The ecosystem approach to breaking your band

This is a brilliant post - don't gloss over it and miss the real message.

Bas Grasmeyer has been studying the new music business for his degree thesis and really gets the big picture. In fact you can download a brilliant pdf he has written from our site here - music promotion pdf.

But this post talks about an overall approach to being discovered, engaging and retaining fans and letting the relationship flourish.

My favourite bits:

...the basic formula for defining your story is that you have to be able to complete the sentence "[Artist-/bandname] is the [artist/band] that…" (eg. "Lady Gaga is the singer that always shows up in the most fantastic outfits")

and from the comments:

"Be remarkable, be easy to discover, turn your fanbase into a party, connect, listen." That's it right there. Awesome.

Please read it and let it sink in!

Why you should use Bandcamp....

...even if it's not the main way that you choose to promote & sell your music!

This is an interesting article by Ty White (his blog is full of great stuff - have a rummage).

In essence, he says that music bloggers (and early adopter fans aren't far behind) are using Bandcamp as a sort of new MySpace and are searching for new music to write about on Bandcamp, using the tags that musicians use to describe their music.

So, just by being on Bandcamp, you may get noticed.

But there's more than that to being on Bandcamp - there's a certain section of people who prefer to buy any commodity from one place - lots prefer iTunes for all their music, but some love supporting artists on Bandcamp.

In selling music 'direct to fan', it's no secret that I am coming down heavily in favour of Topspin. But, even if I was using that as a diy musician as my main sales and email system, I'd spend the time to have a Bandcamp profile and store, just for discovery and 'completeness'

A discovery phenomenon has been creeping up amongst music bloggers lately: they’re digging through Bandcamp pages by clicking tags and exploring other artists with those tags. It’s a little bit like the MySpace phenomenon of a few years ago, where bloggers would discover new music by clicking through other bands’ Top 8 friends, but even less efficient (the Top 8 is almost an explicit introduction from the artist).

Read Ty's post here.

And if you've never seen Bandcamp in action, watch their video here.