How To Get Your Music Heard

How to Get Your Music Heard Tips

If you think about it, the problem of how to get your music heard is the number one issue for any aspiring band or musician. Even when your act is established, building your fan base is all about exposing people to your music. If you can’t do this, how will you get people to buy what you write or play?

Band Booking and How to Get Your Music Heard

The website Live & Unsigned recently interviewed The Hoosiers, a band who struggled for over a decade (12 years to be precise) trying to get signed. They’re in the fortunate position know of being able to look back and reflect on what worked and what didn’t over the long term in order to answer the question of how to get your music heard.

As a band writing and playing their own material, they stress the quality of this material, the songs themselves as a major factor in whether a band makes it or not. In fact this is equally important for original acts and cover bands alike. No-one’s going to leave the house to go and   see a cover band show with material they’ve never heard of or which leaves them cold are they?

The Hoosiers stress the importance of gigging not just as one of the main solutions to how to get your band heard, but also to give you the “real buzz” which will keep your morale high as you strive to get that deal.  More than this though in the experience of a lot of the artists I work with, you can use playing band bookings in order to hone your songs. See what works and what doesn’t in front of your audiences and growing fan base. Fine-tune and adjust even parts of songs as you get live audience feedback. 

Gigging will of course, also “tighten” and perfect the performance your act ready for a “bigger stage” and help your cash-flow in the meantime..

 

How to Get Your Music Heard via a Band Booking Schedule

What about if you’re starting out or based in a small town where there are only very few live venues for band bookings? What do you then about the problem of how to get your music heard?
The Hoosiers recommend you play these few venues “mercilessly” so that you become “recognised” and “appreciated”.  You can also slowly and steadily expand further afield and do the same in the next town.  

 When you’ve done this and have perfected your live act via regular and frequent band bookings and built your gig crowd numbers – start to invite industry officials to come and hear you.

One final thought from the Hoosiers about how to get your music heard. They recommend “Battle of the Band” type bands bookings when you’re starting out. They point to the advice you can get form professionals on the panels at these sort of events about your look, your sound and your playing.
If you do the same you’ll find it can be very helpful to get your act in front of people who know more about bands and the music industry than you do.

Just make sure you can take their criticism -albeit most of it will be “constructive” anyhow.  If you do this, along with playing regular band bookings you can solve the number one challenge of how to get your music heard.

Live & Unsigned Article 

Band Booking Guides

Essential Band Booking Banter

Essential Band Booking Banter

Pre-planned Banter at Band Bookings?

Some live acts are dead against any type of pre-planned or "contrived" stage banter.

Certainly you don't want to plan every sentence you say to a gig crowd in advance of every band booking. That would take away any hope you might have of spontaneity. 

There are though, some things you better make sure you do plan in advance - and stick to on the night at the band booking.

Get the Band Booking Names right

For instance, if you're playing a private party or corporate event it's best not to wing it with the names of important people or businesses to thank. personally I've played gigs where the wrong name has been used for both the bride and bridegroom. You can imagine the reaction of the people who booked the band in those circumstances. A reminder of these things at the top of the set-list is often all it takes to avoid disaster.

Like many successful live acts though, you might want to pre-plan a little more of the banter you'll use at any band booking. Just the odd key phrase to remind you what you could say at certain points in t he show maybe. That way you'll have less chance of "drying up" and leaving awkward pauses or having nothing but a gormless expression while a guitarist changes a snapped string...

More band booking banter here

Band Booking and the right Band Members

Band Booking and Band Members

Band Booking or going down great with gig crowds  

is not only about how well you can pitch your band or what you’re like on stage.  When a semi-pro band is successful as a live act it’s usually due to a lot more than the individuals band members’ onstage abilities.

Band Booking & Band Members

As far as individual band members go, often the most important thing any one of them can do for your band booking success will have nothing to do with how well they can play or can sing.

