How to Make a Band: Starting A Band The Right Way
In a perfect world, a great band would come together without much work – just you and your three best friends making rock ‘n roll magic. In reality, learning how to make a band come together requires a lot of hard work, networking and trial and error. If you’re considering starting a band, you need to focus on a few vital factors:
Musicians: This is obvious, but where do you find them? Potential band-mates might be lurking anywhere: Your workplace, the music store, your neighborhood. Go to local shows featuring the type of music you want to play, and get to know people. If you’re still at a loss to find compatible band members, look online. Sites such as Band Mix help bring musicians together with their music-only online classifieds. These classifieds could be a crucial step for you when figuring out how to make a band.
Equipment: It should go without saying that when starting a band all potential members of the band should be serious enough to have his or her own equipment. Instruments and amps aside, a PA system is a must-have if your band is serious. You don’t necessarily need one in the early stages, however, so if you don’t have one, put it on the to-do list, but don’t let it hold you back from getting the ball rolling – and don’t choose members solely based on whether they have a PA, either.
Practice space: A space to practice is absolutely vital when starting a band. If you’re lucky, one of your band mates will have a garage or basement suitable for practice. If you and your band mates are all tiny apartment dwellers or otherwise can’t use your own space, you’ll need to rent practice space. The upside of renting space by the hour is that it makes it serious – you’re not going to goof around when you’re paying for space, and the acoustics will likely be superior.
A demo: Once your band is formed and you’ve managed to develop some songs of your own, you’ll need to make a demo to give to club owners and booking agents. You can make a decent recording using home recording software for your computer if you know what you’re doing, but plan on pooling your funds to invest in a professional recording session. If you want to learn how to make a band get some good paying gigs, then remember that this is a necessary step when starting a band.
Web presence: It’s never been easier for bands and their fans to connect – and even if you’re not yet at the point of having a fan following, you need web presence to help develop it. Utilize Facebook as a supplement to your official site. Can’t afford a high-priced web designer? Check out our homepage to learn how to make a band website that’s professional and affordable.
A press kit: Young bands often snub press kits as being too commercial, then wonder why they’re not getting attention (and the bookings) they crave. Press kits should never be over looked when learning how to make a band. You don’t need a press kit if you’re content to play in your basement and the occasional battle of the bands; otherwise, it’s a necessity. Your band’s press kit can be digital or physical, and should always include a promo copy of your music, a professional photo and a professional bio. Treat your band as business as well as art, and you’ll be well on your way to achieving your goals.
If you are one of the many people trying to find out how to make a band, then following these steps will make your life a lot easier, and your band more professional. Remember, starting a band the right way will save you tons of time and headaches.
Three Music Marketing Services Worth Paying For
Your band has MP3s, a Facebook fan page, and a few live shows on the calendar. What you might not have right now is money. It’s tempting to cut corners when it comes to music marketing – there’s that hope that you’ll spontaneously go viral somehow, causing record companies to fall all over each other to sign you – but let’s get real: Very few bands become successful by accident. Your band needs music marketing, and you need to do it right.
Your band can do some of its own music marketing, but don’t underestimate the importance of investing some money in real marketing tools. They don’t have to cost a fortune, but they do have a price tag. Here are three services your band needs that you should be willing to pay for:
Photography: Your band’s media kit needs a band photo. That part is not debatable. Can you use a lo-fi snapshot taken by your kid sister? If your sister has artistic skill and the photo conveys want you want it to, sure. If the photo looks unprofessional because you don’t want to pay a photographer, you need to rethink things. A good media kit photo can be the difference between landing press coverage and getting passed over for someone else. We could give you a lengthy list of band photo do’s and don’ts, but hiring a good professional band photographer is the most reliable way to get a good photo. If you can’t afford a high-priced band photographer, advertise at a college with a photography department.
Band bio and press release writing: If you’re still starting out, chances are you don’t have a PR guy or even a manager to take care of your media correspondence. That’s OK, but it doesn’t let you off the hook for a good band bio and press release (unless, of course, you don’t want the press to take you seriously). If you’re lucky enough to have someone in your band that has a way with words and understands music marketing, you’re golden. Otherwise, hire someone.
