The “Four P’s” is a term used to describe the traditional Marketing Mix: Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion. Well, I’m going to borrow from that expression and talk about the Four P’s of Playing Live Shows: Preparation, Promotion, Performance, and Post-Show. This series of blog posts will cover the things that you can be doing as a live performer to maximize each show. Part 1 is all about preparation.

The Four P’s of Playing Live Shows: Preparation

We’re going to start with the assumption that you’ve chosen a venue and confirmed a date with the venue booker. For tips about getting booked, see one of my previous posts 5 Ways to Impress Venue Bookers and Get More Gigs.

Once the gig is confirmed, here are some things you will need to prepare for the show:

Who will the opening band(s) be?

I guess the first question really is will there even be an opening band? The answer will almost always be yes, as the benefits are clear. An opening band can warm up the crowd, hopefully bring their own fans to the show, and help with the promotion of the show. So when choosing an *opening band, a few things to consider (*and if you happen to be the opening band, much of this advice can still apply):

Does their music complement yours?

There are two schools of thought: one being that you find a band that is similar to yours for a more cohesive evening of music. The other option is to go for something totally different to give the audience a very different experience from each band. There is no wrong or right answer, it really depends on what kind of show you want people to experience that night.

Would their audience like your band’s music?

Another consideration to make is if there is a potential for the opening band’s fans to like your music. After all, in an ideal case, you are going to gain some new fans that night.

Will they help with promotion?

When choosing opening bands, take into consideration whether they are a proactive band that works hard on promoting shows. What you don’t want is a band that will simply show up the night of the show, without having done any legwork to bring their fans, and simply play and ask for their money. This can be hard to avoid sometimes, but do some research, and ask around before making a final decision.

Do they have other shows booked around the same date?

You also don’t want the opening band to have another show scheduled within a few days of yours, or worse, the same night as your show (I’ve actually seen that happen many times, where an opening act books another gig for later the same night). It is completely demoralizing, and will likely result in that band not drawing as many people to the show.

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The Devil is in the Details: Show Logistics

It’s a good idea to get the logistics for the show sorted out well in advance. This includes:

Compensation

What’s the deal at the venue? A guarantee? Percentage of the door? Pass the hat? A percentage of bar sales? Once you know the deal, work out how the compensation will be split with any opening bands. Do not wait until the night of the show to do this. Sort it out well in advance and save yourself the potential headache the night of the show.

Food/beverage deals for bands

What’s the deal for food and drinks for band members? Free? Staff price? Full price? Any limits on quantity of meals/drinks?

Guest List

Is there a limit to the number of guest list spots? Do you have to submit the guest list to the venue in advance?

Ticketing & Seating

What is the cover charge? Is choosing the price up to the venue or the bands? Are tickets sold in advance? If so, where are they available? Or is it simply pay at the door? Can people reserve seats?

Load-in time and logistics

What time is load-in at the venue? Do the bands load-in at different times? Is there a special entrance to load-in equipment?

Sound & Equipment

What sound equipment is provided by the venue? What are bands responsible for? Are the bands going to share certain equipment? Is there a sound tech provided by the venue? Can you bring your own sound tech? What time is soundcheck for each band?

Start & End Time

What time do the doors open for the public? What is the start time for the show? What is the schedule for the bands? Is there a specific time that the show has to be over by?

Door logistics

Who is taking money at the door? The venue? A volunteer from the band(s)? Is there a cashbox with change supplied by the venue? A stamp to stamp people’s hands?

Room set-up

Some venues offer different set-up styles for the room, whether it’s all seating, no seating, some tables with chairs, etc. Talk to the venue and decide on the best option for your show.

Merch table

Is there a table/space for merchandise? Where is it located? Is there lighting provided? Does the venue take a % of sales? Is there a cashbox with change supplied by the venue? Who is responsible for selling merch? Venue? Bands? Can you sell merch throughout the night, or only before and after the show?

Promo materials for the venue

What does the venue need from you? Posters? Flyers? Bio? Band photo? Press Release? Be sure to supply them with everything they need well in advance of the show.

Download a Sample Live Show Logistics Checklist to help stay on top of these details: Download Here

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Build Your Set List

I touched on this in a blog post about how to find a booking agent, but building a set list is really an art unto itself. Your set-list will determine what kind of experience your fans will have. Some considerations when building your set-list:

• Set-length: How long of a set will you play? Decide what length would have the most impact and strikes the right balance between giving a satisfying set, and leaving the audience wanting more.
• Select the songs: Once you know how long your set will be, choose the songs you want to play that night, including for an encore, if it should come up.
• Pacing: Do you have high-energy songs and low-energy songs? What kind of experience do you want to give the audience? Start slow then build? Are there songs where the audience can participate? Where do you want those songs to go in the set? Figure out how those songs can best work off of each other.
• Song transitions: Make sure your songs flow well together and that everybody in the band knows when there will be a small break for interacting with the audience, and when you’ll be going straight into the next song.
• Type of venue/seating arrangement: Is it a dingy bar, a night club, a fancy theatre, a coffee house? What’s the seating arrangement? This can impact the type of set you want to offer.

