Tag: "Fans"

How many times have you written off a band or an artist because of their fans? I’m sure many of us are either unwilling to admit it or simply have not realized this subconscious process of ruling out, but it happens all the time.

Regardless of the quality of the music, it is very easy for potential new listeners to be deterred because of the reputation created by a band’s fanbase. For example, what comes to mind when I mention the name Slipknot? For many of you—especially those who are not very familiar with them—my guess is that you thought of the types of people you might associate with that band; mean, dumb, meathead psychos (Sorry, Maggots. No offense!). However, while this may be true for some of their fans, this doesn’t mean you should curse the band all together. The problem is that too many people apply this stigma to the band, assuming the music is unsophisticated, dumb, mindless, or perhaps untalented. However, those who are familiar with and open to the idea of Slipknot, fan or not, know that they are a very hardworking group of extremely talented musicians. It might not be your cup of tea, but at least give them that.

Okay, so maybe the guys in Slipknot bring it upon themselves with their terrifying masks and generally offensive demeanor, but how about Tool? They have a similar demographic as Slipknot, but many listeners might find their sound to be a little “easier to swallow.” However, they often get lumped in with the same sort of crowd that makes outsiders assume the music is terrible, while in fact, tool has written some of the most interesting, progressive, and influential songs in nu metal.

Too often do people overlook a band just because of the fanbase they seem to attract. Of course, that’s not totally unreasonable. If you do not like or do not relate to a certain type of person, and that type of person likes a certain type of music, then by the transitive property, it seems safe to assume that you will probably dislike that type of music too. However, this isn’t always the case. We all have “guilty pleasures,” but why are they guilty? Because we’re embarrassed to admit when we like something outside of our own self-ascribed reputation? Are we that proud of our “taste?” Continue reading ‘Like Fan Like Band: How Fanbase Can Affect Artist Reputation’

Most bands who are just starting out often ask themselves the same question: “How do we build a local following?” And a good majority of experienced musicians would respond succinctly with, “Just play as many shows as possible,” which is certainly good advice. But an artist doesn’t just want fans. An artist wants a community, people who can get behind the music and the message.  This is the artist’s challenge. Luckily, there are some strategies that can really help get the locals on board (assuming the music doesn’t totally suck). Here are three good ways for you, the artist, to build a local following:

1.) Make a lot of friends (particularly within your genre/scene)
Okay, I know this seems like a crude piece of advice, but whoever tells you that being a musician is not a popularity contest is wrong if your goal is to have more fans. Even if you weren’t the most popular kid in high school, it helps to be outgoing. Seems obvious, but if you’re not already a charismatic socialite, this can be a challenge. Generally, every artist’s first few shows are attended by supportive friends. Later on, you may have some work friends, classmates, or even family members who come to a show every once in a while. However, if you get in with a certain crowd that you know is into your type of music, they will back you 100 percent.  This will provide you with an organic foundation for your fanbase since these people know you not just as musicians but as friends, and they can vouch for you when inviting other friends to come to your shows. Ultimately, the more friends you have that are into your music, the more personal your connection to your fanbase.  I know you like to think your music can speak for itself (and perhaps it can), but it helps to have some loyal comrades to help promote you. Consider it a sort of “street team.” Networking is just as much about social activity as it is about business. So stop playing video games, get off Facebook, and go meet some real people! Go to parties! Go to shows! Be present.

2.) Befriend other local bands with loyal fans
Don’t have many friends? Have trouble meeting new people? Well then one of the best things you can do is form strong ties with other local bands within your scene who already have somewhat of a strong, loyal following. Hang out, play shows together, sing on each other’s songs—before you know it, their fans will become your fans too. People love seeing bands work together; it’s all part of developing a musical community. The music scene is not just about one band, and it’s certainly not about rivalry. It’s about the whole movement, and the more you act like a team player, the more likely you are to gain real respect. In order to keep these types of connections going, always be sure to return favors and do what you can to help your fellow bands whenever possible. Too often connections are lost and bridges burned simply due to lack of reciprocation. Become a part of the collective musical effort, and your fans will do the same.

