently gained recognition and support from just about everywhere. It's not just the story of the film that appeals to me but the stories behind the film. Such as Cillian Murphy was originally meant to play the lead but pulled out, apparently due to the nature/difficulty(?) of the songs he had to sing in the film. I think the storyline is actually based around the chap who ended up playing the lead. Also the story of the on-screen/off-screen romance of the leads and the fact that neither of the leads have any interest in acting again I find really charming. I've got my DVD ordered and will have a very rare night-in to watch it. Have a read about it here.

So as an entertainment industry are we for want of a better expression 'buggered' (still)? Should I go sell my soul and get a job at Foxton's now? We've got artists running around with handicams making their own films getting investment from here and there, placing their own music and getting international recognition without massive massive M&P costs. Then I hear about an artist I really liked (and pursued) having his album funded entirely by donation, soon to be distributed this week.

From Small Beginnings To...

To quote and disagree with myself of a few months ago (he was an idiot, ignore him, really self-indulgent tosser)) "Up until fairly recently I was very much pro-artist, DIY etc. But for truly great albums and for artists to develop from album to album I think they need the right people around them. Great marketeers, producers, A&R, graphic designers, film-makers etc. Those who all work together as a catalyst to the artist's creativity and allow them to be an artist, rather than an online campaign specialist." This increases the odds of sucess 50 fold, so quite true, but this doesn't replace the strength of a really great concept well-excecuted. If you don't have major investment, it's not the end of the world anymore.

For me, someone who spends about 80% of their life infront of this screen and the rest (bar 2% sleeping) at gigs, film and music to me are basically the same thing, which is content. As are blogs, great sites (and crappy ones), viral apps etc. What I think I'm witnessing is a renaissance of artists who exist in several mediums with great ideas and the motivation to follow them through. About a year ago I was giving a talk at the Apple Shop on Regent St. about the industry as it is today. I had some rather irate guy in the audience tearing me a new behind about how the record industry was dead and in the hands of the artists. I retorted by asking him to name 5 truely landmark, critically acclaimed albums that had stood the test of time that were DIY projects. This was a little unfair as I knew he'd struggle. Looking back, if I'd said name 5 truely landmark pieces of content that were produced indipendently, I probably would have shot myself in the foot.

So, where's the money? Show me the money. Where in this huge d-list party is the money being made and where can I get some? Everywhere, absolutely everywhere in small amounts, here and there, on this site, that site, under the sofa at that gig, via that youtube channel. As an artist, or a label, I think the trick is to tie together and centralise the dozens, maybe even hundreds of channels of potential revenue. Pair this with not spending colossal sums of money. I'm talking about artists rather than labels on that one. Why spend £10k on what essentially is a 14 track demo (saw this recently) when you could spend £5k on a great EP with video and the remainder on promo? If I was still a recording artist I'd set up the following as the most basic set of tools.

Myspace - obvious but inclusive of

Snocap, CD baby, Magnatune and any other distrubutors you'd care to involve
Youtube channel - you need video content all the time, rehearsals, vidblogs, inspirations etc and get subscribers
Tight analytics - you need to be identifying who is interested an where - getting lots of hits for Australia? Get linked on triple J's website etc etc.
Top eight friends of bands very similar to you who yeild more than 1000 hits a day (it's not that difficult)
'Blidget' of your blog - go to widgetbox.com, they've got a great one that you can stick in Facebook aswell. Blogs are essential and the myspace one is fairly crappy.
Merch - You need this, as simple as badges and t-shirts but you'd be amazed at how much you can make.

Online radio - get your music on LastFM and Pandora, befriend specialist stations and podcasts, really get to know them and get your stuff played, a kind of digiplugging I guess.

Blog - This isn't simply an endorsement of this platform (though it is pretty good). Everything you do should be syndicatable and very very easy to find, plus associated with stuff similar to what you're doing. Have your main 'this is us' blog which brings the fans closer to you. But also have blogs on all the major platforms with all your content on, heavily tagged in a way which doesn't have to compete with other popular tags. Get your lyrics up there, and tagged. If someone hears a line from your tune and google's it. You want your track, to appear, and from that page links to your other content and somewhere to spend some cash or re-direction to a site where you're making ad revenue.

