datamusicata

Last Friday we were discussing getting people to your gigs and how you can do that; what works and doesn’t work. What we came up with mostly, was what doesn’t work.

Let’s see if we can develop some positive spin today. What DOES work.

I believe that essentially it is a combination of all those things that we discussed that only work a little bit. That’s the deal here...they all work a little bit, so you need to do them all.

That can be a lot of work, but there are some short cuts. One is www.artistdata.com . I use them for my scheduling updates. You only need to put up each date once and it is disseminated to all the sites, (myspace, lastfm, etc) including your own website. Very handy and saves you tons of time.

Postcards should not be sent unless they can do double duty. For instance, have a postcard made up that has your album or albums cover (s) on one side, and ordering information printed on the other side, along with a space for the when and where of your performance.

That way, if someone can’t make the gig, at least they have a chance to pick up a CD anyhow thru the mail. And they have something to stick on their refrigerator or bulletin board. And these things work for months and months after they are sent, as ascertained by my mail order. It’s not enough to retire on, but everyone of these little ripples counts in the ocean of your career.

It’s a quiet reminder to all your fans that you are out there making your music and they have a chance to participate.

There are also mail services that will do the mailings for you, and services that will do the email management for you. You determine how many times a year that you want to post and how many people are in your lists and then you have them send them out. You simply supply the one place with the information.

You can do it as a quarterly newsletter, that has stuff about you, what you care about and your art. I have one caveat. Do not make it overly long. No one has time to read a tome. And keep your paragraphsy short, so that visually, it appears that it can be digested. This is important psychologically.

If you get a post that is one looooonnnnnnnnnngggg paragraph, you are probably not going to read it. I get a newsletter from Just Plain Folks, that I always mean to read, except it’s about ten pages long. I NEVER read it. I only mean to.

It’s like looking at an entire cow instead of just one New York steak. Any non vegetarian can eat a New York steak. NO ONE can eat a whole cow at once.

Be succinct and if you can, be entertaining. Why do you think I put up those stories from the stage? They are funny and they are brief. No one can do dry studying, reading, working all the time. They need a break. Give them one. If your post is brief and entertaining, they probably will read it. And that gets them engaged in you, the artist.

Don’t forget the free listings in all the papers, magazines and public radio stations. They will list your gig for free if you go to the trouble of telling them about it.

And if you have some spin, like an CD release party, benefit for some worthy cause, that helps.

You can also do things like give away at least one CD a set, because people like free things. Have contests where you agree to do a free house concert for someone and twenty of their friends. It’s a party at the patron’s home and you’re the entertainment. For free. They will love it and you for doing it.

Now I am sure that you all can come up with some more. Let us hear about them. Let us network our brains out and get a crowd at our next gig.

O, one last caveat. Don’t play too many times in the same place. You devalue the coin. It’s not an event if you play the same place ten times a year. Once every eight months is great. Nothing sooner.