Website creation: The biggest mistake your band can make is to limit your web presence to social media. Facebook is a necessity, but it’s most effective when used along with a real, freestanding website. Your web site isn’t just for your fans, it’s where the press goes to find contact information and media kit material, and a professional destination for links embedded in articles about your band. Web design isn’t cheap, but winging it isn’t a viable alternative. For a professional site that won’t break the bank, you can purchase a site theme here at BandWebsiteTheme.com that will allow you to showcase your music and photos, list tour dates, post to your blog, and maximize your social media music marketing.
With professional music marketing services, your band will start commanding the attention it deserves, and you can spend your time doing what you really care about: the music.
Have Your Band Website Up Fast With A Band WordPress Theme
Nowadays it is essential for bands to have band a website. Everyone (including A&R reps) are using the internet. You are pretty much setting your band up for failure if you do not start promoting your band online. We know that there are lots of bands out there with little to no experience when it comes to coding websites, so we made Band Website Theme which offers bands an easy solution using our premium band wordpress theme for their website.
Using our band wordpress theme enables your band to get a quality website up fast, saving you hours of time learning how to program a website, or hundreds of dollars paying a programmer to code a website for you. Our quality websites are search engine friendly allowing you maximum traffic potential from the search engines, which means more potential fans will find your site.
Adding content like webpages, music or videos is easy with our band wordpress theme. All themes come with a free setup manual which will show you exactly what you need to do to add new content. with our band wordpress theme you can integrate your latest Youtube videos, tweets from twitter, and even a Facebook login for your visitors allowing them to instantly sign up as members of your site. Once members of your site they can also invite there Facebook friends to join your site right from your band wordpress theme, which sends a notification to their Facebook accounts.
We will also show you how to change the color of your band wordpress theme, so your site can be whatever color your band desires. Our theme is designed with many features that can be customized to make your site work exactly the way your band needs it to work.
If you are looking for a band website then please check out the Band Website Theme band wordpress theme and give it a try. We offer a 60 days no questions asked money back guarantee. If you are not satisfied with our product we will give you a full refund.
Promote Your Band On Twitter
Twitter is a great social networking site for bands that allows you to let your followers know what you are currently up to. Just like Myspace and Facebook I would suggest targeting somewhat local followers. If you want to gain and keep your followers you are going to want to post a lot of tweets and make them interesting and creative. A great way to gain your followers fast is to find local labels, bands and other people in the music industry and start following everone they are following. Give it 24 hours or so, stop following everyone who isn’t following you, and do the process over again. Friend Or Follow is a great site that allows you to view who you are following that isn’t following you back.
Need a website for your band?
Band Website Theme is a great way to get your band a website up and running even if you have little or no programming experience. This is an inexpensive way to get a fully functional professional website up and running in an instant rather than paying a programmer hundreds of dollars and waiting weeks or months for your website. If you promote your site right and get some merch and songs available for download then your Band Website Theme will quickly pay for itself.
Promote Your Band On You Tube
You Tube is a great site for your band if you have a music video or some live footage to put up. You subscribe to peoples channels much like you would follow someone on Twitter. I would also suggest targeting local members and subscribing to their channel and unsubscribing to people who don’t subscribe back like Twitter.
Need a website for your band?
Band Website Theme is a great way to get a website up and running for your band, even if you have little or no programming experience. This is an inexpensive way to get a fully functional professional website up and running in an instant rather than paying a programmer hundreds of dollars and waiting weeks or months for your website. If you promote your site right and get some merch and songs available for download then your Band Website Theme will quickly pay for itself.
Promote Your Band On Myspace
Myspace is by far the best site to get your bands name (and more importantly, your songs) out there. At one point %90 of my bands gigs were coming from Myspace. That is because we worked hard to build our network of fans and some of those fans happened to be booking agents.
Building your network just means building your friends list. The more friends you have, the more visits to your bands profile page. If you send people requests, comments or messages, then you are going to have some of those people check you out. If you have a nice page with no friends, then who is ever going to check it out? A&R reps also surf myspace to find the “next big thing” so increasing your friends list increases your chance of one of them finding you.
A good way to build your network is to figure out what kind of audience you want to target and search for them on the myspace search page. The resulsts are the people you want to send requests to. Make up a short note to send with the request telling them something about your band. Try to be interesting and original as this will increase the amount of people who will view your bands page.
Another way is to use a friend adding sites like Adder Demon . These sites have made it faster and easier to add friends, which give you points. The more points you have, the more friend requests you get from other people. The only thing I don’t like about this is that you have no way of targeting your potential friends.