 
You’ll come across some who have access to cheap or free rehearsal rooms (or their own space for the band to practise), bassists with a PA (to run all the instruments through as well as the vocals), others with vans, guitarists with lots of friends (for a ready made audience),or drummers with website building or social media skills etc.

Band Booking Skills

Some of the most valuable of course, are those band members who are able to market your band and bring in plentiful supplies of gigs when the other band members wouldn't know where to start.

One problem though with finding the right band members is that often you can get blinded by a potential band member's personality or just how good their playing or vocals are. 

“Natural” front men (or women) might be fantastic interacting with an audience. Unfortunately they’re sometimes extreme extroverts who can have huge egos which can be draining for other band members to deal with. Sometimes that big ego (and their position in fronting the band and taking most of the “limelight”) can lead them to believe they don’t need make as much of an offstage contribution as other band members. You can imagine how this can be the cause of a lot of friction. (The good news of course as far as fronting a band is concerned is that actually, even introverts can be great at it).
 

Take your time for band booking success

Anyhow, whether you’re trying to get your band together, or replace a band member when successful band booking is your goal, it’s worth taking your time to make sure you get the right band members.

Its hardly rock n roll to say your band bookings goals should  mean you’re” interviewing" potential band members to gauge their attitudes . But the idea really is to just try and dig a little behind what they can do onstage.

Try to find out how much time they actually have to devote to the band, what their musical goals and motivation are like and explore what they might be able to offer “off stage” as well. 

A little bit of extra time invested up front will do much to aid your band booking efforts in the long run

More about band members and band booking here

How Often Should You Play a Band Booking at the Same Venue?

 "Do not play the same area more than once every 6 weeks".

These aren't my words. They come from the mouth of someone responsible for booking all the bands for a major venue in Pennsylvania, US. 

However, I'd say the advice is just about right for recommended gigging frequency at any one venue no matter where you're band's based.

The venue booker in question here goes on the say that:

 "I know you think that people will always come to see you – and they will, if you give them enough time between your gigs. But there’s no place more lonely than an empty club and eventually your reputation will quickly suffer if that happens at your gigs."

If you think about it, with a small town, you can probably apply the advice above to playing anywhere in the town itself too frequently.

It can be tempting once you have a venue which is keen to give you a band booking on a regular basis, to rely on them for too many of your gigs. Its far easier than getting out there and pitching your act to new venues. 

The fact is though, that whatever sort of areas you're gigging leaving space in between your appearances gives your audiences time to build up their appetites for your next visit. This applies equally to cover bands, original or Indie acts and solo artists alike.

You can find this  especially useful if you're not changing their sets very often. 

The more time that's passed between your appearances (and so the larger number of other bands that bands that have played there before you come back there), the less chance the crowd (or bar staff) will remember the order of your band's every move or note.

Remember this: playing somewhere every 6 weeks will still

allow you to appear there 8 times a year. 

You only need a few of those regular venues (about 6 actually), to be out at least virtually every week in any year.... 

 

More  Band Booking Tips

Band Booking by Getting to "YES"

A guitarist emailed me last week to ask what he was doing wrong trying to secure a band booking at one of his local venues.This place was important to him because it was quite a "name" venue and he reckoned that having it on the bands "resume" would help him secure more gigs elsewhere over time.


I asked him why he felt his approach to getting his band booked was wrong.


"I've dropped a demo CD in there 2 weeks ago like they asked me to and when I called them this week- they still haven't listened to it!" he complained.


I had to smile a little at this. I told him that band booking isn't always as simple as contacting a venue once and agreeing a date with them.there can be a lot of follow-up. Chasing them. the skill of course is to do this in a way where you don't come across as a pain in the backside to the venue.

You need to stay in touch when they haven't yet said "yes" to you - but without getting on their nerves. Scroll down to point 2 on this link for one highly recommended way to 
succeed with reluctant gig venues 



Here's a simple (and hopelessly drawn) sketch to illustrate. 

