Myspace Is DEAD! Ideas on the Future of Music Promotion.

Once again I wrote too much about a simple idea.

Here are the cliff notes:
1. Myspace is dead.
2. How do we gainfully promote music?
3. Bands need flyer more!
4. The Economy of FREE SHOWS.
4. We're making a Triple Nickel Music Compilation of upcoming artists.
5. Damian writes too much.





If you're a myspace user like i have been for the past five years, you've probably noticed the same thing i have.

Its DEAD. Well not entirely dead....

The musicians are still alive and well and using myspace to "network." What i think these Networkers have failed to realize is that WE have effectively killed Myspace.

We posted10-15 bulletins. We added everyone, their mother and their dogs. We spammed the hell out of their comments page. We bugged them mercilessly. We Networkers, We promoters, we egotistical assholes thinking people cared so much to read the same bulletin 20 times, we lazy sons of bitches.... We killed Myspace. People went on to more personal avenues of social networking, and created a new juggernaut FACEBOOK. Facebook decided not to allow bands to add and add and add 1000 people a day. They did not give us the wide range of freedom to bug the living shit out of our friends.. Facebook got it right! I love facebook. I don't get 100 friend adds a week from bands who, "Thought you'd like our music! Check us out! Comment! We comment back!!" So the masses fled.... And who can blame them?

Now I include myself in this. I posted 2-4 bulletins a day on myspace. Most of my life long myspace "friends" deleted me. They didn't care about the shows i was promoting and did not want to hear about it every single day. What they did want was a place where you could spend all day doing pointless little surveys on which character from Little House on the Praire you are. (I'm Little Laura! Who'da Thunk?)

So the users of myspace have left by the troves, they've ran away from Myspace to other avenues of Social Networking or just stopped period so they could commit more time to World of Warcraft of X-Box Live....

And I can't blame them. I use myspace now just to book and promote shows. That's it. I would have abandoned the website along with everyone, (anyone remember the mass exodus of Friendster? Anyone even remember Friendster?) but its the easiest place for me to "connect" with the other musicians. Where i can get the most visability at the moment. So I stay. It use to take me an hour to read half a day of bulletins. Now it takes about 10 minutes. The majority of the bulletins? Bands promoting shows.

So here I am, I have an amazing summer of shows coming up at the Triple Nickel (http://www.myspace.com/555nickel or http://www.facebook.com/pages/Triple-Nickel-Tavern/77734541596) and I was at a loss of how to promote them adiquately. Even before the mass exodus of Myspace, I was contemplating on how to reach those people who no longer use myspace or were ignoring the massive amounts of bulletins being posted. Facebook has their invite system which is descent enough, but it doesn't allow for the visibility one could obtain from posting a bulletin or blog. So How do we do it? How do we promote these shows?

I come from the "Old School" of show promoting. Back in the day when bands and promoters had to actually leave their house with these things called FLYERS (or Fliers depending on how you feel like spelling it.) These FLY-ERS would promote music with attractive illustrations/photos that would catch the eye and make you LOOK at it, and it would also have information such as the Venue, The bands playing the show, The date and time and the cost! Wow! What a novel, antiquated Idea!

As the years went by and Myspace grew to be the behemoth that it was Flyers went the way of the dodo, or the Cassette (which some labels are trying to bring back...). Bands simply did not take the time to hit the streets and meet people and put these flyers in the hands of unsuspecting music patrons.

I'll also blame the venues. The Soda Jerk fellas who have done some great, great, great things in the town of Colorado Springs, took it upon itself to start up street teams and their own brand of promotion. All Great and well, but the musicians and bands in this town got fat and lazy and stopped making their own flyers. They left it up to the Venues and the Promoters to advertise their shows and to do the work for them while they once again sat in front of their TV's or couches or whatever it is bands do other than Flyer. I do it too, or as much as i can. I DO all the work, instead of the bands. It should be the other way around.

There are only a few bands out there who take the time and care and EFFORT into Flyering. I won't name any names, but of these bands that do this small amount of legwork i have found that THESE BANDS, the ones who take it upon themselves to Flyer and promote their shows, tend to have the BEST SHOWS of any of the bands in town!!!