3.) Book and run your own shows with other locals
This is a path that more bands should be take advantage of, but don’t because of the extra work involved in booking your own shows. However, if you’re willing to put in the effort, be sure to talk to the right venues and the right people as you play “promoter.” Band-run shows are the best for everyone involved. There’s no middle man taking a cut of ticket sales, so all of the money (if any) goes back to the bands. When you are in charge, the show runs the way you want it to. One of the main advantages here is that both bands and fans will be more inclined to come to you for information and opportunities in the future. Bands are more likely to want to work with you because you hold a valuable key to the scene. This is a great way to make connections on a higher level, a level that shows how responsible and proactive you are (assuming you do a good job). When you start consistently booking solid shows, you and your band will be recognized as true team players in the community, making fans more inclined to support your work and spread the word. People love supporting a DIY effort

These are just a few ways in which you can easily build a community around your music. It has nothing to do with being a “rock star” and everything to do with being a hard-working, responsible, and dependable individual. People can see right through superficiality, so the best thing you can do is be true to yourself and to others, and lend a helping hand to your local music scene. If you do, others will respond with appreciation and respect. Now get out there and make some moves!

More like this:

• How To Build An Online Fanbase
• Fans, Friends & Followers oh my!
• Take The Stage: Best Advice Ever Given, Stories From OurStage Artists

Are you constantly on the lookout for the latest rising music stars? Are your headphones attached to your ears at all times for fear of missing a beat on the latest upcoming talent? If this sounds like you, and you’re a Canadian resident, then OurStage and the Intel® “Canada Superstars” Competition need your help!

Intel® “Canada is looking for their next superstar, but they cannot do it without your vote in the seven competition channels. In return for your efforts, you’ll be entered alongside other OurStage users to win an incredible prize package, with one Grand Prize winner receiving a Fender® Modern Player Telecaster Plus along with a Fender® Mustang II 40 Watt Guitar Combo Amp!

You only have until September 30^, to judge and be entered to win, so what are you waiting for? Get judging!

Click here to view the competition FAQs.

Click here to view the official rules.

Resident Canadians, this is your chance to judge the Intel® “Canada Superstars” Competition for a chance to win some awesome prizes! We have seven different channels that all need judging, but only you — the fans — can help us determine who the winners will be. If you do, you will be eligible for our sweepstakes in which one Grand Prize Winner will receive a Fender® Modern Player Telecaster Plus Guitar and a Fender® Mustang II 40 Watt Guitar Combo Amp — a retail value of $615.24. So what are you waiting for? Click here to select a channel and start judging now!

Hey there, fans! We need your help finding the best OurStage shredder. There are tons of talented guitarists competing in the Guitar Player “Take The Lead” Competition, but it is up to YOU to tune in and judge for the ultimate king of noodling. The winner will be featured in an upcoming issue of Guitar Player magazine and will also win a year’s supply of Ernie Ball strings and accessories! So what are you waiting for? Crank the volume up to 11, and click here to vote for your favorite OurStage guitar solo!

Intel is seeking the first ever batch of Canadian superstars and they need your help!

Starting today, you can judge in the Intel® “Canadian Superstars” Competition to decide which up-and-coming talent rises to the top across seven music channels, including electronic, singer-songwriter, urban, pop, rock,
country and Francophone (for tracks sung in French).

In addition to the opportunity to discover great new music, judging in this competition also enters you for a chance to win a fantastic prize pack that includes:

• (1) Fender® Modern PlayerTelecaster® Plus
• (1) Fender® Mustang II 40 Watt Guitar Combo Amp

Why wait any longer? Click here and start listening now!

Want a chance to audition for a performance at one of Canada’s premiere country music festivals with Carrie Underwood, Rascal Flatts and Kenny Chesney? In May, OurStage and Capital Hoedown are giving OurStage Canadian country artists the opportunity to do just that. By competing in the “Capital Hoedown Showdown” Competition on OurStage, you could be one of three finalists to audition on July 28, 2011 for a performance on the MAIN STAGE at Capital Hoedown 2011! Enter your original country song by June 24, 2011 and you’ll be on your way to rocking out with the stars.

