Getting an Audience for Minority Music Events in Smaller Towns
Trying to get an audience for minority music in a small town? Local live music is getting harder to promote in the UK.
When the breweries killed off their provision of money for entertainment a decade ago they signed the death warrant of the pub band.
Mainstream media obsession with arena-level pop acts effectively turns all lesser-known artists into sneer-worthy losers in the eyes of the plebs, meaning that when a live band does appear in a pub or at a function most people move into the other room.
Cheap supermarket booze, smoking bans, and online social networking have shaped a stay-in society, where most people rarely, if ever, venture out of an evening.
Recession, repression and self-obsession make for dwindling audiences at vanishing venues.
We are faced with the daunting task of somehow coaxing bums off sofas before we can even talk about "getting bums on seats.
" So called "minority music" (or "specialist music," as HMV now labels anything not on Radio 1) such as jazz, folk, blues, bluegrass, country, and now even reggae, are suffering most.
There are yet a few surviving clubs and societies around, relying on conventional methods of promotion such as posters, flyers, ads in local papers and mailing lists.
Some have websites with listings, email lists, and many are using Facebook and Twitter for targeted marketing.
And there are people out there missing the buzz of a live gig, occasionally perusing the local rags or signing up to a mailing list for info on gigs to go to.
The difficulty is not only getting them to know about a gig, but getting them to then actually remember to turn up.
The problem with posters is they are usually immediately forgettable.
Likewise, flyers get pinned to fridges, left unread for a month or two, then binned when they start to curl at the edges.
Ads in the local rags are unreliable with erroneous details printed and deadlines often missed.
Websites rely on the audience remembering to look at them regularly.
Emails get deleted or slowly nudge their way down, and eventually off the screen.
It's common to feel overloaded with Facebook or Twitter invites to events, most of which are happening too far away to bother even reading them.
I used to use all these methods to promote my events but found I'd regularly be bumping into people already on my lists who'd ask me, "when's the next gig then?" I would of course tell them, but somewhere within a little voice would be yelling, "Don't you have the flyer? Didn't you get the email? The text message? Not seen the posters? Didn't you read the Facebook posts?" and perhaps the more troubling, "why do I bother?" It occurs to me that the one thing all of these marketing methods have in common is their impersonal nature.
Posters, flyers, mail-shots, listings and ads are effectively paper spam.
The digital methods really are spam, just spam from a "friend".
A spam by any other name smells just as sweeping.
So, as a jazz musician seeking to promote jazz events in my local area I feel I must return to the oldest method of information dissemination - word of mouth.
Along I go, as a punter, to some of the few remaining local jazz events I can find in my area, and I talk face to face to the audience members.
They are obviously interested in live jazz as they're there, so there's no problem starting a conversation.
Routinely doing this at a few events I gradually build up a list of around 50 names and phone numbers on the piece of paper I'm carrying, headed: "Impromptu Roving Jazz Society...
Invitation only! High quality jazz gigs at short notice...
could be anytime, anywhere! Get on the invite list!" Now I can put a plan into action.
I go to a local pub or bar that doesn't usually have live music at all, tell the landlord it's a lovely room, and hey, wouldn't a jazz band would look great in that corner? And well, I'd really love to play there.
I show them the list.
I say I can bring around 25 to 35 "jazz lovers" into their place to listen to my four-piece band on a quiet week night and it'll only cost him the nominal sum of 60 because I'll pass round a hat for the rest.
That's way less than a DJ or Karaoke charge.
Oh, and of course we'll need a few free pints for the band.
The right kind of pubs usually go for it.
Now, my mobile phone is on a contract with 500 free minutes, so making fifty quick calls to tell each person on the list about my gig personally costs nothing.
It takes around an hour and a half.
I do it on a hands-free headset while cleaning the fish-tank or ironing.
I tell them where and when, and that I'll be passing round a hat in the interval, asking for a "minimum 3 contribution.
" They each feel like they've been invited to a secret gig, and effectively, that's exactly what it is.
On the night, candles on tables, a few glasses of ale, and because we're actually bloody good, most of my invited audience put more than 3 in the hat - often 10 or 20 each.
I usually get around 200-250 in the pot to add to the 60 from the chuffed landlord who just had the best Monday night ever over the bar.
So me and the lads get a good blow in a local pub with free beer and a nice bit of spending money for the rest of the week...
(not forgetting to save some for the lovely taxman of course.
) A few younger folk in the bar come up to be added to the list.
"Is this jazz? I thought I hated jazz but this is awesome!" Ipso facto the list grows over time, and now I've found a great new venue interested in letting me put my various bands on regularly.
As unthinkable as it might sound in our ad-driven, sales-based, marketing-mad culture, we don't really need the media at all if we make the effort go and find our neighbourhood music lovers and treat them as individuals and friends.
This way we can keep our healthy, truthful, brain-stimulating, soul-nourishing, heart-lifting music alive and someday, maybe someday, the masses, currently wasting away on a diet of empty sound and flashing lights, might come looking for our original, organic, musical produce.
