50 Music Production Tips

Never leave promotion to the other guy. Depending on your point of view don't count on the label, band or publicist to do their jobs. Do it yourself or it may not get done.

Know your niche market(s) or hire/befriend someone who does.

Always think of the fans first when making decisions.

Start early.  Pre-promote. It allows time for viral buzz (aka free promotion) to build and ensures you’ll get you a larger share of a discretionary spending.

Take the time and spend the money to get a great publicist to get free media.

Produce great promotional material and send it out early and often.  Don’t wait until they need it.

Email lists must be your new religion. Make sign up simple and easy to find. Put it visibly on the top half of the front page and watch it grow.

Segment your email lists (genre, location) to fight email burnout. 

Produce and send great e-cards. The best ones get forwarded to others

Make your web site a destination by keeping it updated and including news, giveaways, polls and things to make it worth visiting.

Put your promo online in downloadable form for easy access by the media and your fans.

Enable and encourage others to do your promo for you.  Ask fans to put up flyers and send out emails. Put a poster online as a free downloadable PDF for fans to use.

Create, utilize and reward a street team. Here’s a short article on the subject.

Talk to people and take informal polls. Have they seen your ads? Where?  Did they grab them and provide useful information? Survey your audience via email, on the web and at shows.

Add a free poll to your web site or blog via http://www.yourfreepoll.com.

Get every free listing everywhere you can no matter how obscure or far away.  Maintain an extensive “listings” email list and use it.

Enhance the value of press releases by always attaching a photo or graphic file or a link to one.

Aggressively seek sponsorships. Big sponsorships are great, but no sponsorship is too small to consider even if its just cross promotion in ads or free give aways.

Always think yourself as a brand that needs to be defined, marketed, and protected.

Try local cable TV. Some local spots on Fuse or other targeted channels go for as little as $7 each.  Check out Spotrunner, dMarc or your local cable company.

Try local internet advertising via Google Adsense, Facebook or local web sites. MySpace is adding targeted advertising early 2008.

Advertise on internet radio and blogs that serve your market.

Create consistency by creating ad mats and radio spots beds.

Sponsor non-commercial radio and get mentions. NPR is great, but don’t forget college radio.

Think out of the box with radio tie-ins. Rry talk radio for a classic rock or jazz radio for a fusion.  Radio stations want to expand their audience too.

Co-brand. Celtic Music with an Irish bar or specialty shop or metal with a tattoo parlor. Worry less about money and think more about exposure.

Sponsor somebody else’s event. Consider trading sponsorships.

Create your own affordable net radio station on Live 365.

Add a blog to your website to keep content fresh. Blogger.com has free tools.

Go viral and post on related list-servers and discussion groups.

Can't find the right discussion group? Start your own discussion group for free at Yahoo or Google Groups.

Get on both MySpace and Facebook and stay active. Don’t just set it up and forget it. Update it and promote it. Make it worth visiting. iLikeand others are creating services to help you keep track and update more than one site at a time.

Make everything you do an event. What holiday is near?  Is it a band member birthday? An anniversary near? 

Consider the internet your new best friend. Study it, learn from it, explore it and use it

Run contests for best poster design or homemade video. Share all the entries on the web.

Produce monthly or even weekly podcasts.  Consider having it produced cheaply or in trade for tickets, etc, by a local college DJ.

Do anything you can think of to enhance the consumer experience.

Give stuff away – backstage passes, seat upgrades, seats on stage, tix to the sound check, mp3’s of live songs.

In the entertainment business perception can be reality. Is your show the biggest, best, loudest, “most talked about”?  Then be sure to tell the world that it is.

Enhance and monetize the hard core fan experience with a Platinum level fan club that offers exclusive downloads, pre-orders, insider news, preferred seating at shows, etc.

Go old school and cut through email overload by also faxing calendars and press releases. Use a free computer based fax broadcast service.

Don't just send announcements to the main stream press but include bloggers, internet radio, record stores, colleges and even large offices.

Make your faxes look like mini-posters worth hanging up.

Fly a plane with a banner over someone else’s event.P

Park a van or truck with a banner on a main street or across from a show by a similar act.

Buy a billboard for an event or series of shows.  Place it strategically near a competitor or across from a college campus.

Use one of the cheap automated phone answering services advertised in the classifieds to set up a special phone line for your schedule.

Pass a clipboard(s) around before a show to capture emails or do a survey.

Meet your fans face to face and ask them for feedback but how you can serve them better.

Try the good old fashioned US mail occasionally.  It actually gets peoples attention.