Your views on promotion

Al Quandt · Post by **Al Quandt** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 1:07 pm

Well eitherway. Back to my main point. They advertised poorly this year and it showed.

LC Pwince · Post by **LC Pwince** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 1:14 pm

kimaliz wrote:
bassjones wrote:Even if they didn't THAT night. They normally do, so they got the time slot they wanted and they got paid more. period.
My point is that we were told and under the impression until the moment we arrive to load in...

Time Slots were alternating

Us (open), them, Us, Them (Close)
Show starts at 10pm

What ended up was

Hey can we use your equipment?
Hey you cant play until 11:30
Hey we changed the schedule

Oh and BTW you are getting paid the same as anyother night.

Typical Legends move.
Do the Wailhounds even draw that well anymore? I honestly don't know.

HillgrassBluebillyFTW · Tue Dec 11, 2007 1:15 pm

LC Pwince wrote:Typical Legends move.
Do the Wailhounds even draw that well anymore? I honestly don't know.

My thoughts exactly.. and personally I don't know that they draw as well as they used to.

I bet with this show it was the people that come out every stinkin year as tradition.

bassjones · Post by **bassjones** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 1:20 pm

Legends is legendary for this sort of thing. I think the Wailhounds time off may have hurt their draw for a while, but I bet it's back up before too long. They're good at what they do, people have a good time, people come back, people buy alcohol, venues like them.

Al Quandt · Post by **Al Quandt** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 1:32 pm

bassjones wrote:Legends is legendary for this sort of thing. I think the Wailhounds time off may have hurt their draw for a while, but I bet it's back up before too long. They're good at what they do, people have a good time, people come back, people buy alcohol, venues like them.

I love the wailhound guys so dont get me wrong when I say this but...

No they didnt really draw much, No it wasnt really that great of a show. I told a bunch of people that they would like them and they are fun, but they really didnt bring it all that night.

So it was frustrating that we on the other hand played our hearts out, brought our friends, got forced to stay there longer then agreed on, hell I even had to pay to get a bite to eat (i dont drink any more so their free beer meant nothing to me).

bassjones · Post by **bassjones** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 1:39 pm

good for you on the not drinking anymore thing. that's awesome.

Al Quandt · Post by **Al Quandt** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 2:27 pm

bassjones wrote:good for you on the not drinking anymore thing. that's awesome.

thanks its tough, but that whole free beer then and less pay thing doesnt really sounds too appelaing now.

conley · Post by **conley** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 3:05 pm

To a certain dgree, I agree that it's both partys responsibility to bring in a crowd; however, I believe that it is slightly more the VENUES responsibility to fill THEIR bar. When Paulas hires me to play, it's for their audience, when Henry's hired me to play - it was for their audience.....when Halls hires me to play at Halls, it's for their audience....if a bar soley expects a band to fill their room, then they are in big trouble and they basically do not have their own crowd.

Just my take on it.

Al Quandt · Post by **Al Quandt** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 3:54 pm

conley wrote:To a certain dgree, I agree that it's both partys responsibility to bring in a crowd; however, I believe that it is slightly more the VENUES responsibility to fill THEIR bar. When Paulas hires me to play, it's for their audience, when Henry's hired me to play - it was for their audience.....when Halls hires me to play at Halls, it's for their audience....if a bar soley expects a band to fill their room, then they are in big trouble and they basically do not have their own crowd.

Just my take on it.

Thats very true. We have our own crowd but we cannot expect them to

A. Be at every show
B. Drive to shows farther away

When we play on the southside and central part of town we can pack a place. When we place out north its not always the case unless it is a special occasion. Our people like to drink, and dont want to drive home across town after a show.

For instance when we play side pocket. About half of our people come out. That is not because we didnt promote, but our promotion is more limited to our current fans.

The bar didnt do more then a listing in Whatzup and our name on the Marquee. So the shows arent as crazy.

As a disclaimer though I will say that Side Pocket stills pays and hasnt complained, that was just an example of how much venue promotion is important.

Bands dont have the means to run a paid ad in the local media (especially if underpaid already). That is one thing I love about C-Street, consistently running the large ad every week. Other then MOMs they seem to have a decent to great turn out for all other events.

On the other hand (and I dont mean to come down on legends so much, they just have good examples too) Legends runs that little b&w ad every week that is better then a lot of venues but gets kinda buried and unnoticed.

Also if the venue promotes the show and makes it look like they are excited about it, then naturally the entertainer is going to feel the same and do his/her best job and most likely promote even better to keep the hype up.