(A Topic for another day, some of the bands/venues who do make flyer and posters.... They look like fucking dog shit. Make them look GOOD. Simple is the best way to go.. Again. This is a topic for another day.)

This is something that should be self evident. The simple idea of PROMOTING YOURSELVES!!! Any musician can download a friend adder for myspace and have it do all the work for them, but if you think of how many musicans are doing this... HOW DO YOU SET YOURSELF APART? HOW DO YOU STAND OUT AMONGST THE CROWD?

GOING TO SHOWS. FLYERING. NETWORKING.

You'd be surprise how many people simply do not grasp this concept. These are where the bands with larger followings come from. I see the Jack Trades guys out at shows. I see the Stab Crew kids out at shows (not to mention throwing some KILLER parties..) Go to any show in Manitou and its packed with Musicians from the area! Its the most simple thing i can tell people, and something i take seriously. If you band wants a show at the Triple Nickel Tavern, COME TO SHOWS AT THE TRIPLE NICKEL. We're not trying to build a scene here, We're trying to build a COMMUNITY. That's what I'm striving to do, and that's what many other folks out there are working on.

Fuck the scene. Communities work together, support each other and a ton of other adjectives I'm too lazy to describe! We all know what a community is. I'm not interested in building a scene, or as i like to think of it, a "Seen".

I've gotten off topic here. I blame the massive amounts of coffee flowing in my veins. So let me get back to my point.

I'm working on building a community and working on ways to better promote the incredible music coming to the Triple Nickel. I often write in my newsletters about how "Great" the shows we have coming up are, and I MEAN IT. We book the absolute BEST shows here in town and we get very little credit for it, but we keep toiling away. We know that the work and foundations we're building now will outlast any scene we have. So what if the shows are small. They're made of hard work and great quality.

How do we continue to get so many GREAT bands coming through? Word of mouth! Our reputation is spreading amongst touring bands as a great place to play with a great, dedicated crowd. Its spreading... and its growing... I'm getting to the point where I'm turning great bands away now simply because we have too much going on.

So Myspace is dead. How do we get the words out to the masses again? We're going to turn back the clock. I'm going to get better about making flyers and posting flyers for shows, but that's simply not going to cut it. If you're Joe Smith who has never been to the Triple Nickel, and maybe never HEARD of it or the bands we have coming through, How do we get your attention?

FREE MUSIC.

It came as a culmination of reading an article called "Free! Why 0.00 Is The Future of Business" (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free) and reading Virgil Dickerson's blogs about Suburban Home Records and his giveaways of many of his artists upcoming records via the internet.

We've been doing mostly Free shows for a while now, with the idea that if the Music is FREE, you'd be much more inclined to come out to watch it and buy more booze. We've found that the more you like the band, the more booze you tend to buy! Booze sales are the key.

How do we get away with so many FREE shows? Let's look at the retail world:

Let's take Target as an example. Remember that new HOT DVD you bought on Sale the other day at Target? It cost you $13.99 or something like that, on the day it came out. Well guess what, Target is actually LOSING MONEY on that item. Why do they do this? They hope you'll come in while you're there buying that new HOT DVD, you'll browse and remember, "Hey! I need some new underwear! Mine all have Skidmark Stains!" You buy the DVD, Underwear and Milk. The milk and underwear have 15% mark ups and they're making back the money (and then some) that they lost on the DVD. Make any sense? It doesn't? Well fuck you too, then! I've been working retail for 12 years... This is old hat to me.

We've been using this model at the Nickel for some time now. Hoping that the Low, Low, Low priced shows (and the Low Low Priced PBR at $5.50 a Pitcher or $2 for a Pint. Shameless plug.) will bring you in and get you to buy that extra shot of Jager, or that Lemon Drop shot you and you're girlfriends love so much. And from there we pay the bands a percentage of the bar. Some nights this works amazingly well, and on slow nights... Well you get the idea. The Nickel is not necessarily a live music destination, and we're trying to break that mold, but as it is, we're the great decider. If you band has pull, you'll know it at the Triple Nickel.

