Using band rehearsals to promote your music
October 1st, 2007 by Nico Ramon
Rehearsing is essential for every musician and it is something that bands and artists should do at least on a weekly basis, if not on a daily basis. Although the main purpose of rehearsing is improving musical skills, you can take rehearsals to another level by recording them on video. This is a good way to see how you look from the viewer’s perspective and also to keep your fan base more active.
The main idea is that you record your band rehearsals with video camera and publish them on YouTube or other similar service. If you don’t have a video camera, then record only audio and publish it on Odeo or other similar podcasting services. By doing this weekly, or at least monthly, you can offer your fans fresh content on regular basis. This can be good for branding purposes, keeping your fan base active and maybe even gaining new fans. However, keep in mind that non-fan listeners might not be so impressed with low quality video recordings of your band rehearsals, so target these videos exclusively to true fans.
Now, if you really want to stand out from the crowd start doing also Skypecasts of your rehearsals. They are basically large hosted Skype calls, in which a maximum of 100 people can participate in. Currently skypecasts don’t support video, but I think that is going to change in the near future. This tactic can be especially good for creating hype since the maximum amount of participants is limited to 100 and an exclusive sneak peak to the bands music will surely attract listeners. Or alternatively, if you want to broadcast live video stream, use BlogTV or Synchronicity Live. Personally I find Synchronicity Live a great service since it is free and targeted especially for artists, who want to broadcast real-time streaming concerts.
I talk about recording your practices at http://netvalar.blogspot.com/2.....ccess.html I even mention inviting fans to your practice once a month to grow your street team. I didn’t think about the video aspect via the internet. That is too bad since some of my readers have E-Mailed telling me I am too focused on the internet. Great advise I will probably use this post in my weekly 5 this week.
Netvalar said this on October 2nd, 2007 at 5:26 am
Personally I’m a finished product kind of guy. I don’t think inviting fans to a practice is a good idea, and neither is filming it. You’d be better off spending the time focussed on practicing, and film a gig instead.
Chris M said this on October 2nd, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Chris, you are very right about that one. It is better if you film your gigs instead of band rehearsals, because you can also capture the chemistry between the artist and the audience, but unfortunately that might not be possible for starting bands, who don’t have any gigs. I still think that recording and broadcasting rehearsals is a very interesting and uncommon way to interact with fans.
Nico Ramon said this on October 2nd, 2007 at 6:21 pm