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What Are Good Promotional Avenues for Independent Musicians
What Are Good Promotional Avenues for Independent Musicians
For and independent musician or band, getting noticed is essential to acquiring any level of success. You can be the best singer or band in the world, but if no one ever hears your music, your work will not impact anyone. In the past, most bands had to struggle for years trying to land a contact with a major well-known record company who held the bands future in their hands. Without the financial backing or promotional know-how of one of the few major record companies, a band or artist could not develop a following. All of that has changed in recent years.
Today, bands and artists realize their talent can stand out even without the powerful record companies pulling the strings and regulating their careers. The ones with the talent, bands and artists, are now the ones who pull the strings and dictate the terms of their success. Through self-promotion, these independent performers can make their own destiny.
Independent artists can now use technology to make their own CD’s and videos. They can also apply for their own bar code to distribute band material in a more professional manner. Recording and packaging CD’s can be done at home.
Bands should utilize all of the local resources around them once they have established a sound and have a CD put together. Going to the local radio station and newspaper with a professional looking promotional kit including photos, band bio pages, CD’s and contact information is a great way to build a local reputation as a professional artist. Of course, you naturally want to cater to your fan base and make your sound available for them to purchase.
While doing this sort of leg work around your local area is the traditional way to build a reputation, technology, namely the internet, is where the real promotional avenues are now. Just about anything an artist or band needs to really get a career going can be done online. If you have a little technical know-how or a friend who does, you can easily and quickly have a website up and running which features everything there is to know about your band.
Social networking sites are the newest way to promote artists. It is also the cheapest way to build a fan base and get your music out there. They are primarily free publicity, which is music to the ears of a struggling independent artist. On social network sites, you can create a band page. The band page can become the hub of all information there is about you or your band. You can get your image out there and have bios posted to share with your fans. These sites allow you intimate and instant access to those who are supporting you. For some artist, this intimacy inspires them to be better artist.
On you social network site page, you can continuously post unlimited pictures from your local shows. You can upload music clips. Giving your fans this instant access to your work in the comfort of their own homes encourages them to easily share your work with others by letting them know where to find it.
One very important aspect of using the internet and social networking sites as an avenue for self promotion is letting your fans know where to find you. The days of pinning flyers t telephone poles are gone. You can put out a quick tweet or message to all of your registered fans letting them know every ‘when and where’ you have coming up. Social network users also spread the word for you without asking for a commission. They simply tell their friends and everything about your band grows exponentially. Their friends will listen to your clips and become your friends or followers too. When you are talking about sites that are used by upwards of hundreds of millions, the potential to get your music out there to the cyber masses is truly limitless.
By mixing old fashioned entrepreneurship, pavement pounding legwork and internet finesse, any independent artist or band can get boundless exposure. When you are independent, it is up to you to promote and sell yourself. You have to constantly be on top of updating everything and keeping the sound you put out fresh and relevant. The easier the promotional avenues are for you to navigate, the more time you will have to spend on what is important—your artistry.