If you would like a quicker and easier way to grow and target your bands network of friends I would suggest using Friend Blaster Pro. This tool will do all of the work for you giving you more time work on more important things going on with your band.
Friend Blaster Pro is a software that allows you to gather mass amounts of friend ID’s (your targeted audience) and instantly send out requests, comments, and messages to them at an extremely fast rate. Once you have gathered your ID’s you put it on auto pilot and let the software do the rest. I have easily sent out 200 messages in 10 – 15 minutes with this program. The only thing you have to worry about are filling out the captcha codes that come up every once in a while.
Numbers Matter – The more plays and profile views you have, the more “popular” you are deemed by potential visitors/listeners. Being seen as “popular” increases your chance of somebody viewing your page, listening to your songs, and even buying your cd’s and mp3′s. A&R reps and booking agents won’t take the time to view your site unless you have atleast 100,000 views because they want bands that can bring a crowd to there shows because after all, they are putting on the show to make money. So with that said get your network going and socialize on myspace, because the more people you add and talk to, the more your numbers increase.
Plays Increaser? Now this is something that I would not use myself, but so many people are using them that I must talk about them. Plays increasers are a program that will actually use a bot to increase your song plays and profile views on your myspace page. They even allow you to select which songs get plays, how many plays they get, and you can use different proxy servers through their program to mimic visits from around the world. It also works with Youtube and Soundclick. If you have any interest in that then you can check it out at Band Plays .
Need a website for your band?
Band Website Theme is a great way to get your band a website up and running even if you have little or no programming experience. This is an inexpensive way to get a fully functional professional website up and running in an instant rather than paying a programmer hundreds of dollars and waiting weeks or months for your website. If you promote your site right and get some merch and songs available for download then your Band Website Theme will quickly pay for itself.
Promote Your Band On Facebook
Now when it comes time to promote your band on Facebook things aren’t much different than Myspace. You are going to want to choose who you target and let them know who you are and why they should take the time to listen to you. There are a few ways you can get your name out there on Facebook.
Fan Page – Fan pages are a great way to promote your band on Facebook because it lets people know how many other people are really into your music. Again, the more fans you have the more likely the person is going to check you out. You are definitely going to want to add a link to your band website on your fan page. You’ll also want to add apps to your fan page like My Band by Reverbnation. You must join Reverbnation to use them, it is free. The My Band app allows you to upload songs and put a “join band’s mailing list” on your fan page. The Mailing List is a great tool I will talk about later. Now I’d definitely say that it is a lot harder to get a fan on Facebook than it is to get a friend on Facebook so I’d suggest what my band has done. Create a personal profile for your band.
Profile – With a band profile you promote your band on Facebook by adding friends like you do with Myspace which makes it much easier to grow your network. I’d grow my network for our profile and send people messages with a link to my fan page asking them to join. Sure enough some people did, and they listened to us and loved us. You can also add the My Band Reverbnation app to your bands (and your band members personal) profiles. Always keep your status up to date and let everyone know what is going on with your band and what you are currently working on. Participating in groups and getting social will drive more traffic to your profile and fan page.
Events – Creating a Facebook event for your shows is a great way to promote your band on Facebook simply because it will be the only way that the majority of your friends and fans will know you have a show going on. This is also another reason why you are going to want to target friends/fans who live somewhat close to you (where you play most of your shows). If your band isn’t already huge then fans who live in the city of the venues you play at are going to be more valuable to you than a fan half way across the world. Get your bands friend list full of potential fans who live close to you, then let them know you have a fan page. Every time you have an event make your fan page the host of it, so you can easily invite all of the members of your page. As your fan page grows, so does the number of people you bring to your shows (confirmed guests).
Need a website for your band?
Band Website Theme is a great way to get your band a website up and running even if you have little or no programming experience. This is an inexpensive way to get a fully functional professional website up and running in an instant rather than paying a programmer hundreds of dollars and waiting weeks or months for your website. If you promote your site right and get some merch and songs available for download then your Band Website Theme will quickly pay for itself.
What Your Band Needs To Do To Put On A Killer Show
This is where all the magic happens! Nothing promotes your band better than a live show. This is your chance to shows everyone exactly what you are about. Here is what I do to get the most out of my shows.
Get to know the other bands/sound guy/promoter before the show. Meet everyone and introduce your self. Get a feel for the place and just get comfortable with your surroundings. Meet the other bands and get their details. Meet the sound guy and let him know if there is anything particular you are going to need from him/her during your set. Meet the promoters and thank them for putting on the show.
