Magma Music

THE VITAL MIGHT signs with 10t Records!

Don’t take our word for it, check it out:
http://10trecords.com/the-vital-might-signs-with-10t-records/

Add comment July 14th, 2009

iPhone apps for bands in minutes

Not sure any of our bands can afford this right now, but it’s an interesting idea:
http://www.springwise.com/entertainment/mobileroadie/

Add comment May 26th, 2009

When will Facebook reward us for using “Pages” rather than Profiles?

So we’ve heard about bands getting their “Profile” type pages deleted from Facebook. They’re really trying to push people with bands, businesses, and organizations to use their “Page” profiles instead.

Recently, they’ve added the ability to post status updates from the band page. If you’re logged in as yourself but you post from the Page, it shows as coming from the Page (i.e. “THE VITAL MIGHT”)

You can create photo and video albums. You can create events. There used to be a limitation to the events feature for Pages but that seems to have gone away.

A couple things we’d like to see with these Pages:
1. Friendly URLs. It’s really a drag to have to send this URL to people for them to become a fan of our page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=625336849#/pages/THE-VITAL-MIGHT/8857891837?ref=ts

Here are our other site URLs:
http://www.myspace.com/thevitalmight
http://www.purevolume.com/thevitalmight
http://www.youtube.com/thevitalmight

You tell me which one doesn’t fit.

2. A way to solicit new fans (OTHER than paying for a Facebook Ad). On MySpace, you can find other fans of similar music and request they become a fan/friend. In Facebook, there isn’t a distinct way to do that without sending out the ugly URL. When we used a Profile page, we could simply add people as friends.

3. A way to mashup with external sites. I’d love to be able to post photos in ONE place and have them feed Facebook, MySpace, Purevolume, etc. Right now, we upload to about 5 different places to cover everyone.

If anyone has other ideas on how to get around these limitations, or if they’ve heard about any change coming, please let us know!

Cheers,
Andy

1 comment May 19th, 2009

Outsourcing

Outsourcing has been a bit of a four-letter-word with how the US economy is doing, but it mostly relates to offshore outsourcing.

What I’m talking about is delegating repetitive tasks to others, preferably others who will do it free or cheap.  I’ve tried hiring interns in the past, but I didn’t have the volume of work to make it a regular gig for them.  I’ve used the site Elance.com for finding web development projects, but I was tipped off after reading the Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss to the breadth of outsourcers available on Elance.

I decided to give it a shot with some press kit mailings.  I posted a project on Elance for someone to print press kits, package them with a CD, print labels, customize cover letters, and take it to the post office to ship.  I immediately received over 10 bids on my project and I quickly picked one.  It was a woman who has 3 kids and works from home on many projects of this type.  Her rate was very reasonable and she was excited to work on the project.

I sent her a box of CDs, using the cheapest shipping possible.  I wrote out all the instructions in an email and I gave her permission in Google Docs to view a spreadsheet that I keep contacts in.  She completed the entire job within a couple days and about 50 packages were on their way to their destination.  Before shipping, the cost was about $50.  So $1 per package.  At higher volumes, it would’ve likely been cheaper per package.

Being able to hand this task off and simply send a few emails was a HUGE weight lifted.  And now I have a trusted contact and I can go back to her with future projects.

Check it out: http://www.elance.com

I’m hoping to outsource more tasks in the future, if it’s not cost prohibitive and it can free me up to attend to more creative pursuits.

Add comment May 1st, 2009

Giving back…

Big event on Friday March 27th.  Cancer research benefit show.  Here’s the invitation:

More info and tickets:  http://www.rockandrun.org

Add comment February 27th, 2009

Promoting to college/specialty radio on Facebook

I’ve noticed that a lot of radio stations (college and commercial) are getting on Facebook recently.  MySpace has always been a great venue for radio stations with its “band” style profile that allows for posting of shows and music.  More recently, stations are popping up on Facebook with either profiles or Pages.

When it comes to promoting a band, record release, or tour, “friending” these sites or commenting on walls and profiles is a GREAT avenue for making contact, passing along relevant press, or just keeping the name recognition going.

For the current THE VITAL MIGHT tour, I have a block of text that I’ve written up for college radio stations that have been playing the band’s recently release.  It says something like:

You’ve been spinning our record RED PLANET, thanks!

