[mplpost] Promoting and Marketing

[Bill Usher]

Part 3: Promoting and Marketing

As I noted in Part 2, at the time of the Touch The Earth series, one hoped
to have a deal with a label who would have an in-house promotion or
marketing staff/person or someone on contract. Or you did it yourself.

Certainly, back in the mid-70s when David Essig had Woodshed Records on the
go with releases from Willie. P., the Original Sloth Band and himself, David
could send a copy off (as an example) to Peter Goddard at the Toronto Star
and you might get a review. Peter, and many of his colleagues in the media
covered the scene and were, for the most part, easily accessible. But, the
'scene' was so much smaller and the whole record label (curatorial)
infrastructure filtered out a lot of bad stuff.

Nowadays, when anybody with money can make their own CD, the job of the
media, separating the wheat from the chaff, has become

So you look for the 'buzz'. It's always been about 'buzz'. Some you 'buy' by
purchasing the hard working efforts of promo and marketing folks. Some comes
about through sheer joyful, word of mouth when people 'discover' for
themselves something they want to turn their friends on to. To make it
really happen, IMHO, you need both.

Back in the late 80s the wonderfully supportive Yvonne Matsell was booking X
Rays on Queen St. She started this thing called a Month of Mondays. I had a
10 piece band at the time called The Space Heaters. It was a musician's band
- because that's about all who came to see us on each of our two months of
Mondays. It did feature guys like Don Francks, Kevin Breit, Alex Dean etc.
but try as we might, very few folks came. Kim Hughes in Now - she came
because Yvonne had told her too - gave us a stellar review calling us the
best band on the strip at the time. Still nobody came.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, there was this little band in for the
two months of Mondays before us. They started out at first with friends and
family only in attendance and decamped weeks later with line-ups to get in.
Ladies and gentlemen, The Barenaked Ladies.

Tell us your promotion and marketing stories. What strategy works best for
you now? Can you do it yourself? Is it best being on retainer with a promo
person or can it work project-by-project? How do you afford it? When can you
afford it?

Over the last ten years or so I've noticed the proliferation of promo
fulfillment services and compilation promotional CDs to Canadian and
international DJs. Has this worked for you? What did they do? What did you
have to do to help it along?

So you get airplay from DJs in Germany on your 'single' - what then? How do
you get your CD to market? How do you get yourself into that market to
perform? Can you afford it?


-- 
http://www.billusher.com 

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