Marketing music for people who hate marketing

16 days ago

Just because you do something everyone else is doing doesn’t mean you have to do it the way everyone else is doing it.

For a while playing shows didn’t interest me because the way I saw bands playing shows. They book tours with 20 or 50 dates and play the same thing every night. They play the songs the same way they sound on the album. They play anywhere they can, looking for every opportunity to reach more people regardless of whether it fits them or not.

I want each show to be memorable. I want want every performance to be special. I don’t want it to turn into a job. I don’t want it to be perfect.

I do think about touring sometimes but if I do there will definitely be a different theme for each tour, something we won’t feel fulfilled only doing once but will want to try multiple times. Maybe a jam section with whoever we are touring with. Something that makes the music not the same with each other show.

Before the show I create a concept for the evening and how I want to cook up a feeling. I look at the space and the other artists and think about how to cook the songs. Last time we played with an indie pop singer and so we made our songs a bit more rock and pop and a bit less psychedelic.

Next time we will play with a noise artist and a female folk singer we are friends with and so we are trying to find a space between the two so we are going for ambient meets tribal, and it’s during a whale exhibition so we’ve made the songs more ocean-y.

We film each and every show from start to finish and archive it. Nothing fancy, just iPhone footage but it’s nice to have it so we can use the footage for social media, music videos etc. it’s also nice to compare performances and analyze what we might want to change.

When I share to social media I like to write something that encapsulates the evening or day. To reflect on our growth and make a clear statement about the purpose of the show and where we are going from here. I’ve written about self indulgence and art, music as part of a healing process and how I put songs together. This time I wrote about music as an ingredient (something I’ll share here tomorrow).

I imagine in the future I’ll write about the different approach to recording vs. playing a show, how I write, what kinds of artists I respect the most, there are endless things I can write about.

What’s awesome is that these little articles and live videos have done the work of marketing that I used to dread so much. I used to think about how I could catch people. Now I think about what I want to share that will enhance the music or what I can use the music to enhance. It may not look like marketing, and it doesn’t feel like it, but it does the same work that marketing does and someone could fairly call it marketing if they want. That’s something else I’ll write about one day.

Our live album is 5 days away from a CD release, but it’s already up on streaming platforms, would appreciate a listen, a follow, a like, or whatever you feel like giving!