That is a rule we keep as a band, someone had posted in the RTF thread that they noticed that we really do have fun on stage. This is completely true, but we also have our bad days personally as individual members, we do not let that reflect on stage, which is probably a reason why our audience gets bigger and bigger.

Venues should learn from the entertainers. Why (except for notably more important shows like nationals, exc...) promote one local so less the the other. Promote every show like its the best thing in town to do that night like C-Street.

Every bar (outside of aesthetics) is essentially the same. Its a place to drink, socialize, and have be entertained. Act big, back it up by having good acts and you 9 times out of 10, will be big.

Pullimic · Post by **Pullimic** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 5:31 pm

bassjones wrote:both, but more lies on the band, since the more people you bring out, the more likely you are to be booked again. That really puts the onus on you to be more proactive in self-promotion.

I disagree with that, the only reason a bar books bands is to make money, not cause they actually care about a band and if a bar doesn't do a damn thing to promote a band other than post a flyer in the bar the show 9 times out of 10 is doomed to a small crowd, I believe the bar is equally responsible as the band when it comes to promoting. something else that would help...more media support like what x102.3 used to do and what 98.9 does with local bands, the hometown hangout on 98.9 is a great thing and bands should take advantage of it. I think 98.9 could play local bands in regular rotation like 102.3 used to do but over all they are doing a great job helping the local scene. there should be more of this on other stations.

deek · Post by **deek** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 5:50 pm

conley wrote:To a certain dgree, I agree that it's both partys responsibility to bring in a crowd; however, I believe that it is slightly more the VENUES responsibility to fill THEIR bar. When Paulas hires me to play, it's for their audience, when Henry's hired me to play - it was for their audience.....when Halls hires me to play at Halls, it's for their audience....if a bar soley expects a band to fill their room, then they are in big trouble and they basically do not have their own crowd.

Just my take on it.

I agree, but I think that's a different situation you are describing.

Sure, if a venue hires a band to play, then yeah, that venue should promote the heck out of their event. But how much of the norm is that? From my experience, its someone from the band going out and getting a gig from the venue...the venue has live music every x, y, z night, so they need to fill it...they don't care who it is, so they are not going to be huge on promoting that particular band...

I guess the thing that gets me down the most on this topic is, that it seems like the bands with the most "friends" draw the biggest crowds. Its not really they promoted better...its just that they know more people...and because most venues just care about the bottomline...well, they know that if they have xyz band, they have a lot of friends so it makes better sense.

I mean, really, of the people that have posted, what is it that you normally do to promote yourself?

bassjones · Post by **bassjones** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 6:02 pm

myspace/here/email/personal conversations/phone calls/whatzup Ando's doing a poster for us for our next gig and we're going to put that thing up everywhere, although I've found personal email to be the most useful. Word of mouth is also the best advertising. We've had a number of people that came out because xxxx said we were awesome, then they tell their friends, etc... We have a email list of about 30 right now, plus all the individual band members' individual email lists.

Oliver's Army · Post by **Oliver's Army** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 6:14 pm

Bands tend to do 'passive promotion' that garners little response.

They paste flyers in hopes it compels people to go.

I had great success in 'active promotion' and collected hundreds of Emails and sent out announcements before the gigs.

A month out...two weeks out...three days out...and day of.

If you include new dates, band info, anything new and exciting...people respond to this and it doesn't feel like spam. They feel a part of something and WANT to go.

MySpace is great if you don't spam the crap outta of the gig.

People come to an EVENT. Not "hey, were playing tonight"

The 'day of' without advance notice is pointless and annoying.

"I would have went if you gave me more than 4 hours notice."

Oh, and for the love of gawd PLEASE scale down you online flyers so they don't eat up half of the Myspace page.

I delete those faster than you put it up.

If you need to rethink your design for online...do so.

Print and online are not the same monster.

Pullimic · Post by **Pullimic** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 6:36 pm

those are some good tips...mailing lists are great for bands to self promote and yes brad word of mouth is great for promotion but those are usually friends of friends until you get to the point where you have a name developed for yourselves which as we all know only gets that way through playing gigs and promotion which falls right back to help from the venues and local media I think the point you might be trying to make is bands who help themselves promote by being proactive will get help from others and get better gigs

Al Quandt · Post by **Al Quandt** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 7:31 pm

Oliver's Army wrote:
Oh, and for the love of gawd PLEASE scale down you online flyers so they don't eat up half of the Myspace page.

I delete those faster than you put it up.

If you need to rethink your design for online...do so.

Print and online are not the same monster.

OH GOD YES! I never make an online flyer more the 350px width. I dont want my comment to break your page.

Local Hip Hoppers seem to break this rule most.