OurStage country music FANS will also have a chance to win big in May. Judge in the “Capital Hoedown Showdown” Competition by July 11, 2011. You can help one undiscovered country act score the performance of a lifetime AND win two 3-day passes to the Capital Hoedown festival! Save some of those hard earned dollars for the beer tent, we’ve got your tickets right here.

Last month, OurStage teamed up with the Goo Goo Dolls and Clear Channel to offer upcoming artists a chance to open for the band on a future tour date. Artists across the US entered their music into 10 regional “SUBWAY FRESH ARTISTS™” Competition Channels for their chance at making it into the Finals. The Top 50 artists from each of the regional channels are now competing in the “SUBWAY FRESH ARTISTS™” National Finals Competition Channel.

The 1990s saw many bands come and go, but the Goo Goo Dolls have proven that they are here to stay. With their new record, Something For the Rest of Us, the Dolls are back on tour and ready to take the world by storm—again. We got a chance to chat with bassist Robby Takac about the new album, the tour and what it’s like to spend 25 years in one of the most recognized bands in the world.

OS: The new album, Something For The Rest of Us, was written to be a voice for the average person dealing with difficult times. What inspired that concept?

RT: Difficult times, I think! I think when you try to put a record together that talks about what happened for the last few years since you’ve done that last, you take a look at the stuff around you and if you’re doing something that’s relatively honest to what’s going on at the moment…I think you can’t help but to feel what some other folks are feeling right now. I think if you look at the news, or if you read the newspaper at all, and you see the things that are going on out there…obviously the general sentiment within the country right now is that things are a bit tougher than they have been in years prior. I think that concept itself is something that is pretty universal at the moment, aside from that top 1% that keeps making more and more money. And I think if you take a look at that entire scenario that I just mentioned, there’s a huge problem there. I’ve been asked, “What does ‘the rest of us’ mean?” and I think it’s pretty much everybody at this point. I think all the major decisions that are being made at this point are made to benefit that top 1% and that’s a very scary thing, because there’s not a huge remedy or any outcome other than this getting worse if we don’t change that idea. So, I think we really just took a look at what was going on around us and did our best to represent that.

OS: Instead of working with one engineer and one producer for the whole album, the band opted to work with numerous people. Why was that decision made?

RT: That wasn’t really a conscious choice. We made the record with Tim Palmer…we went and started it on our own and then we brought Tim on after a few months of work. We worked with Tim at our studio in Buffalo and then we went back out to L.A. and finished the record with him there. He moved to Austin and we had some time between when we finished the record and when we were going to put it out, so that gave us some time to listen to it and start to think to ourselves, there’s some things that we would probably would have done differently. So we ended up spending some time working on some stuff on our own with some of the guys in our touring band and a couple of opportunities opened up…we always wanted to work with Butch Vig, he’s been a friend of ours for a long time and we never really had the opportunity. He’s a staff guy over at Warner Brothers now, so we were able to work with him and do a song with him…and a friend of ours, John Fields, who we were always interested in working with…we were able to go in and record a song with him. That’s really the only song that we recorded from scratch; “Home” is that song. We went in and actually recorded that song when the record was done, we recorded one extra and it turned out to be that one. I think it ended up being the single because it was just the freshest in our mind, the most current-sounding. So that’s what we ended up leading with.

OS: What were some of the second-round changes made before the release?

RT: Korel Tunador, our touring singer and keyboard player, came in and played an awful lot of stuff. We went back in and re-sang some background vocals and just kind of tightened stuff up a little bit more. I think we just felt like the record could have been a little bit more focused than it was, and so we spent the time going through all the tracks and finding the things that worked and fixing the things that didn’t….we put real strings on stuff, too. Originally, we had sampled strings on some of the songs, so we went in and recorded some real strings, as well. Most of the changes were fairly minor, but I think when you put them all together, it was a pretty large amount of changes, although they’re barely discernible, probably, to most people.

