I had tried writing this all out without doing some name-dropping, making references to "Example A," "Figure 3," "Generic Metal Band X," etc. It wasn’t working. I don’t think I can convey my enthusiasm for the topic without referencing the artists who’ve inspired me on this train of thought.
My goal is to discuss and share ideas of how bands can mutually help themselves and eachother. As a music listener, I’m always wondering about how music is catching my attention in the first place. I’m not talking about music I learn about via the radio, television, etc. I’m mainly talking about bands which I initially stumble upon online or in person. What happened for this music to reach my ears? As a musician, how can this work for me to reach others? As a fan and mutual supporter of other musicians, how can this serve to help them in today’s music business environment?
Probably the largest hurdle to overcome is just getting your name and music into someone’s awareness. After that, it is up to the artists to make the best impression they can. The real control is with our listeners, our audience, and if they like what the musician is doing enough to further support them.
I’ll start with the process of bands touring together as headlining and opening acts. I’ll illustrate this using a Venn diagram of overlapping circles.
In this illustration…
The larger circle represents the fans of the headlining band who are going to a show. The smaller circle represents the fans of the opening band attending the same performance. The shaded areas where the circles overlap represents those fans who are already familiar with the music of both bands. The unshaded areas represent those fans who are not already familiar with the other band. When it comes to gaining the awareness of more people, the goal is to maximize the most number of fans who are not already familiar with both groups.
I play bass in two Irish bands. If one of my low-key bands were to open for a well-known Irish band like, say, U2, then the example from the illustration would be "f." My band’s circle might represent maybe... 10 people, all of whom have already heard of U2. The larger unshaded area represents a stadium full of maybe 18,000 people who have never heard of my band. Afterwards, 18,010 people at the show would then be aware of both bands. My band would have the most to gain in terms of exposure.
With varying degrees of audience size and popularity, the other examples in the illustration show the relationships of exposure. The example where both bands have the most to gain is example "a."
A friend of mine from my hometown is the lead singer of a band known as HURT. There are pockets around the U.S. where HURT can really pack the house. There are other places where it seems like no one has heard of them. I’ve seen HURT opening for much larger bands like Stain’d and Alice In Chains. I’ve also seen HURT headlining with smaller local bands as their opening acts. In many of these cases, it looks to me like the majority of people at their shows are already familiar with all of the bands performing. It feels like their gains in new recognition have been very, very small. I am eager to see HURT’s fan base grow to international proportions, even though I feel that for the most longevity, their growth should come in small increments.
Recently I had a chance encounter with a band named Diafanes. They are from Brazil and were on their 2nd tour of the U.S. When I saw them perform, they were performing for free at a charity event on their day off between two paying gigs. After seeing them perform, buying their CDs and listening to their music, I felt that there was much more to them. I did some web searching on the band and its members. It appears, from what I saw online, that they are a huge band in Brazil. Yet from a few pictures and videos I saw of their U.S. performances, they didn’t have very large audiences here. Why? Because no one had heard of them.
On one hand, I see U.S. bands with solid fan bases touring and performing for large audiences, but with little to no national media exposure. This means they are not likely to be well-known in other countries, either. On the other hand, I know that there are foreign bands which are big in their home countries. A very small percentage of these foreign bands ever gain large exposure in the States. I remember hearing that, for foreign bands, gaining popularity in the U.S. is like finding the Holy Grail. They may be big back home, but even their own fans don’t feel like the band has really attained stardom until they make it in the States, as well. I’m guessing this is still true, today.
HURT has posted on YouTube little video tour blogs of their adventures. Most of these have shown things like their buses breaking down, members of the tour staff acting silly or encountering strange tourist attractions. Some have even shown the band members working on new songs in the bus. On HURT's message board, their fans eagerly awaited these tour blogs and talked about them extensively afterwards.
After my introduction to Diafanes, they posted on the internet the first part of their own video blog of their U.S. tour. This blog wasn’t too different from HURT’s except for a couple small but important details. For one, they segued between topics with a bit of scenery or stage set overlaid with little soundbites of the music from their CDs. This addition of music is a nice touch because it gives a taste of their music to anyone who stumbles upon their video by chance. Second, they talked briefly with a member of one of the bands they performed with, providing the band member’s name and the name of his band, "Consider The Source." They followed this with a clip of Consider The Source performing. Since I am now a fan of Diafanes, I watched this clip a couple times before I realized that I liked the brief sample of music from this other band.
Hmmm… wait a second. One moment I had never heard of Consider The Source. The next moment I am looking them up online, finding more examples of their music and now I am totally digging them. How the heck did that happen?
That’s when it occurred to me that perhaps I had stumbled upon a new idea. Touring is expensive. It doesn’t cost much of anything to post a video online. All you need is a simple camcorder, a laptop, decent video editing software, and an internet connection. The Internet is global. Major labels, television, and radio stations no longer have as much control over music exposure as they used to have.
What if a foreign band famous in their country were to come to the States and tour with one of these hugely popular, yet still relatively unknown U.S. bands? Add to that a concerted effort by both bands to produce video tour blog segments. Both bands' sets of footage would feature themselves and their music but would also show a little of the band they are touring with. The search tags for the videos can further help both bands gain exposure for eachother. The headlining U.S. band would provide the large home audience at the shows for both bands. The foreign band’s fans back home would see their tour blogs and suddenly be introduced to this new U.S. band they may otherwise have never heard about. Going back to my illustration, this would be like example “a” where two relatively large bands would both gain a huge increase in cross-recognition among new fans. If all goes well, the U.S. band can then maybe go visit their country and tour as the opening act.
One of the points someone has already made to me is that it would be difficult to find such a band match-up where their fans would like both bands. I have gone to concerts where I maybe liked the other band or didn’t care for them at all. I have never seen a band so bad or so dissimilar to my tastes that it affected my opinion of the band I was originally there to see. My guess is that this is the same for most people and that there would be little risk.
I know this isn't a one-size-fits-all idea for every band and there are multiple other issues to consider. Maybe some variation on this may be helpful.
It's almost gotten to the point that you can't even give away CDs, anymore.
Touring is expensive. The internet is virtually free. I'm just kicking around ideas of how to best combine these two to our advantage.
Thanks for reading and please share your thoughts.