When the breweries killed off their provision of money for entertainment a decade ago they signed the death warrant of the pub band.
Mainstream media obsession with arena-level pop acts effectively turns all lesser-known artists into sneer-worthy losers in the eyes of the plebs, meaning that when a live band does appear in a pub or at a function most people move into the other room.
Cheap supermarket booze, smoking bans, and online social networking have shaped a stay-in society, where most people rarely, if ever, venture out of an evening.
Recession, repression and self-obsession make for dwindling audiences at vanishing venues.
We are faced with the daunting task of somehow coaxing bums off sofas before we can even talk about "getting bums on seats.
" So called "minority music" (or "specialist music," as HMV now labels anything not on Radio 1) such as jazz, folk, blues, bluegrass, country, and now even reggae, are suffering most.
There are yet a few surviving clubs and societies around, relying on conventional methods of promotion such as posters, flyers, ads in local papers and mailing lists.
Some have websites with listings, email lists, and many are using Facebook and Twitter for targeted marketing.
And there are people out there missing the buzz of a live gig, occasionally perusing the local rags or signing up to a mailing list for info on gigs to go to.
The difficulty is not only getting them to know about a gig, but getting them to then actually remember to turn up.
The problem with posters is they are usually immediately forgettable.
Likewise, flyers get pinned to fridges, left unread for a month or two, then binned when they start to curl at the edges.
Ads in the local rags are unreliable with erroneous details printed and deadlines often missed.
Websites rely on the audience remembering to look at them regularly.
Emails get deleted or slowly nudge their way down, and eventually off the screen.
It's common to feel overloaded with Facebook or Twitter invites to events, most of which are happening too far away to bother even reading them.
I used to use all these methods to promote my events but found I'd regularly be bumping into people already on my lists who'd ask me, "when's the next gig then?" I would of course tell them, but somewhere within a little voice would be yelling, "Don't you have the flyer? Didn't you get the email? The text message? Not seen the posters? Didn't you read the Facebook posts?" and perhaps the more troubling, "why do I bother?" It occurs to me that the one thing all of these marketing methods have in common is their impersonal nature.
Posters, flyers, mail-shots, listings and ads are effectively paper spam.
The digital methods really are spam, just spam from a "friend".
A spam by any other name smells just as sweeping.
So, as a jazz musician seeking to promote jazz events in my local area I feel I must return to the oldest method of information dissemination - word of mouth.
Along I go, as a punter, to some of the few remaining local jazz events I can find in my area, and I talk face to face to the audience members.
They are obviously interested in live jazz as they're there, so there's no problem starting a conversation.
Routinely doing this at a few events I gradually build up a list of around 50 names and phone numbers on the piece of paper I'm carrying, headed: "Impromptu Roving Jazz Society...
Invitation only! High quality jazz gigs at short notice...
could be anytime, anywhere! Get on the invite list!" Now I can put a plan into action.
I go to a local pub or bar that doesn't usually have live music at all, tell the landlord it's a lovely room, and hey, wouldn't a jazz band would look great in that corner? And well, I'd really love to play there.
I show them the list.
I say I can bring around 25 to 35 "jazz lovers" into their place to listen to my four-piece band on a quiet week night and it'll only cost him the nominal sum of 60 because I'll pass round a hat for the rest.
That's way less than a DJ or Karaoke charge.
Oh, and of course we'll need a few free pints for the band.
The right kind of pubs usually go for it.
Now, my mobile phone is on a contract with 500 free minutes, so making fifty quick calls to tell each person on the list about my gig personally costs nothing.
It takes around an hour and a half.
I do it on a hands-free headset while cleaning the fish-tank or ironing.
I tell them where and when, and that I'll be passing round a hat in the interval, asking for a "minimum 3 contribution.
" They each feel like they've been invited to a secret gig, and effectively, that's exactly what it is.
On the night, candles on tables, a few glasses of ale, and because we're actually bloody good, most of my invited audience put more than 3 in the hat - often 10 or 20 each.
I usually get around 200-250 in the pot to add to the 60 from the chuffed landlord who just had the best Monday night ever over the bar.
So me and the lads get a good blow in a local pub with free beer and a nice bit of spending money for the rest of the week...
(not forgetting to save some for the lovely taxman of course.
) A few younger folk in the bar come up to be added to the list.
"Is this jazz? I thought I hated jazz but this is awesome!" Ipso facto the list grows over time, and now I've found a great new venue interested in letting me put my various bands on regularly.
As unthinkable as it might sound in our ad-driven, sales-based, marketing-mad culture, we don't really need the media at all if we make the effort go and find our neighbourhood music lovers and treat them as individuals and friends.
This way we can keep our healthy, truthful, brain-stimulating, soul-nourishing, heart-lifting music alive and someday, maybe someday, the masses, currently wasting away on a diet of empty sound and flashing lights, might come looking for our original, organic, musical produce.
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