OS: The Goo Goo Dolls have been a touring band for 24 years. When going out in support of a new project, how does the band balance out promoting the release while also honoring the older material?

RT: I think we know the songs that have made their way into normal life for folks through the radio, or walking through the supermarket, or whatever it might be. I think we’ve got a pretty good handle on what those songs are, so we try our best to get those thirteen, fourteen songs in that we’re pretty sure that someone has come there to hear and might be disappointed if they don’t. We do our best to work in about half of the new record, about six songs, and then throw in a couple that we think are gonna be big numbers in the show that aren’t necessarily the most popular on a mainstream level. Those moments that we think are representative of what we can do that are a little bit outside of what people know of us.

OS: How have Goo Goo Dolls fans changed over the years?

RT: Some of them got older, many of them have had children and they’ve been bringing them to the shows, which is one of the more interesting things that we’ve seen over the years. There are some kids that come to see us play, they’re fifteen, sixteen-years-old and they don’t know the world without this band. I mean, not that they focus on it all day and night, but we just always have been. If their parents were fans, our records have been around their house. If their parents were fans in college, then they’re maybe a little bit more knowledgable about what we did…but at the least, they’ve heard “Iris” somewhere, so they have some sort of connection to what we do, be it good or bad. I think having those concepts gone on within what we do, the crowds have gotten pretty varied. There are kids, there are older people there…we don’t draw 4,000 goth kids, we don’t draw 4,000 housewives, we don’t draw 4,000 accountants or 4,000 hipster kids…it’s like we draw 1,000 of each of those to the show. And I think that’s what makes our crowd pretty interesting.

OS: Many OurStage artists have named Goo Goo Dolls as a big influence in their careers. What advice would you offer to them?

RT: Make sure you like what you’re doing, because you might be doing it 25 years later. Be as honest as you can…at some point, you might get called on it. And aside from that, remember that success—monetary success or commercial success—is a by-product of doing something well. The success is not the product, and I think that’s what you need to keep in your mind. Just because you’re doing something and you are not making great financial strides, doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. And I think that that, to me, is the most important thing you can keep in your mind. It’s your craft, it’s your art, it’s your ideas and if those are good ideas, not whether anyone else likes them—that’s a whole ‘nother issue. But I think you’ve got to hold that stuff close to your heart and know for yourself that you’re doing the right thing.

Continue to judge in the “SUBWAY FRESH ARTISTS™” National Finals Competition and you could win big, too. The fan who earns the best predictor score in the channel will win two tickets to see the Goo Goo Dolls perform live along with a meet and greet with the band!

Check out this video of “Broadway” from the Clear Channel Radio performance we attended in NYC! Also, make sure you check the tour dates below the video to see the Goo Goo Dolls on tour this fall.

10/6 Stranahan Theater -Toledo, OH
10/7 Indianapolis, IN  - Murat Theatre
10/10 Green Bay, WI  - Weidner Center
10/ 11 Sioux Falls, SD - Augustana College
10/ 15 Myrtle Beach, SC  - House of Blues
10/ 16 Chattanooga, TN  - Tivoli Theatre
10/ 18 Montclair, NJ  - The Wellmont Theatre
10/ 19 University Park, PA - Eisenhower Hall
10/ 20 Kingston, NY  - Ulster PAC
10/ 23 Latrobe, PA - St Vincent College
10/ 24 Mansfield, PA - Decker Gymnasium
10/ 26 Portland, ME  - State Theatre
10/ 28 Fairfield, CT  - Pitt Center
10/ 30 Salamanca, NY - Seneca Allegany Casino and Hotel
11/ 07 Glasgow, UK  - Academy Glasgow
11/ 08 Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK – Academy Newcastle
11/ 09 Leeds, UK – Academy Leeds
11/ 11 Birmingham, UK – Academy Birmingham
11/ 12 Manchester, UK – Manchester Academy
11/ 13 London, UK – Academy Brixton
11/ 15 Norwich, UK – Norwich UEA
11/ 16 Bristol, UK – Academy Bristol
11/ 17 Leicester, UK – Academy Leicester
11/ 20 Liverpool, UK – Academy Liverpool
11/ 21 London, UK - HMV Forum
12/30 Thackerville, OK – WinStar World Casino
12/31  Thackerville, OK – WinStar World Casino

