Being in a band is tough these days. I mean, it was never easy, but now it's a lot less clear what it is you have to do. The reason for all this uncertainty comes down to the internet. While it was out there making it ridiculously simple to steal the food from Lars Ulrich's unborn child's mouth, it was also telling bands that it was the only show in town for promotion and distribution of their music.
It's 2010. How does one go about doing this now?
Well, let's assume that you're at a certain level. You've written some songs. You've maybe even played a few gigs and recorded some tracks. Well done. Pat on the back for you. The next step is getting the word out about your band. For many bands this means one of two things - get your own website, and get a MySpace page.
My contention is that you don't really need a full bells and whistles website, and you certainly don't need a MySpace. What you do need - and this is critical - is a band name that is easily Google-able and doesn't currently give the name of any other entity, be it a business, a club and most definitely not another band.
MySpace is dead. It may not seem like it, with the likes of Radio 1 and bands still promoting it, but the eyeballs and ear-holes are elsewhere. There are a number of reasons for this, but the main one is the one of the very things that made MySpace so popular in the first place - it's customisation options. It allowed users to run whatever widgets and themes they wanted, which inevitably led to the site becoming nigh-on unusable. Add this to a flash-player for the music that always seemed a bit sluggish and ugly, and it wasn't long before it became more hassle than it was worth. Its gig-listing and messaging options are still clunky. Tom and his mates there have tried to keep up with the Jones', but it's too late.
So what to do? First thing I'd suggest is to buy your own domain name. It's not expensive and it looks a hell of a lot better to be able to put thisismyband.com on a poster than www.myspace.com/thisismyband. No?
Buying a domain name is as simple as heading over to the likes of GoDaddy or Fasthosts, typing in the name you want and then paying for it if it's available. When you have your domain, you can set up email accounts of the form singer@thisismyband.com or guitarist@thisismyband.com - again, way cooler than dikhed142@hotmail.com or even thisismyband@gmail.com.
However - and this is important - I'd recommend you stick to 1 email address to give out to promoters, venues, other bands or whatever. You can still use something like Gmail as your interface for your email (in fact, I'd recommend Google Apps for your Domain), but it's important that every member of your band has access to the same messages. Otherwise there can be arguments or excuses. Neither are fun to put up with.
So what else can you do now that you own a domain? Well, the most obvious thing is have a website. For nothing. There are a few web services out there that offer a one stop shop for your website needs, and the one I use for this very blog is Posterous. Stupidly easy to set up and customise, you can create your site simply by mailing your first blog post to post@posterous.com. Once you've verified that you want to have a site you can set up different pages for things like music (coming to that in a minute), videos, info, contact details etc, as well as standard links to other sites that you'll set up. 'Other sites?' I hear you whine? Yes, other sites. Shut up.
Once you've added everything you need at Posterous, and made the horrific realisation that I expect you to become a blogger, you need to set up a few other sites in order to effectively get the word out to your social circle and beyond what you're up to. Currently, this means Facebook and Twitter.
You already know about Facebook. You've probably got an account already. What you need to do is log into your personal account and create a 'Fan Page' for your band. Then go back to Posterous and follow their instructions for autoposting to Facebook. After you've done that, it's time to start annoying everyone on your friends list by asking them to 'like' you. I know. I already don't like you. Unfortunately this is somewhat of a necessary evil. Once you convinced people to 'like' your band, they'll be able to see your blog updates in their Facebook feed, via the magic of autoposting. Make sure when you've created your page to give it a decent URL - something like facebook.com/thisismyband - the facility to do this is here.
A lot of people don't 'get' Twitter, but that's not Twitter's fault. It's a great way to communicate to a lot of people at once, and, like Facebook, it can be autoposted to from Posterous. This can save you a load of hassle and going to different sites to post updates. Sign up for Twitter here (if you're sensible, use your band-name - ie @thisismyband). Then find people in your area to follow. Twitter will help you with this. For your sanity I advise turning off the email notifications you get when someone 'follows' you. It's tedious, and if you're doing it right you'll start to be inundated with emails, so better to just opt out of that.
It is possible to autopost updates from Facebook to Twitter, but Twitterers in general would rather you went the other way around. Use Twitter as your first stop for little updates, and via the Selective Tweets Facebook app you can pick and choose which Tweets go to Facebook. All it asks is that you add #fb to the end of Tweets you want to go beyond Twitter.
Interact with your Twitter followers. Talk to them. Engage in the discussions you see. Make yourself, and therefore your band, known to them. Invite them to gigs. Link them to songs. Hell, give them songs.
Finally, for this post - blog. Blog your wee heart out. Blog about upcoming gigs, photo shoots, video shoots, tour plans or just your thoughts on guitar tunings. Posterous makes it dead easy to do it - you just email post@posterous.com from the email account you set it up from, and it will do the rest. Attach an MP3, and Posterous will embed a player. Attach a video, and it will make a video player. Attach some photos, and Posterous will make a gallery. A complete idiot could manage it. And with all the right autoposting settings in place, those blog posts will appear in Facebook, Twitter, and whatever other sites you've set up.
There is a temptation to stick with Facebook, because that's where your friends are. Don't. They'll already know about your band. Twitter is where you can break new ground. Try it out, and come back soon for the next instalment, entitled 'part 2 - music'.
