Begging your friends to come see you play on a regular basis is not a sustainable strategy to fill venues. You either have to build a following (put out contact flyers with your website and social media info at every gig, etc.) and/or find places that have a draw themselves to start building your following. Marketing a band is a big part of being successful.
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Bemoaning the lack of an audience
- Thread starter GCPENG
- Start date
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
Lots of "the venue sucks" comments, but the fact is, life has changed. Around here, other than restaurants and private clubs, there is exactly one place with a large built in crowd. You either play for what you did twenty years ago, or you bring a lot of people.
Exactly. My BL has, over the last five years or so, built a solid following of people who like to hang out together on weekends. It is first and foremost a social scene. We just provide the soundtrack. People singing along to "Sweet Child O' Mine," etc.
The saddest part of this post is that the musician is apologetic for the lack of patrons at the venue. The musician's job is to provide the music. The venue's job is to employ a good promoter to put butts in seats. The musician plays music to entertain the venue's patrons... not develop strategies to bring them through the doors.
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
Do you think the Stones keep getting stadium venues because they play as well as they used to, or because they fill the place?
Things ain't what they used to be. I can't put a date on it, but at some point promotion became the band's job. Of all the places we play, only one has music 7 nights a week and draws because it's a cool place to be. All the rest depend on us to provide the crowd.
+1
If it was as easy as sending out Facebook invitations, every band would pack the club every time they play.
It’s not like it used to be in my area. Back in the early 2000s my band was drawing 500 people to nearly every hometown show and even a lot of out of town shows there was a hundred people. These days it’s really hit or miss. In the last year we’ve played a few shows with over a thousand people. But we’ve also played some shows with as little as thirty people. There are things bands can do to help but it’s also just a different time.
The main thing you can do is just be smart about where and when you play. Pick venues that have more regulars over venues you may think have better sound or stage situations. Your goal if you want to build a following should be to play to new people while still retaining your loyal fans. If you're playing venues where it’s basically you playing to people who have already heard of you then you’re not getting any exposure. If you’re in an originals band play shows with some more established bands even if it means playing for free or close to it. Not ideal but you gotta be realistic about it, you can’t demand decent pay if you don’t draw anyone. Social media can be a good promotional tool but I also see a lot of bands use it very poorly to the point where it’s actually counterproductive. Lot of people in bands friend people on Facebook and then send them an invite for the band page. But you go to the band page and there’s nothing. No links to music, no videos. That kind of thing is bad because people pretty much treat it like spam email. Also fb throttles who sees your bands posts. If you get a bunch of people to like your band page who aren’t genuinely interested in the band it’s actually counter productive because your post will show up on those peoples feeds and it’s more likely they will not show up in the feeds of people who are real fans. You have to organically build followers on social media or it’s just going to be a big waste of time. You’ll basically end up trading likes with other bands that aren’t interested in your band at all but just want to boost their number of likes to make it look like they have fans when they really don’t. My band only has like 2000-3000 followers at any given time. We play shows with some bands that have like 50,000 that don’t draw for crap. Same goes with likes on YouTube. The real goal for band youtube pages should be to get comments, not views. You want to be talking to your fanbase. I know of a local band here who has 200,000+ views on one of their music videos YouTube and there’s 2 comments. Obviously they paid to boost their number of likes. If they were genuine more than 2 people would have commented on the video.
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I know you're "not looking for solutions" but I'm going to stick my nose in your business anyway.
What kind of music do you play?
Before starting said band, did you guys ask around to your friends and family to get their opinions of what a good band is?
I have a little cousin who is a metal drummer. I'm not into his kind of music at all. Being a dang near 50 year old dad, I'm "out if place" at his shows. I love that kid. But I don't go see him play because I don't enjoy it.
I only bring that up to point out that support for friends and family DOES have boundaries. I'm not going to spend more than one awful evening out to support you if I don't like your music. I'm certainly not coming out every time you play if I don't like your music.
So, what kind of band is this? What kind of music? What kind of show do you put on (or do you expect the music itself to be the show)? Are you guys a party on stage or a bunch of boring guys dressed in gardening clothes? Do you engage an audience when you have one? How have larger crowds reacted to you when you have one? Have any of these people come to see you at other venues? If they did, did you put on a great show? Did they comment afterwards or give you any feedback at all?