Once you’ve decided on your set list, rehearse it. Then rehearse it again. And once more. Make sure everyone in the band can play that set with their eyes closed and that they know all of the cues and transitions between songs without having to think twice.

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Visual Presentation: On Stage & Merch Table

On Stage

You should also prepare what your visual presentation will be at the show. Does your band have costumes? A certain dress code? Will you have video projections playing in the background? A banner with your band name hanging on stage? A custom drum head with your logo?

For some good ideas for visuals at your show, check out Chris “Seth” Jackson’s guest post on the Bandzoogle Blog: No One Will Remember Your Band: 10 Ways to Stop Being Forgettable

Merch Table

How about for your merch table? Do you have an eye-catching set-up? Proper signage?

Here are some essentials to have for your merch table:

• Signage: Your band name, list of merch items & prices displayed clearly
• Cashbox with change (don’t rely on the venue for this)
• Inventory sheets to track your sales
• Pens/markers (for mailing list, signing autographs)
• Mailing list sign-up: Email addresses are still the most reliable way to stay in touch with your fans, and the best way to convert fans to paying customers. So get those email addresses anyway you can, even offer a free sticker/pin in return, it will be a great long-term investment for your band.

Here’s an example of a great merch table setup, including proper signage and a mailing list sign-up: What’s Your Merch Setup (Grassrootsy Blog).

*Note: Accepting credit card payments at shows can increase your sales dramatically, as not everyone carries cash with them. Services like Square-up or Indie Pool (for Canadian bands) can turn your iPhone into a credit card swiper.

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Preparing For Promotion: Give Yourself At Least 6-8 Weeks

Part 2 of this blog series will go into detail about promotional tactics you can use to promote your show. But for the purposes of preparation, you should give yourself a good 6-8 weeks lead-time to plan and execute the promotion for your show. This will allow you to take into consideration things like a media & publicity campaign, whether or not you’re going to go after sponsorship for your show, and promotional collaborations with the other bands performing.

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So what did you guys think of Part 1? Did you find it helpful? Is there anything missing? Please leave your comments below!

Every week, we highlight one of our favorite websites on Bandzoogle.

Who: 5th Projekt
What: Ambient, psychedelic art-rock.
Where: Toronto, Canada
Why their website rocks: What’s not to love about this website? It displays excellent and consistent branding, has a great homepage with calls-to-action for their mailing list and a free download, plus the site features a nice, clean navigation experience. And to top it all off, their online shoppe highlights a nice integration with the Topspin store (one of Bandzoogle’s E-Commerce features), is well organized, and offers everything from a $3 vinyl sticker to a $45 deluxe package for their fans.

Check it out at: www.5thprojekt.com

5 Ways to Get Your Music Noticed by Music Bloggers

This is a guest post by Andrew Zarick. Andrew is the Founder & CEO of StereoGrid, a music delivery network that allows artists to easily deliver music to and gain fans and insights from the dissemination of promotional music to music bloggers and press. He is also founder of rap blog 100BestRapSongs.com.

As both a music blogger at 100BestRapSongs.com and founder of StereoGrid, a music platform that specializes in helping artists deliver and disseminate promotional music, I've witnessed first-hand the good, bad and the ugly associated with artist PR and vying for music blogger and press attention.

Speaking as a music blogger, I often times receive upwards of 30-40 new music submissions a day. Many top tier bloggers receive even more than that. That means that your music submission, assuming you sent it via email, will fall somewhere in between the hundreds or maybe even thousands of other non-music related spam emails that the blogger receives on a daily basis.

There are a number of things that you can do as an artist or artist manager to give your submission a better chance of being opened, being viewed, being listened to, and then hopefully, being written about and shared.

Here Goes...

1) Understand Your Press List

Have the individuals on your press list written about similar artists in the past? Do they only write about pop music or do they also tend to write about up and coming artists? Do they only write about certain genres of music? Does your music fall within that genre?

A quick way to see if a blog has written about an artist you think you're similar to is to do a Google Search with "site:blogname.com artist name" - Google will show you a list of search results from that blog featuring that artist.

2) Have a Detailed Subject Line

If you're going to stand out from the crowd you better have a damn good subject line. Is your song a new release? Say so. Is there an MP3/Video attached? Call that out. Is your song featuring a big name artist that might be more well-known than yourself? Call it out.

Good Examples:

MP3/Video: Fatal Lucciauno - "Big Bro" (Prod. By Kuddie Fresh) + "Flawed" Freestyle
(Music Submission) Smoke - Goin Hammer (Feat. Chalie Boy and Gorilla Zoe)

3) Keep the Description Simple

Remember that the recipients of your song submission receive many submissions per day. They don't want to read a novel when determining whether or not to listen to and post a song. Tell a concise story about who you are and your music. Have you been featured elsewhere? Toured with a famous band? Have a famous cousin? Why are you different? Why should we care about you?

Confusion from Pigeons and Planes says,

"…the pitches that get my most attention are the simple ones that make it easy to check out the music. When it comes to indie/unknown artists, it all depends on the music. If I get an email with 20 attachments, a short story’s worth of writing, and links to everything the artist has ever done, I’m not likely to check it out. If I see a simple message with one song, and if I like that song, I’m going to do what I can to support."

