Thanks for taking the time respond thoroughly. A lot of truth and good ideas there, very cool of you to share! Will definitely help me out along the way.gibson_ewok wrote:I did some of that, but not much. Basically if someone adds you to a group that's related to sound or something like that, and everyone posts links to their tunes in there everyday, then that's fair game I guess, and sometimes I post in there (but generally I find it's not even effective). I've slowly culled out things that I've found to be almost not effective, such as posting on forums all the time (you might get 50 or 100 plays max from a GOOD forum, where everyone's heaps involved). I don't understand why people are posting the links to their tracks on every other entry out there, how many people do you think will honestly listen to it just because you posted it on another entry? I'm a firm believer of promotion not being about quantity, but quality, which is exactly why I haven't posted my link on anyone else's entry. First of all it's rude, but secondly, no one's going to listen to it that way anyway.If you don't mind me asking Mr. Bill, when you were building up your Facebook following, did you post links to your stuff on other people's pages and/or group pages, etc.? I haven't done this yet out of fear as being seen as spam, so I just post in a handful of forums here and there. It works slowly and people keep finding me, but I feel like there's a lot more I could be doing to spread the word without being a spammy prick.
I released a lot of free music, and did a lot of Ableton tutorials all for free, so a lot of people found me that way in the early stages, again playing a lot of gigs (in the start I played a gig almost every week for free, which actually cost me money).
Also, getting affiliated with labels can be a good thing, even if you are releasing things for free, and making proper personal connections with these people, for instance, like if you have good friends that run decent sized labels that have hardcore followers that will listen to anything that label tells them too, then sometimes you can reach out to those friends and get them to post about your stuff also (no point getting just anyone to post about it, you want to target the correct crowd otherwise they just don't get interested and won't become a fan anyway).
Ektoplazm was a big one for me. I did a few releases through there which all got around 10,000 downloads, which helped a lot when it came to sorting out international tours. Also, collaborating with a lot of people, and doing remixes for people, that gets that whole cross-promotional thing going which helps a bit, too. Especially in Australia, where at the moment everyone is remixing everyone else's tracks, it's really helping build the scene a lot.
Also, mailers. Like I just released some stuff through BeatPort (about a week after my Beat The Clock entry) and I got the label (Adapted Records) to attach the link for my track to their mail out which was initially just going to inform people about my Cerebellum Serenade release on BeatPort, it was also made very clear on that mail out that it was a free track if they voted, also with the voting/giving the track away for free system, I made sure to make it very clear that I was just going on an honesty based system, so if people voted, they just had to tell me that they voted and I would give them the track for free without any solid proof that they actually had. I think that kind of built a small level of mutual respect which people also like I think.
Anyway, you just have to be creative with promotion I think, figure out new ways to contact people, and new ways to deal with getting your music to them. Free music is a good one to begin with, Ektoplazm is worth checking out, also BandCamp. I also put a new track on SoundCloud on almost a weekly basis (I don't hold on to any tunes for too long), I think it's important to keep a constant buzz going and keep people interested.
There's plenty of ways to go about it, you just have to get in contact with the right people, and aim your music at the correct audiences to build up a true fan base that actually cares about what you're doing, as I said before it's pointless having 50,000 Facebook and SoundCloud followers that just don't listen to your music or come to your gigs, and you can tell exactly when someones bought their fans, they'll have like 10 or 20,000 followers, but their statuses on Facebook will get like 5 likes and 5 comments, then someone will have 3 or 4,000 true fans, and they'll get 100's of comments and likes and much more plays on SoundCloud etc..
Anyway, hope that helps.
Cheers,
Bill.
I agree with the spamming and overblown numbers games, it's pretty silly. Good luck with the contest man, if you win it will be well deserved.