How about this new venue? Is it on the other side of town or out of town? Is it expensive to drink there?
Point being, any number of factors could be at play here.
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
Self-promotion is ALWAYS part of the job for musicians, and yes, the market is ever-tightening. Being a good musician is never enough. Two examples for one instrument to give you an idea.
I saw Ali Ryerson, one of the best jazz flutists in the world, this past week, in a club in CT. Twelve people at the 9:00pm show (fortunately, I was speaking with the bartender, and he said that the place was full for the early show), and she was playing with as a trio (no drums) which shows that they were trying to save money.
Sherry Winston is another world-known player - take a look at her website. She has to market herself hard, which she does well.
I saw Ali Ryerson, one of the best jazz flutists in the world, this past week, in a club in CT. Twelve people at the 9:00pm show (fortunately, I was speaking with the bartender, and he said that the place was full for the early show), and she was playing with as a trio (no drums) which shows that they were trying to save money.
Sherry Winston is another world-known player - take a look at her website. She has to market herself hard, which she does well.
Yeah, I strongly agree with this.
As far as I’m concerned, there are 2 types of clubs:
- Owners have no regular crowd, so they rely upon hired entertainment to provide one. What they don’t realize, is this only ever lasts for one night, and they have to start over again the next week trying to build a crowd from band draws.
- Owners have built a loyal following based on a reputation for having the best entertainment and atmosphere, and people flock to them every night. They only hire established quality bands, and patrons know that.
Maybe you'll have better luck when the Stanley Cup playoffs are over. The sad truth is that as a society we've been conditioned to do our own service work rather than pay for it. The idea first started in the '70's at gas stations. Instead of having an attendant wash your windshield, check your oil and pump your gas while you just sat there, you saved $.01 per gallon by doing his job. Everybody wins. You win by getting the smell of gas on your clean suit, the attendant wins, because he can stay home and collect unemployment for a few months before losing his home, and the corporation really wins by raking in billions of dollars every year through the forced free labor of its customers. Now, as musicians we either have to provide the venue with its customer base or pay them to play there. Either way we're forced free labor.
ha! humans have been asking this since before the development of language --- it was a thought! we have seen the enemy and the enemy are us!
i think many '2nd tier' venues have crowds/popularity 'in waves' as folks 're-discover' and then get bored. and if the venue is 'bigger' than the band = the entertainment can become the victim of that venue's current status.
offer a pound of free bacon to the first 100 fans through the door. good luck!
I get that self promotion is hard work, but imagine what advantage a band who takes ownership and responsibility of that stuff will have over bands who don't.
Yeah this is a problem. Something I’ve seen over time. I get that venues make their money selling drinks. But I think what was overlooked is that if you don’t get people into live music when they are young they are much less likely to support live music (local bands in particular) when they are of drinking age. I know I was going to local shows before I was in a rock band. We had some cool venues like an indoor skate park back then which didn’t even sell alcohol and was mostly kids and the scene did great for about ten years after that as those kids went through their teens and early 20s. Big problem in my town was in from 2000-2007 or so the local music scene did so well the venue owners decided to cut out all age shows thinking well the place is packed out so I can make more money if more of these people are buying drinks and over the years the crowds got worse and worse. It’s actually very difficult to get people who don’t go see other bands to come out specifically to see your band. A lot people have no love or respect for music if they don’t get into when they are young. Which is why we mainly focus on making fans out of people who genuinely love music and support other bands. It’s a waste of my time to try to beg coworkers who never go see any shows except maybe like an overpriced Bruno mars show once every three years
No solutions here unfortunately, it is tough out there. I will say that playing music in front of limited crowds with my buddies is better than not.
Yeah somehow the savings never appear do they? You go to the grocery store, check yourself out, bag your own purchases, and never save a penny on the tab. Pretty soon there won't even be a bartender, much less a 5 piece band.
If you are playing covers, people will come. If you are playing originals, get as much internet exposure as possible. Get a music video out there on the tube of you.