4) Include Essential Song Assets

Music bloggers really like presentation. If you're lucky enough to have a compelling enough subject line to get an email open, further bring the music blogger into your world with well designed artwork.

Winston "Stone" Ford from The Couch Sessions makes the point,

"Any artist at this time needs artwork and presentation. If you actually have really good cover art, that’s what I gravitate towards and click on first."

Ensure that the blogger has all the assets they need to create a solid blog post. This means include links to music videos, external URLs like your website and social media presences in addition to your artwork and song description.

"Always present yourself professionally and keep a very strong brand image. It is all about keeping your brand and product as high quality as possible." - David Reyneke, Potholes In My Blog

5) The Infamous Media Player Embed

The most essential asset to include in your email is a link to your music. This is so essential that I'm giving it its own section. Realize that even successful bloggers sometimes have other day jobs that don't involve blogging. This means that a lot of work is done via mobile phone. Attach your mp3 file (or a snippet at least) to the email itself when sending so that the blogger can listen to your song while on the move. But don't stop there! Also clearly call out in your email where the blogger can go to get the media player embed code so that they can easily publish a media player with your song. If you want to get super fancy, include the actual embed code in your email as well.

The Most Common Mistake

"Spamming. Spamming is the biggest mistake that a lot of independent artists do. A lot of artists ask me, ‘how can I get noticed? How can I blow up on Nah Right? How can I blow up on The Smoking Section?’ Well, you have to create a buzz for yourself on your own. Spamming Nah Right, spamming me, sending me emails, sending me tweets is not going to help anybody. So what you have to do is create noise for yourself. When you create the buzz, I’ll be knocking on your door. Stop spamming. It simply does not work." - Trent Fitzgerald, Beats and Rants

And remember...

"Great music will always transcend, but to get it out there and help it in that process, you have to have a lot of things in place. A compelling story, identity, distinctive style, and aggressive personality. Put yourself out there with those bloggers/fans/community respect and engage them with no end." - David Johnson-Igra, SF Critic

It's festival submission time again! Whether you already have a hard copy of your presskit, or you are starting from scratch, it is always a great idea to add a digital press kit page to your website. Sonicbids and ReverbNation provide great options for online presskits already, which you can integrate into your Bandzoogle site easily. Here I'll write about how to create an online presskit through Bandzoogle.

The first step is compiling the information, and add it to the appropriate page features.

• Write a bio: This is probably the hardest part of creating a press kit, and arguably the most important. A lackluster bio will steer festival directors away from your band. Treat your bio how you would a hit song - hooks. You have to keep your reader interested. We have several help articles on this topic, but we can never stress the importance of a good bio enough. Think of it as a cover letter on your resume.
• Add sound and video: Create a medley or select tracks you are best known for. Make sure these are high quality versions; our players allow you to set the quality of all tracks from low to uncompressed. You can use an audio player that will create a unique play list for your EPK page, and even customize the player colour in the Options to match your album or website design. If you have a music video or live show footage with a good sound, you can also add it via the YouTube feature. This works great in conjunction with your players, as it will automatically pause other music on your site when played.
• In the news: Pull together press clippings, blog posts, quotes, awards, nominations, interviews. You can make them available in list form through a text feature, and add download links (for BZ members: search for ADD LINK in your Help section to find out how) for visitors. Try to link to the content within your site; the content may become unavailable on external sites sooner than you notice, and broken links would look unprofessional to A&R reps.
• Image is everything: Take some high resolution band photos to get started. High res photos are key for your band's professional image since they won't appear blurred or pixelated in print or blog posts.
• Current affairs: Have a new album coming out? Touring this Summer? Let media know where to find you next, and that you are actively involved in making music. Add an Event feature to show case upcoming and past shows, or a News feature to keep your information fresh.
• Contact info: This is a good opportunity to use the custom mail form, which allows you to create a list of specific information that is sent to the email address of your choice (like your manager instead of your drummer.)

Creating the layout

Feature titles will help properly label your content and let the visitor know what information they are looking at. I would also recommend titling the page Press Kit and adding it to the main menu, so that it can be found easily. Below are some great examples of Bandzoogle members with really well organized electronic press kits created using internal links, clean layouts and Bandzoogle features. The result is really attractive Press Kit pages that are easy to navigate. Enjoy!

www.maktub.com

www.tylerkealey.com


www.kelseyjillette.com

www.roblutes.com

Every week, we highlight one of our favorite websites on Bandzoogle.

Who: Carrie Johnson What: In addition to performing as a pop/country crossover artist, Carrie is also a private vocal, guitar and songwriting instructor with over 150 songs in her catalog. Where: All over the US; currently writing and recording in Hartford and Nashville. Why her website rocks: Simply laid out and well organized, this site features a very clear navigation, and a great content layout out using columns. The homepage is attractive, with good variety for visitors: great videos, the all important call to action (linking to her Store page), and she engages fans with personal stories in her blog.

Check it out at http://carriejohnsonmusic.com/