In the past decade, the internet has given independent musicians the ability to gain overnight success without the constraints of a record label.  When my band first started up, this new wave of online social networking was just hitting it big.  Before using the internet as a marketing tool, if a band wanted to go on tour, everything had to be done through the telephone and mail.  Getting contacts and getting promoters to recognize you was not an easy task, then along came this website that would change everything, myspace.com.  Me and my band members spent hours upon hours on the internet just trying to get our name out there, even to the point where we had “automatic friend adders” on myspace.  After sometime, we had over 50,000 friends on our myspace page, all asking us to come to their town, and well known record labels knocking on our door.  For those of you who are just starting out, let me say, you are very lucky to have this awesome marketing tool.

1) Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  Make band accounts for all these sites and any other social networking sites you can think of.  Keep them current and update frequently.  Add as many people as humanly possible to them.  Scatter them with your music, pictures, videos, and merchandise for sale (just make sure its not to the point where the page will take forever to load and discourages people to visit them).

2) Youtube! This has become a big one.  You’re not Metallica and you’re not missing out on millions of dollars when you put your videos online.  Invest in a decent camera or find a friend who has one and will follow your band around to all your shows, then put as many videos as possible on youtube.  Live videos, webisodes, interviews, anything.  People will see your band’s name, hear your songs, and see you play.  This will give them reasons to come out to your shows and get hooked on your music.

3) Interviews.  All the different types of music have different scenes, message boards and websites, for example, I was into the hardcore scene, so I had websites, such as, Lambgoat, Bridge9, 905board and The Kill Decibel. Contact websites and ask them for interviews, reviews and to post your vidoes.  Get yourself and your band known on the message boards.

4) Welcome the “smack talk”.  Its a reality of the internet, unfortunately.  Don’t let the people sitting behind their keyboards in their mom’s basement, who have never picked up an instrument in their life, get you down.  The truth is, no publicity is bad publicity, and for everyone one person who says something bad about your band, a thousand people say something bad about every single band you see being played on Much Music or MTV.