In a world where bands are constantly spending hours updating their Facebook, Twitter and MySpace pages, it may seem like having an official Web site is a thing of the past. In fact, a large percentage of bands these days have their bandname.com site re-direct to their MySpace.  While this will save you a bit of time and maintenance effort, having an official Web site can actually be better in the long run.

Though technologically hip, Facebook and Twitter are both extremely limited in terms of what bands can do with them. Facebook’s Pages for bands are uniform and do not allow for HTML customization. While this is good news for people sick of MySpace crashing their browser, music is not the focus here. Most bands’ Facebook pages have a separate tab for music, or they have a small music section on the bottom right corner of the page (of course, those with more web experience can make a flashy Facebook page for their band).

Eminem's website is simple, straight-forward and eye-catching.

Twitter is good for up-to-the-minute brief updates (140 characters at a time), posting links to other sites and speaking directly to fans, but you really can’t do much in terms of posting content.

And then there’s MySpace, which many consider to already be “dead.” Though the fans have certainly abandoned MySpace communication, it is still the go-to, one-stop-shop for promoters, booking agents and talent scouts. The problem with MySpace occurs when bands decide to fill their pages with videos, graphics, ads and banners that can make the entire viewing process slow and unenjoyable.

With an official Web site, the power is in your hands. With completely customizable HTML, you have total control over the branding and design of the site. You also have control over how long the site exists. Think about it: If you’re only on Twitter and Facebook and these sites shut down someday, your band will have zero web presence! Your Web site will also be an official place for fans to go to get all the information and content they need, from live videos to song lyrics to blog posts and chat forums.

OurStage artist Danielle Barbe's website, created on BandZoogle

From an internet marketing standpoint, it only makes sense to own yourbandname.com, as fans may assume you have the page and try to go there. You will also be the first result in search engines, instead of another band or a completely unrelated company.

Now, for those of you who think you’re not web-savvy enough to create a Web site from scratch, there are other options. One is using BandZoogle.com, which is basically a platform that helps you create the Web site. BandZoogle will help you create and customize pages, and all you’ll need to do is fill in the blanks.

You can have fun with your Web site by using it as a blog, a fan community page and a news site. Just make sure that it’s clean, easy to navigate and updated consistently!

In today’s day and age, technology allows artists the opportunity to be in a lot of locations where their fans hang out.  The increase in smartphones, for one, has made the idea of being everywhere your fans are, quite literal. Today, artists are empowered to stay connected to their to those that support them, and engage them on a meaningful level from anywhere.

You know you can use Facebook to engage your fans from your smartphone, but the lack of branding opportunities perhaps makes the experience less than what it could be. Fortunately, there are a few businesses out there that work with their clients to create smartphone applications that represent the artists brand image and allows them to engage directly with their fan base. One such company is Mobile Backstage.

“Mobile Backstage is an individually branded social application for bands and artists to interact directly with their devoted fans via mobile.” The application offers the fan a focused way to interact with the artist, undisturbed by the often times distracting social media sites. The application immerses the fan in your own brand and your own image.

Some of the features include:

• Sharing – Create and share exclusive media to your most committed fans
• Music – Interactive discography, in-app listening and easy shopping prompts via iTunes
• Visual – A tailored look and feel for each customer
• Fan Interaction – Rate and comment on all media, create and share fan media, relevant and real-time feedback and other basic social media features

Tools like this are really great stepping-stones for artists in their revenue-generating careers. The cost of setup isn’t cheap and it is only when you’re gigging consistently and have a nice revenue stream that a tool such as this should be considered. The application cost $75/month to run, and has a $1,516 initial setup cost.

Let us know what you think about these applications. If you have any experience with mobile apps as a Mobile Backstage, share your wisdom!