The Internet

I was lucky enough to spend 6 months kicking back on a tropical island between 1994 and 1995. Funny thing, when you take off from civilization and remove yourself from American culture for an extended period of time, when you get back, you may find that you’ve missed out on some big fad. When I got back from St. John, everyone was talking about the Internet, the World Wide Web, email…

When I returned to working on my music career, I found that things had changed quite a bit. In the early 1990’s, my biggest challenge as a booking agent was research. Where did people play in that town? What was the cool band in that state? Suddenly, there was a wealth of information available to anyone with a computer and a modem, if you only knew where to find it.

In the last five years I have really changed the way I do business because of the Internet. The web has changed the way I look at music promotion and how I spend my time. Let’s examine this broad subject of the Internet and how it can help bands to promote themselves.

The euphoria of the Internet age has depleted somewhat, with dot com millionaires filing for bankruptcy and technology companies failing by the minute. It has become chic to dismiss the Internet lately, with complaints of time wasted and too much useless information being the common issues for most. Don’t be deterred though, because this tool can be harnessed and focused in a way that has never been possible before.

There are many ways that the Internet can be useful to those of you trying to promote your bands. Specifically, the Internet is very useful in doing research, publicizing events, making contact with the rest of the scene, and as a promotional tool.

Whether you are a musician, a booking agent, or a publicist, the web has information that is valuable to you that was previously difficult to obtain. When trying to book a tour into a geographic area that is previously unfamiliar to you, the net can supply you information on the best venues to play, the popular bands in the area, newspapers, magazines, radio outlets, and more.

As I was booking the first national tour of the Jive Talkin Robots, I found myself attempting to book shows in parts of the country that I had never done business in before. I got some recommendations and found websites of popular East Coast bands. I looked to their gig listings to find out which clubs were potential targets. By cruising from the links section present at almost every band’s site, there were always more bands whose list I could cannibalize. Some band’s sites, like the website for Schleigho at the time, even had extensive links to the clubs themselves. I could patch out dozens of emails every night to club proprietors half way across the country, and figure out by their responses which clubs were the most likely targets for us. You can visit websites like superpages.com or bigyellow.com to get all of the information that you need like phone numbers and addresses.

The Home Grown Music Network is a great place to start, as there is a list of dozens of bands that are already out there doing it, and most every one of them has a website where their gigs are listed and their press is available. In a few hours you could have hundreds of clubs and media outlets in your database that can enable you to start your pursuit.

Once your tour is booked, you can look to massive databases available on the web that give you all the information you need to publicize the shows. Newspapers.com has a list of thousands of newspapers across the country, and there are countless lists of radio stations with Jamband shows listed on the web. Bands can even set up trades where they utilize each other’s email lists, announcing shows for out of town bands. Recently, jazzy Jamband Honeypot lent a hand when Jiggle the Handle traveled to New Orleans for the first time by sending out an email notice to their New Orleans fans, letting them know about this band that traveled from New England. In this way, bands can network with each other to combine their strengths.

There are many ways to promote and publicize your band on the net. There are several “magazine” sites including jambands.com, pauserecord.com, or headjams.com that report on the news of the Jamband scene. These sites welcome press releases from bands big and small. While this is no guarantee of free promotion, it is a good start. Other possibilities include fan sites like gadiel.com, phish.net, or philzone.com. Some people get the word out in chat rooms and via listservs originating with these more successful travelling acts.

By contributing to these open forums, you can get the word out about the band and announce news. Over the summer, Uncle Sammy and Addison Groove Project toured the East, and played many markets that neither band had been to before. Jeff Waful, Uncle Sammy’s manager and a contributor to jambands.com said, “There were some places that we had never been to before, and hundreds of people showed up at the gig. When we asked people how they’d heard about the band, they said that they had heard good things about the bands over the Internet.” This is the goal of Internet promotion, to get people motivated to go out and see a show of a band that they hadn’t seen before. Mission accomplished.

There is no doubt that Internet promotion has certainly been used extensively by the Jamband community. The Grateful Dead seemed to get it kick started with a significant net presence by their fans as soon as the Internet bloomed. Intentional electronic communities sprouted like dead.net and the Well. These communities served as a virtual meeting place where fans from all over the world could gather and exchange ideas about their favorite music while meeting new people who shared their interests. The tradition was upheld as Phish took to the national scene, with Phish.net sprouting without the band’s efforts contributing to its growth. This site was controlled by the fans, and it provided an unedited view of their appreciation of the band and its music.

Now, bands like Deep Banana Blackout, Fat Mama, the Big Wu, and the Slip have all utilized the net to their advantage and spread the word around the country.

Bands can take advantage of the technological advance of the last five years by turning their websites into virtual press kits. Photos, music samples, biographies, news, and tour dates can all be listed. With dedicated Internet connections, you can be speaking with a far away promoter about your band, and have them pull up your website while you speak on the phone. From initial contact you know that your target is getting your marketing plan undisturbed. You don’t even have to wait for the package to clear the US Postal Service before you can discuss the possibilities of doing business together. The look and feel of your website can go a long way in describing band philosophies and outlooks.

There are many avenues for a band to directly deliver their music to new audiences. The proliferation of Internet radio stations, jukeboxes, and specialty sites make it possible to actually deliver the music to new audiences. Mp3.com, amp3.com, the Monster Music Network, jambands.com, and even headjams.com offer bands a forum to actually deliver the music. Napster.com is a music community that enables fans to share music files, so anyone searching for music can find it. Phish, Max Creek, the Grateful Dead, Dave Matthews, even Jiggle the Handle are all easily downloaded from the communal database for anyone to listen.

All of this may seem overwhelming, and those who are not savvy at html programming or sound file creation may feel confused. I learned a lot about how this whole system works by joining an egroup that was a discussion forum for independent musicians and service providers. At that time, it was a group called Indiebiz, which was run by Kathode Ray Music in Tennessee. Then after about a year, it morphed into an egroup called MusicThoughts, which was run by Derek Sivers of Cdbaby.com. By participating in these group discussions, I was able to learn a little bit about everything from Internet promotions to grass roots marketing, product distribution, management, sponsorships, and business planning. Visit egroups.com to see if there is a discussion group that would suit you. Indie-Music.com is another great place to learn the basics of music promotion.

The Internet even provides a virtual marketplace so those bands can directly distribute their products. The aforementioned cdbaby.com is a warehouse of independent bands, and its management staff are well versed in the Internet marketing business. Amazon.com is another giant in the distribution game, providing a widely recognized destination for those seeking music. Of course, the Home Grown Music Network is a huge distributor of jam music both on the Internet and through non-virtual avenues as well. Bands can even distribute directly from their own website with secure servers that enable customers to purchase merchandise with a credit card.

As with all new technologies and business trends, it will take some time for people to sort out their most efficient uses. Try not to get overwhelmed. Attempt to set goals on what you hope to achieve with your Internet promotions, and tackle goals one at a time. Realize that Rome wasn’t built in a day and formulate long term marketing plans. The best band businesses are built over a period of five to ten years, and the Internet can help to solidify those efforts.