Hand out your business cards to everyone and take any cards they have in return. KEEP THEM! They might be extremely valuable to you in the future. Create a contact (black) book of all your acquired contacts so you can easily access them when desired. If you want your band to go anywhere then keeping in contact with your important “contacts” is a must.
Getting to know everybody prior to your set will definitely help getting their attention at the beginning of your set. After that it is up to you to keep them interested.
Once you are playing you must remember one thing. Stage presence is key! Playing tight and being a good musician are a must, but no matter how good you are standing in one spot trying to bob your head a bit isn’t going to do it. If you want the crowd to get into your stuff and have a fun time then you are going to have to have fun yourself. Why would anybody dance and grove to a song that the band doesn’t seem to enjoy. You need to move around, enjoy yourself and create energy that the whole crowd feels. You are supposed to be the center of attention while playing so do what it takes to keep the crowd watching and waiting for more. If you can’t play and move or jump around at the same time without looking awkward then you are going to have to practice until you can basically run laps around the stage without missing a beat. Head banging is always recommended.
Need a website for your band?
Band Website Theme is a great way to get your band a website up and running even if you have little or no programming experience. This is an inexpensive way to get a fully functional professional website up and running in an instant rather than paying a programmer hundreds of dollars and waiting weeks or months for your website. If you promote your site right and get some merch and songs available for download then your Band Website Theme will quickly pay for itself.
What Your Band Needs To Put In Your Press Kit
A press kit is something that you will use to hand out to Venues/Booking agents/music industry pro’s. It shows them all of your work (songs) plus shows them all the work you’ve put into your band. Your press kit should contain these things:
Bio – A bio about your band telling people who you are, where you come from, what you’ve accomplished and why you are different from the rest.
Demo Cd – atleast 3 of your best songs.
Photos – You will need one 8 x 10 photo. Other photos in your kit are recommened.
Contact/Booking Info – Email and/or phone number where you can be reached. Your website info as well.
Venues You’ve Played In – The booking agent will be a lot more likely to book you if you have this spot filled up with prior shows.
Press – Press is anything that anybody media related has said about your band. Tv, radio, news papers and magazines would all fall into this category.
Things You’ve Accomplised – Anything your band has done that is going to make you stand out from the rest of the bands out there. Could be a big band you opened up for, or radio play on a big radio station.
Setlist – How long do you usually play for? How long can you play for? How many sets? What is your set usually like?
Discography – If your band has more than one album out.
Need a website for your band?
Band Website Theme is a great way to get your band a website up and running even if you have little or no programming experience. This is an inexpensive way to get a fully functional professional website up and running in an instant rather than paying a programmer hundreds of dollars and waiting weeks or months for your website. If you promote your site right and get some merch and songs available for download then your Band Website Theme will quickly pay for itself.
Band Photos Are Important
Photos are extremely important as they help your band show off your infamous “image.” They put a face to the name for somebody who hasn’t seen you or your live act before. They tell people something about who you are and what you are about. One of the worst things your band can do is have poor quality photos on your website or myspace page. It look very unprofessional and will do nothing but drive your visitors away.
The best thing would be to hire a professional photographer to use their extremely expensive camera with their knowledge to create well thought out high quality photos. Unfortunately this can be expensive and some bands won’t want to spend the cash. The good thing though is that technology has made it easier for us to take quality photos ourselves.
If you are going to take photos yourself then a digital camera worth a few hundred will do just fine. I’d suggest getting somebody with some sort of photography experience to help you out with ideas and angles and such. Try and be creative and professional when taking photos. Good color and light are essential.
Editing Photos – You wonder why professional photographers photos look so good? Well aside from having great equipment they edit their photos using a photo editor like Adobe Photoshop . Photoshop has an unbelievable amount of tools and tricks to enhance your photos. I’ll usually get more creative in Photoshop then I would while taking the actual photos.
Now there is free program out to edit photos which is much like photoshop and it’s free! GIMP is a great alternative to photoshop. Check it out at Gimp.org
Need a website for your band?
Band Website Theme is a great way to get your band a website up and running even if you have little or no programming experience. This is an inexpensive way to get a fully functional professional website up and running in an instant rather than paying a programmer hundreds of dollars and waiting weeks or months for your website. If you promote your site right and get some merch and songs available for download then your Band Website Theme will quickly pay for itself.