One problem I have run into with this model, is that people think if the shows are FREE then the bands must be terrible or not worth the time to pay attention to. These same people ignore the bulletins and postings and ignore the shows altogether. Their close mindedness is their loss, but how do we attract these people? That's the question I ponder every night as i lie in bed drifting of to sleep... Well sometimes i think about He-Man and The Masters of The universe, or DragonBall Z or porn or Ponies. I love ponies.

So I'm going to attempt a new experiment and take things back a few years....

I'm working on putting together a music Compilation. It will be a FREE D.I.Y. Comp that will feature a number of the bands coming through to The Triple Nickel this summer. I plan on making about 150 of these on CDRs and passing them out at Record Stores, the skate parks, Shows, Tupperware parties, wherever music fans may be.

It astounds me that more bands and Venues are NOT doing this, They are NOT giving away CDS. They've allowed themselves to become lazy and expect the internet to do the work for them, but its so SIMPLE.

You can buy a spindle of 100 CDRs at Costco (or the evil Sam's Club) for about $20 bucks. With the advancement of Cd burning technology it only takes moments to burn a CD (unless you have my 6 year old computer...) and BAM! Make a paper case, cool atractive photo / illustration on the front. On the back, songs, Website and upcoming shows. Staple or Tape to close the DIY case and BAM! Done! This website: http://www.papercdcase.com will help you do ALL the work.


Its sooo fucking EASY and CHEAP, and NO ONE IS DOING THIS. This very simple idea is how you can reach those NOT using myspace, those people NOT regularly going to shows! This is your gateway to a growing fanbase and Musicians are not using this very simple, DIY model.

So fuck it. So we're going to do it, instead. I'm going to pay for this project out of my own pockets (I do not get regularly "paid" for my show promoting, instead i mostly give the money I would make to the musicians or pump it back into promoting). We'll make 100 to start with, with the bands coming through in June and July and if things go well, We'll make 100 more or so to continue promoting throughout the summer. If all goes well, I should actually MAKE money off these shows for once! Woo hoo! Horray!

Its a Win-Win-Win for everyone! This is a great promotional tool not only for the BAR but for the bands involved. Again, the idea is that we give these Cds out to people. They throw them in their CD players in their car, they listen, they LIKE, they come to shows. The shows are FREE (well the majority of them anyways) and they buy lots of BOOZE and they like the bands so much they buy merchandise from the bands! Hopefully they enjoy their experience at the bar so much, they come back on a Tuesday night and enjoy a few more libations, or perhaps they go check out The show down the way at the Rocket Room the next weekend.

Maybe they don't have a babysitter the night That awesome band from the comp plays. They go see them down the street at the other bar, or drive to Pueblo to see them the next night. Maybe they buy their cd from Amazon instead, and tell their friends!!

This isn't about building up business for any one place, this is about building a community! Hopefully if this does well, we can talk the local bands into doing something like this every few months for ALL the venues and ALL the bands, not just The Nickel and the bands on this compilation. Its a way to expand the community and our movement. Baby steps, people. Baby steps.

Hopefully you've read all of this over caffeinated diatribe. I'd REALLY like you're input, ideas, and suggestions. Not just on this project, but on ALL aspects of promoting and community building. The community can not be built by just a few of us, but ALL of us and its important that we all work together to make this town actually worth a damn, and i know we can all do this.

I'll try to keep you people updated on this experiment and how it goes and when and where you can find it. I would love to have the first batch done and OUT this weekend in time for the Burlesque show Friday night (May 29th), but I'm going to be realistic and assume we'll have it ready to go by June 13th. Hopefully We'll be at the Pike's Peak Derby Dames Bout passing them out, and after wards at the Triple Nickel that night with the amazing ROOSTERD!, RJ FLETCHER, and 4H Royalty. I'll keep you posted via here, myspace and facebook!!

Also. Local bands, If you are interested in becoming a part of this complitation, contact me ASAP. I'll require one Mp3 that you think best represents your band. Not all bands will make it on this comp, but I'll try my hardest to make it so. If you are interested email me at: damian(dot)burford(at)gmail(dot)com or Myspace me at: http://www.myspace.com/iamdamian

Take care, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.


------------EDIT-------------

I just posted this in two blogs and two bulletins... On myspace... So i Guess its not TOTALLY dead....