Hi,

My band have finished recording our album after a year. We’ve done a launch gig and only sold 10 albums.

Has anyone got any successful tips for promoting an album, we’ve got 990 copies to shift.

Interviews in local paper, on local Indy show and on afew websites already done.

Local gigs just seem to bring in our mates and the mates of the other local bands. Estimated album sales per gig 1?

Cheers for any suggestions

(I’m not going to link to it here, if anyone has actually had success promoting albums by this site we would look at paying for ads here, I’m guessing it would be well out of budget though)

Martin

TM.

Not sure how “pro” you are or how “pro” the album is. What sort of music? etc.

Try these couple of links. They may be able to help in some way.

The Merch Desk

Bad Elephant Music

PR company….. my old band just released their second album and the difference with having a proper PR company with proper contacts in the industry is huge.

Do more gigs.get noticed.beg for supports.(e)mail out promos.Do more gigs.
Don’t drink all the merch. money! 🙂
Since I was “doing it” there’s this thing called the tinternet..(i see you know that 😉 )
Proper pr is likely to cost more than the album production.
But if you’re really good/talented/have a “buzz” ,see if some sympathetic p.r.’s will do you a favour , if/when you sign a deal , you pay them then.
Do more gigs.

Hi Martin, where are you based and what sort of music? We’ve just recorded our first demo and just want people to hear it let alone pay for it!

In previous bands the most success I’ve had was through putting on our own gigs, inviting good bands we’d played with and then we’d get invited to one of their big home town shows.

It meant that rather playing 1 big home town gigs and 8/9 rubbish (no crowd, awful bands, schoolboy promoters/sound techs and various combinations of the above) out of town ones we’d do 1 big home town show, 2 big out of town shows and maybe 2 or 3 ‘hit and hope’ out of town ones. Much better for morale, selling merch, getting paid and gaining fans than relying on “promoters”. Only trouble is it took us a while to find a number of bands that were good and had a similar work ethic. And then we split up.

Do you have any previews online?

Gareth
http://www.shipofgold.bandcamp.com
(current band)

Play more gigs. Make your music available online, for free. Play more gigs. Promote the CD at gigs. Play more gigs. Make your music available online, for free.

We’re based in Nottingham and play indie rock if any of you fancy gigging?

Not very pro, everyones got jobs that prevent midweek gigging outside Notts. The album sounds pretty good, we spent some cash on getting it recorded mixed and mastered.

We are hoping to recoup some of the cost of the album out of selling it online rather than putting it out for free. I’m liking lifer’s buy by donation ep.

Bigblackshed- thanks for the links, albums all done now so might try tapping elephant music up for some pr. Its probably worth getting some tshirts done so the merch desk is something to look at.

Cheers for the advice

Some youtube clips here

Get a Facebook page, a Soundcloud page and a Bandcamp page, put sample tracks up on Sc and Bc, promote the hell out of it on Fb, linking to Bc and Sc, make it available as a paid-for download, and for anyone buying the cd online, give them a download code for a free digital version, give away a couple of non-album tracks as downloads on Sc and Bc.
Push yourselves on Fb, with stickers and cards with appropriate URL’s or QR codes for people to scan taking them direct to your pages.
There’s a local band to me, (well, Swindon, anyway), now called All Ears Avow, previously Mortdelamer, who do this, and they’re getting the attention, enough that they’ve gone from a trio to a five-piece.

If you want to start selling it, a friend of mine did a deal direct with Amazon to sell their album through them.

Had a listen to the two tracks on YouTube, and your stuff is pretty good actually. Good luck with the selling of albums…I think live performances is the way to go, plus web promotion as others have said.

Here’s my alternative. Don’t give anything away for free. Don’t make anything available online. That is what everybody else is doing. That is what musicians feel they have to do these days. Be different.

Play lots of gigs. Play awful gigs. Play some great gigs. It’s good fun isn’t it?!

Didn’t mean to kill this thread stone dead! Just had a listen. I like the combination of rock guitars with a very English voice (Paddy McAloon and Mick Jones spring to mind). Try Kerrang Radio. They’re based in Birmingham so not a million miles from you. I believe they’re pretty good when it comes to supporting un-signed/new bands. Get some stuff to them, make contact and pop in there.

I still stand by what I said earlier. Vinyl and even cassette are popular again quite simply because it’s something you can hold and(if you like)cherish. It may just be the current fad but it might help you get some recognition admist the deluge of free downloads and streaming. Don’t feel pressured to make too much of your stuff readily available. Maintain a little mystery!

All the best.

the bottom line is if you are good enough and do enough gigs, you’ll get somewhere, or at least have fun trying. it depends what you want out of it, no? like anything in life, there’s no gameplan or formula, just decide what you want and go for it. the difficulty with a band is everybody wanting the same thing…

Press releases, soundcloud, itunes, etc.

It’s more about promoting you, rather that just your album.

Youtube with buy now links, etc.

Go round to indie record stores and ask if they want to stock it.