It pisses me off when I write a thoughtful post about a marketing idea, or some practical advice on how to sound great live only to find a comment that sounds like this:

“Hey you guys shut up, if you shitty bands weren’t so any good you wouldn’t half to worry about it!!! You guys suck!”

Although the chronic spelling errors hurt my feelings, the comments make me laugh. I can’t help but feel that the reader is missing the point of “Weird Experiments in Band Marketing.”

We started this blog a year ago to start defining “success” as it applies to being in a band. In my opinion there’s a severe lack of useful material out there related to music marketing or running a band. If it is good, it’s usually written by someone who has crossed the chasm to find success somewhere other than playing music.  In fact, look at what happens when you type in “Music Marketing” in Google. Besides a few top-ranked blogs, the results are truly retarded: a bunch of half-assed articles trying to sell bands a duplication service.  A lot of times they’ll add “101” to the end of the title to make it sound educational like “Music Marketing 101”, or “How To Start Marketing Your Band 101”.

Ooh, or maybe you’ll find a video of some dude pontificating on the magic of posting fliers to promote your show (this video cracks me up):

No wonder bands don’t really look to the web for advice on how to promote their band, good content on music marketing is a relatively new concept! 

Do you know what musicians actually search for? Despite all the evidence that a record deal may be the worst kind of strategic partnership, bands are mostly looking for info on how to get signed.

According to Google:

• “Promote Band” – 8,100 Global Monthly Searches
• “Get A Record Deal” – 18,100 Global Monthly Searches (!)
  

Holy shit that’s frustrating! What about the DIY spirit? What happened to that?!?!

If you want skip past record deal pipe dreams, and all the trash marketing advice, read this free ebook by Derek Sivers:

This book has been out for a while, but concisely states everything that you would ever need to know about music marketing. See, I don’t make this stuff up!

Coming up with original marketing ideas is not the focus of this blog. But if you want to read about a band that’s putting these ideas to work, then this is where you want to be.