We’re in Cambridge on Friday 2/6 at the Middle East.

PLEASE LET YOUR LISTENERS KNOW!

I paste that into the box that allows for a personal message when adding a friend.  Since those boxes (at least on MySpace) have a character limit, you need to say what you need to say succinctly.

For example:

The next time around, if they’ve accepted your friend request, post the same text on their profile, wall, etc. It’s a great way to keep the artist’s name in their minds.  With Facebook Pages, all you need to do is Become a Fan and then you can post right away.

Network away!

Add comment January 28th, 2009

Running out of time? Order by date!

I’m in a predicament right now where THE VITAL MIGHT’s tour got here faster than I had time to get everything done. While I should be sending out press releases and following up, I’m writing this blog post instead. I’ll make it fast since I need to tab over to my spreadsheet and get crackin’!

If you’re got something date-dependent on the near horizon, like a tour, record release, TV appearance, or anything else that requires lead time for press or radio coverage, don’t get overwhelmed. Don’t think that it’s too late and you need to throw your campaign out the window. Just sort it by date and do what you can.

THE VITAL MIGHT is in Worcester, Brooklyn, and Philly this weekend and I’ve gotten press releases out to NYC and Philly press, but haven’t done any followups, haven’t contacted college radio nearby that played the band on the last campaign, and still need to send out a mailing list update.

What do I do first? I sort it by show date and start on Worcester. I’ll bang out college radio, press release followups, and move onto Brooklyn.

It’s really that simple. Don’t give up on your campaign because you ran out of time.

Add comment January 13th, 2009

Posters posters posters!

Posters for essential for promoting a band. Most of the time, there isn’t a direct correlation between posters and people at shows.  A lot of the time, they’re simply a large business card for a band.  Until a band is really sought after, they might only have 1% effectiveness for getting heads in the door.  So 100 people see your poster and 1 of them come to the show, or tell someone about the show.

THE VITAL MIGHT is heading on a tour in January and February and I just spent about an hour marking up some posters, packing them in envelopes, and writing addresses on the packages.  This simple hour of work will go a LONG way for the band, but as I said, not directly related to people streaming into the shows because they saw a poster.

Then what do they do for the band?

1. They show professionalism to anyone who sees them. Club owners, managers, booking agents, bartenders, patrons, other bands, etc.  Anyone involved with the bar or venue (whose job is to get people into the venue and potentially buy booze) will see that you’re making an effort to develop a following at the venue or in the area.   If you’re trying to get heads in the door (to pay covers & buy alcohol), you’ll always be the venues’ friend.  This goes a long way towards booking more and better shows in the future at the venue.

2.  They create some subtle name recognition. If you send them every time you head through Philadelphia, and you play similar clubs, the people who go out to shows will start to see the posters a 2nd and 3rd time and subconsciously think, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard of those guys.”  In some cases, just by seeing good looking posters several times, people will have a positive impression of the band, even if they haven’t heard a note.  There are SO many bands out there and so many ways to hear about them.  Any name recognition edge you can get may help.

A few tips on posters:

• I highly recommend creating a somewhat generic poster (that is very compelling visually, 11×17 if you can afford it) and leaving a block of a light color somewhere on the poster where you can write in details of the show.  For instance:  Sat Jan 17th at Dr. Watson’s Pub.  That’s all you need.  The posters will be in or around the venue, so people will know what you’re talking about.  For example:
• Reuse posters and buy them in larger quantities. They’re cheaper and you don’t have to deal with the hassle of remaking, reordering, and paying for more shipping, so they’re cheaper.  We’re still using 2007 posters for THE VITAL MIGHT (that have a silhouette of a band member who’s no longer in the band and that says “Aught Seven” on it).  But as I was putting these guys up one day in 2008, I bumped into a guy at the Sound Museum in Brighton who said, “Hey, nice poster!  I do screen-printing if you ever need more.”  I said, “Yeah, I might since these say Aught Seven and have an old band member in them.”  He said, “Who cares!  They look great!  No one will notice that!”  So we’ve continued to send them and post them and no one has said a word.
• Make specialty posters for special shows. This one sort of goes against the last bullet, but I think it’s important to change up the posters from time to time.  If you keep posting and sending the same design over the course of a year, people might tune it out and think it’s the old poster.  At LEAST make a specialty web flyer, since those are free to make. For instance:

• Packaging. Try to stay cheap.  You don’t need to buy poster mailers or giant 11×17 envelopes.  I have catalog envelopes that work very well.  You can fold the posters the long way (without creasing them) and push them into the envelope and tape up the opening.   Also, mark the envelope well so the club owner or whoever gets the mail knows that there are posters for a show inside.  If you’re helping them promote a show and get those drinking mouths in, they’ll rip it open and get someone to put them up ASAP.  For example:
•  
  CD with the posters. Drop a CD in the envelope.  The club owner or bar manager might take it out and put it in the rotation of music that plays at the bar, or in the jukebox.
• Send them for every show and poster in your main cities for EVERY show. Even if you know you’re going to bring 200 people to the next show, send ‘em or post ‘em anyway.  The people who went to the show might see the poster and get even more excited and bring more people, or brag about it after the show.

That’s my take today on posters.  I’d love to hear what other people think or if they have different techniques than I do on postering.

Add comment January 5th, 2009

If you don’t have the time and resources, hire someone else

For this past release of Red Planet from THE VITAL MIGHT, we put together a release plan that included PR, print advertising, online ads, college & specialty radio promotion, social networking, tour support, and a bunch of other pieces.  Being the small label that we are, we can’t handle all of these tasks ourselves.   We also have other jobs that take up a significant amount of time and if we wanted to get any sleep or have any sanity, we had to outsource parts of the release plan.

For Red Planet, we handled as many tasks as we could, but a college & specialty radio campaign would’ve pushed us over the edge.  We didn’t have a database of contacts and we hadn’t done a campaign like this before, so we decided to go with The Planetary Group again, who did an admirable job on the band’s debut release back in 2006.

Before deciding to outsource, we laid out a plan for doing it ourselves.  We filled up the calendar with deadlines for compiling and checking our contacts database, deadlines for mailing packs, dates for following up, and some other details.  When piled on top of the other tasks already in the queue, it looked like too much.  So we spent the money to have a third-party company handle it.  We were very happy with the results, especially given we would simply receive an email update and a report every week from the guys and gals at Planetary.  Instead of dozens of hours compiling, mailing, calling, and emailing, we got one email per week summing it all up for us.

We are ALL for being DIY and indie in everything we do, but sometimes you just run out of hands and hours.

Add comment December 18th, 2008

If you can’t find a tool that fits, use a spreadsheet!

For many years I’ve dug around for the best contact management software.  I’ve used Outlook, Outlook with the Small Biz Contact Manager addition, Highrise, FreeCRM, Salesforce.com, Access, and I even built my own web front-end for my contact database.  They all had too many features.  Even Highrise, by the 37Signals guys who are famous for limiting features to create better functionality, didn’t fit what I needed.

I wanted a very easy way for me to see who I need to contact next, in what order, how to contact them, what happened the last time we interacted, and maybe some email notifications if I needed to followup with someone.

Recently I decided to stop looking for the perfect tool and just use a spreadsheet.  It’s been a huge success.  I keep at simple as possible.  I have a separate worksheet for each category of contacts (i.e.  press, blogs, venues, other bands, etc.) and they all have roughly the same fields:

• Contact info (name, address, email, web site(s)
• Preferred contact method (email, web, phone, myspace, cave drawings, etc.)
• Last contact (the last date I sent them an email or called them)
• Notes (I usually throw in a date and a quick note like “12/1/09 - booked show”)

One of the most basic features of spreadsheets is the sorting capability.  When it’s time to run through some contacts and get in touch, I sort by “Last contact” (oldest to newest) and I start down the line.  If it’s time to promote a show in New York, I sort by state and secondary sort by city and then start through the “New York”s.

Sound simple?  It is. But it works far better than a bulky, over-priced, feature-”rich” CRM system.

And I love Google Docs for my spreadsheets.  I can share and collaborate the contact lists with colleagues and interns and I can access them from anywhere.  With Google Gears, I can access them offline too.  Google Docs also limits features compared to Excel or Numbers, so there aren’t 100 extra menu items to get in the way of simple contact management.

Sort away!

Add comment December 11th, 2008