My band needs help. Any ideas?

[Ricktus]

Ok so here's the deal. I play in a band (kinda like electro pop, but with soul influenced vocals) and we have just made our debut recording available for free download via our website, the trouble is of course that hardly anybody knows we are there! Most bands would tackle this by getting out there and playing live, but that's not an option for us as I live in Bulgaria, and the vocalist lives in Arizona USA. We write and record together by sending files backwards and forwards over the net.

We plan to self release an album towards the end of the year, and we do know about itunes and CD Baby etc, it's just the bit where you build an audience in the beginning that is something of a struggle for us.

Does anybody have any ideas of what we could do to promote ourselves and get our music heard, bearing in mind our situation?

Thanks
Rick

[aleutiancowboy]

Well for one thing promote your website whenever you can. You didn't even tell your sly brothers where we could go to check out your download.

I play in a band that when we started out was very similliar to your situation. Two of us lived here in Unalaska year round and the other two lived in Washington and came up to Unalaska during the fishing season. While we were popular here nobody else knew about us. We recorded an album and like you put free downloads on our website and myspace. However what got us more hits on the website and sold more CDs was that each of us sent out a cd to radio stations. The guys who were in Washington sent out cds to there local stations that played that type of music and us here in Alaska did the same. We targeted more of the smaller stations that we were more likely to get more airplay time on and it worked. We started getting hits on our web site from people who had heard a song of ours on a station. It is not a guarantee that you will get airplay time but sending out free cds never hurts.

[Ricktus]

Well for one thing promote your website whenever you can. You didn't even tell your sly brothers where we could go to check out your download.

Yep, that just proves how bad I am at promotion lol, check us out and download our music at:

http://www.thebeautifulones.org/

The free CD's to small radio stations thing is a good idea indeed! Like you say it can't hurt. Thanks for that 

[PeripheralxMvmnt]

Theres a band called The Postal Service that wrote music the same way (hence the name). Read up on them, and maybe you can find out something that way.

[Tyler]

Check out Amie Street - http://amiestreet.com/page/how-it-works

Get yourself Myspace and Facebook pages if you don't already have them.

Once you are on Amie Street, Myspace and Facebook then promote the heck out of your music on the web.

You should also do some podcasts and post them up on iTunes. 

[Ricktus]

Hey Peripheral, thanks for the info, I'll check out The Postal Service!

Tyler, We do already have a myspace account: www.myspace.com/beautifulonesinternational  although I've kinda neglected the social networking thing 'cause there are so many bands all in the same boat trying to get attention. I'll give it another go though, and will sign up for Facebook and Amie Street. The podcast thing is a great idea, I guess some video blogs and stuff would work well too.

Thanks for the help guys! 

Rick