Get your music on there somehow, I'd forgotten how much I love this track!!! :-)

Youtube channel - for me this is becoming as essential as myspace. More and more people use youtube as a method of discovering new music simply because you can search for that track you want easily and it ranks highly in google when you type a track title in. Even if you have no video's do an iMovie montage or something that promotes your track like I did for Dark Room Notes.

I-Tunes/Amazon - consider this your premium content host. This is where the people prepared to part with cash for what you've got. So make it feel special, exclusive mixes, access to content as a result of purchase etc etc.

Links Links Links - You need to be found easily by people who've either heard of you or are interested in the sort of thing you are doing. Myspace friends is the most obvious example of this, but new music blogs (such as mine ;-) are
great because search engines pick up the tags and links plus the posts themselves drive traffic.

Regular content - plus the means to distribute it. You want to be RSS'ed as much as possible and as interesting as you can be. Simply because public memory is short and the closer people feel to you as an artist the more involved they'll be and support you in many ways.

Anyhow, I've really rambled now about not a great deal. New showcase this Saturday which I'm sorting this afternoon, be sure to get yourselves down and tell people about the acts you see there.

Hope all is well with you.

IB

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Absent Elk at Metro & Suggestions

nobody@vox.com(Indieboy) — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 18:57:46 +0100

Hello,

Was at the Metro on Oxford street last night to see Absent Elk. They weren't on till 9 so I hung about Puntey for a while, had a walk about, had Katsu curry at Wok Wok. Katsu curry is the best thing in the whole world, bar chocolate waffles. I must admit, I've had better but it did the job.

I met up with one of the other A&R chaps at the venue and had a look. The place was fairly packed which is great to see on a Wednesday. I stood over by the right PA stack with my beer and had a horrible realisation. I've been doing this pretty much every night for a while and every night I'm stood near a PA drinking beer. Which means eventually I'll probably end up as a deaf alchoholic. So I'll make sure I drink pop and might get some of those noise reduction plug things, they don't block out the sound, just reduce the intensity. I had nasty tinitus this morning, sounded like my head was on standby or something.

Anyway, for those of you that don't know the Metro, it's a venue in a basement. You enter through a staircase, mirrored on one side which can be disconcerting after a couple of bevvies into a small seated area, then through to the bar and venue. I've been to a couple of good club nights there but it was the first 'official' visit I'd made to the venue.

I submitted a review of Absent Elk on the RCA blog a while ago so have a look if you get chance. I have to say they're quite a handsome bunch and had a strong stage presence. No shy shoegazing. I recognised a few of the tracks from their blog and they were really well performed. There all really good musicians and I thought their set was really tightly played, must be a fair bit of rehearsal or gigging going on with them. I don't know whether it was the sound, or the something else but there wasn't one song that really jumped out at me. I've listened to all their submissions so was able to spot them but I guess I was waiting for a really strong tune to hum on the way home. Although it wasn't there that evening I'm sure it's in the band somewhere, I look forward to hearing more from them as it develops.

There was some crazy woman down the front, inhabiting the usual 5ft no go area in front the stage, dancing the night away. I think she may have had a couple. She danced like she was keeping her balance on a dingy in high wind, it was great. :-)

Ok, next thing. I want to develop the pages a bit and I think a few tools/embed thing is needed to make the music more accessible and perhaps give you more information on what's happening with your music. If you could get any info possible on what's happening in here with your account, traffic, other people etc what would it be? Would you like to see a Vox chart? Or perhaps a better media player that gave more details on the artist playing, more tracks, the number of hits/neighbours for that track and the ability to embed that player on your myspace/facebook etc? Perhaps the label blogs could be more of a centralised hub of the data generated by you. What about being able to distribute your tracks? Would you like to see more video involved in this process?

I don't know what's possible yet but if I get an idea of what would suit the community I can start investigating in the right areas. So have a think, apart from recognition and a record deal, what would you like to see here? Perhaps think along the lines of functions which would help promote the better tracks within the community more easily. Currently we're just short of 3k accounts, I can happily say I've pretty much listened to every single artist that has submitted tracks to the A&R group. When we get to 10k+ it's going to be important to be able to have great music naturally grow and highlight itself. I already have a couple of concepts for tools which should help with a more organic process but I want to be sure these would be inkeeping with what you want to see. In the early days I suggested a chart system and got several messages saying that was the last thing they wanted to see. So I leave it with you, what do you reckon?

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