Do you promote your performances?

[doremiremi]

Hello people! I came to this site because I saw a link at the FAWM forums. Might be weird for a first post, but this can be interesting for you people too.

Currently I’m busy writing my Master thesis and I need some help with this, which might also lead to an interesting discussion. I’m currently writing the pre-research of my thesis and it’s about how the fans of artists help spread the word about them (through the Internet), mainly about concerts of relatively unknown bands. So what better place to ask people than here! This will help me especially with narrowing the topic down to a problem definition, so I can have a clear focus for my Master thesis.

I’m sure there are people here who perform and have a (small) fanbase/following, but even if you don’t have that and just perform once in a while, answering my questions would help me tremendously. I’m at the stage where I need to define the type of people and their needs and habits, so having an impression of the different types of people would certainly help.

So what I would like to know are the following things (you don’t have to answer them in a QA style, but this is just to make it easier):

1. What is the most important reason to perform for you? (Like, is it more for fun, to promote music, earn money, … ?)

2. What do you normally do to promote your music and/or your performances (online and offline)? And if you let other people do that, what do they do?

3. Do you have fans (you don’t have to know them personally) or some following (even a small amount of people in a forum counts).

4. What do your fans do in terms of promotion/spreading the word – both for your music itself and your performances? Is that what you expect them to do (as it is in your “promotion-calculations”) and if not, what more do you expect from your fans to do? (maybe "hope" is better word than "expect")

5. Do you ever have 1-on-1 contact with fans (like after a performance, online, etc.) and what do they say?

If you know better places online to post this, let me know.
If you know die-hard fans who go the extra mile for you, let me know.
If you know other artists who has fans that like to spread the word, PM me.
If you’re an event promotor, PM me too. I would like to know what the process of event promotion is like.

Yes, I know, there are books about this and I’ve read the Indie Band Survival Guide, but I would really like to hear directly what people’s experiences are. Plus, the thing I want to focus on is the fact that by getting a few fans of your music, your fanbase could get bigger because of them being so enthusiastic that they will spread the word. In these times of Internet, it's really easy to spread the words about bands you like and I'm really interested to see how you as a performer, can encourage that behavior (without being pushy of course) - besides putting up a killer performance!

Thanks in advance! I really appreciate your posts and sorry for the long post!

(don't worry, this is not a hit-and-run post, I will surely keep lurking and posting on this forum!)

[OsCKilO]

besides putting up a killer performance!

I think that is the only way to get your name about town......... And Turn up every week for your performances....




The Rest of the Questions are a bit difficult...

[Oldrottenhead]

my wife is dong her masters in social work, her research thesis is going to take up a lot of her time. in the morning i will show her this post, she will be extremely jealous of both your originality and luck to have found such a font of information.

i can see her getting the pins out for her voodoo dolls now whatever you do dont post a picture of yourself.

[doremiremi]

I think that is the only way to get your name about town......... And Turn up every week for your performances....

Haha, I know! Promoting your gigs can still help you a lot though attacting new people.

Thanks anyway!

my wife is dong her masters in social work, her research thesis is going to take up a lot of her time. in the morning i will show her this post, she will be extremely jealous of both your originality and luck to have found such a font of information.

i can see her getting the pins out for her voodoo dolls now whatever you do dont post a picture of yourself.

Heh, I am really lucky to combine my thesis with music, which is something I love very much! This thesis also requires a lot of work. I kinda hate it finding people who wants to answer questions because it's kinda hard, but finding out about these sort of communities is a real treat though!

[OsCKilO]

Have you got any tips on promoting your gigs?


That would be great!