How to Promote Your Music Online: From Forum to Field

Posted on 31 Aug 2010 at 15:39

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Continuing Expert Reviews' summer festival features, we headed off to the Bloodstock metal fest in Derby to talk to some of Britain's up-and-coming musicians about the software and web tools that helped get them on to the bill.

The Bands

We spoke to Sarah and Pete Humphries from Zocalo, James "Rambo" Pearce of Stone Circle and Matt Pascoe and Kyle Willoughby from Credit to Dementia.

Zocalo are a London based hard-groove/blues-groove five-piece who play groovy fun time beer drinking music that they call "the blooze". With broad appeal among fans of metal, groove and blues, they bring lashings of old-school groove and mix it up with a newer sound, bluesy solos, funk laden bass-lines, pounding drums, fat riffs and soaring female vocal lines.

Stone Circle are one of the UK underground's shining stars of progressive death metal, renowned for their intelligence combined with ferocity and songwriting skills. Likened to Opeth and Katatonia, they've started making a name for themselves live and attracting attention from festivals and promoters.

Credit to Dementia hail from Cornwall and take their influences from many different forms of metal as well as other musical styles; in their own words "some people think we're a thrash band, others think we're death metal and some probably just think we're a load of crap"; they invite the curious to see them play, listen to their music and decide for themselves. Having built up a keen Cornish following, playing Bloodstock was a key step towards the aim of taking their unique blend of metal to a wider stage.

Promotion

The first thing you need to do (preferably after the bit where you write songs and practice) is to get yourself out there. A MySpace page is every new band's first stop on the internet, but as Stone Circle's Rambo told us, it can be hard to stand out among the crowd.

"As for MySpace and getting people to pay attention I think having a good branding and design for your page that suits your music is really important. If you see a MySpace page these days that looks a bit average and your band logo doesn't stand out I think most people will just ignore the friend request or maybe be not quite as inclined to listen to your music. A level of professionalism is what makes the difference".

MySpace's key feature was highlighted in our interview with Zocalo: "you can put your music up there for free; it's cripplingly expensive to do that on your own site".

The other big social networking platforms are Facebook and Twitter. Both continue to grow in popularity and the ease of mass promotion and event scheduling is something that appeals to all the bands we spoke to.

Credit to Dementia's Matt Pascoe summed up the necessity of an online presence, particularly when it comes to promoting gigs. "Without it, the majority of the people back home in Cornwall that turn up to our gigs wouldn't know about them if wasn't for online promotion. It's just something that everybody does now. Five years ago, everyone would just call each other up."

There are downsides to such easy information sharing. The guys from Credit to Dementia noted that "on Facebook there's an element of bitchiness. If you post something, if there's anyone negative, they're not going to hold back... you can say anything and, unlike a real social situation, no one can really challenge you about it because you're online." However, the band acknowledges that even this has its benefits: "it doesn't matter what people say – at least they're talking about us and know our name".

ReverbNation's free service offers tools including gig booking, merchandise sales and tools to help organise your fans into promotional street teams, as well as the usual music streaming. However, the sheer number of features can be overwhelming. Zocalo's Pete also notes that "it's very American and can be a bit confusing; you get seven gig offers a week but they're all in Georgia or Connecticut or New York state" - not exactly practical for a young British band.

Getting your own domain is another important step. You can register a domain name for as little as £3 per year and hosting is also cheap. However, design, security and bandwidth are key issues. Zocalo have opted to hire a pro to handle their forthcoming site: "You can't have some half-arsed my-mate-did-it-over the weekend or freebie site. You have to have a serviced site. Unfortunately, you can't stream content unless you've got a lot of money because of the cost of bandwidth required."