 When you get a "Yes" from a venue to your request to play there, here's what most other bands don't see.


When musicians see bands with full gig dairies they often think they must have "know the right people" or be the best bands. Believe me, none of this is true. It's all about keeping going trying to get that band booking long after another artists has given up their efforts.

 It's often taken a lot of "No's" or "Not yets" from the same venue before you've got that "Yes, you're booked". 

The beauty of this of course is that much of your competition (other bands vying for a gig at the same venue), will have given up trying to get on there long before they get the band booking.


Of course, all that following-up with venues, and chasing them to see if they've listened to your CD is only effort you need to do up until you get that first gig there. 

As long as you play a reasonable gig there on your first appearance you can make one follow-up band booking after another there. All with no effort apart from playing the gigs themselves. Taken to it's logical conclusion, once you have enough regular venues you won't need to try to get your band booked anywhere else.


This effort in securing the initial band booking at any venue makes it all the more important not to let the venue down once youv'e got that first gig there. 

I mean, who wants to make an effort booking their band when they don't have to?

Check out the quote on this old post about 

how to get a band booking

Band Booking and "Selling out"

If playing band bookings is your career rather than a paid part-time hobby, you'll know there's more than one kind of "Selling out".

The "positive" one is when you fill your band booking with a big crowd. The not so great one, refers to the kind of music you play live to earn your living....

 

A gig-getter newsletter subscriber contacted me last week about how to join a band - again.

I say again, because he’d been playing live with a band for a number of years until it split up. He'd been posting and answering ads on the usual sites (Party sounds, Craiglist, Gumtree etc) and was getting plenty of responses.

The problem was that none of the offers to audition were exactly the type of music he wanted to play.  It reminded me of an article I read in Bass Player Magazine.

The article was written the Weezer bassist Scott Shriner and it was called: "Just don't say no". In it, he spoke about the art of saying "yes" to offers more often. Specifically, about taking on musical projects which on the surface might not seem perfect for you at that time.

He talked about being "open to try new genres" or directions, about how this can ultimately improve a player’s creativity and technique.

He said that when he went through a period of being an unemployed musician, he had to start saying "Yes" to the kind of things musically which would normally make him "queasy".  Cover band bookings, recording with friends, even switching the instrument he played to find gigs....

Now to some people, this would be too much "selling out" to bear. To Scott, it got him busy playing band bookings, got him back networking and put his name around again. Ultimately the attitude got him the Weezer gig.

 

 

Back to my drummer friend, he tells me the one thing he misses about playing band bookings (almost as much as the social side and the high of drumming live)- is the lack of ready cash by the time the weekend comes around.

Well, perhaps taking a different view on what you'll accept from a musical project, at least for the short term, could be worth considering...

More Band Booking Tips

Band Booking is Good for Venues Too

If you listened to some people talk about band booking and gigging you'd burn your guitar and amp now because of the economy.

 

Smart, successful musicians know though that when times are tough for bars and clubs etc, live music can actually be more not less important in order to make money. 

This is because venues (whether live music ones or not), more than ever need some method of differentiating themselves. Some incentive to get cash-strapped punters up off their backsides and out into the night to spend some money - in their venue.

 

One of these ways is obviously by offering live entertainment.

I saw a great example of this in action in a provincial UK town last month. This small town  had loads of bars in the town centre but only 2 were open on the Sunday night I went there. One of those bars was a venue which was advertising live bands 6 nights a week. 

The venue owner told me that it was the bands which drew the people in and that without them he too would be closed on a Sunday. He also told me his bar was "busier than it's ever been".

Not only that, but when I went to see a gig on this particular Sunday, they'd had live bands on all day prior to the evening performance by the band I'd gone to watch.

So if you think about it, us musos are actually doing these venues a favour. keeping them in business in some instances. Makes you feel a bit more relaxed about pitching your act to your next target venue doesn't it?

 Band Booking ebook