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Matt, finding your audience can be a very long and discouraging task, I feel like I am terrible at it. Being as strategically efficient as possible and taking any 'shortcuts'one can are definitaly essential (if you figure any out let us know!) But to me it seems the best way to go about it is to offer something very high quality, not meaning any qualitative value on playing etc, just being really good at whatever it is you do (whether it's a classical concert pianist or a performance artist who smears strawberry pudding all over themselves while playing a kazoo, you know what I mean) and then offering that thing consistently for a long period of time. As well as playing, I've put on a few shows & house concerts around the Monterey Bay area (promoting and playing w/ Steve Lawson, Lobelia, Bryan Beller/Kira Small, Bill Walker, Atmos Trio, Gustaf Fjelstrom) I even opened for Kim Boekbinder as well as Saul Kaye. And it seemed I had to do a quite a few before people even got the idea they were happening and worth coming to. And that was even with a few radio spots on KPIG and flyering, emailing etc. Seems people (& I'm totally guilty of this too) go: 'I missed it this time, but I'll make the next one' and so it goes. Seems good to also team up with other folks and help promote them, and to just keep doing it unflinchingly for a super long time maintaining a high quality experience %100 of the time. I always ask myself, "am I doing my audience a favor or are they doing me a favor by coming and listening?" But, I've rambled long enough! And hey, let's try to do a show together sometime, (seriously) or at least meet up and jam or hang out! Good luck with everything, it certainly is tricky to get things off the ground and even more so when you do something 'out of the box' oh that makes me think of a cool panel discussion Steve Lawson did about out of the box music, check it out here: http://www.stevelawson.net/2009/07/podcast-of-the-outside-the-box-panel-from-unconvention/ Best wishes, Steve Uccello http://www.uccelloprojects.blogspot.com/ www.steveuccello.com --- On Tue, 6/14/11, Matt Davignon <mattdavignon@gmail.com> wrote: > From: Matt Davignon <mattdavignon@gmail.com> > Subject: Connecting to fanbase / Touring / some encouraging figures > To: "Loopers Delight" <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com> > Date: Tuesday, June 14, 2011, 2:50 PM > Hi all, > > In the midst of having very little success in booking a > short midwest > tour, I stumbled on this article about Kim Boekbinder, who > has been > experimenting with "pre-selling" tickets to her tour gigs > before she > books the gig. (Think kickstarter campaign.) > > Info on that is here: > http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=12929 > http://www.kimboekbinder.com/shows/ > > That's a great idea, and another whole discussion. > > So I started thinking, "Well, Kim's a much more successful > artist than > I am, in a genre of music that does well in hip music > circles these > days. I'd probably get a big fat goose egg if I tried it." > > ...And yes, that's true. I'm by no means a successful or > popular > musician. But then I started wondering - how many listeners > do I > actually have, and how many would be likely to come to a > show if they > knew I was playing in town? So, I went to last.fm and > crunched a few > numbers. I tried to make my estimates conservative, but the > results > still came out mildly encouraging. Pasted below are the > results I just > posted on another list in another discussion. > > note 1: This is not really intended to be about me > specifically, but > an example of an artist who has a couple cds out, which are > available > on the popular downloading sites, but brings only about > 5-15 people to > a local gig. > note 2: Last.fm is a site in which users track their own > listening > habits. However, you can look up an artist and see how much > their > music is getting played by the site's members. > > Paste: > According to Last.fm, there are 223 Last.fm members who > have listened > to (or scrobbled) at least one track of mine. Some fuzzy > math: Given > from the listeners I can see on last.fm, I assume that I > personally > know or have met about 10% of these folks. I'm also going > to guess > that less than 25% of people who purchase or listen to this > kind of > music are members of last.fm. (It's probably more like 10% > of > listeners have last.fm accounts.) So, multiplying my > last.fm listeners > by 4 or 10 to estimate 100% of all listeners, there is > somewhere between 800 > and 2200 people out there who have purchased or downloaded > at least > one song from me. (That's a good deal more than my > uneducated guess > would've been.) > > Of these 800 to 2200 people, I probably know about 10% of > them. (And > that 10% would of course be concentrated in the bay area.) > > The tricky question is: How many people who have listened > to my music > like it enough that they would attend a concert of mine if > I was in > town and they knew about it? I'm going to be conservative > again and > say 10%. (I'm very likely to attend concerts of indie acts > that I've > listened to at least once, but I don't think I'm a typical > US listener > in that regard.) > > So, that makes somewhere between 80 to 220 people, mostly > based in the > USA or Europe, that would possibly attend a show of mine if > they knew > about it. The last time I toured, I didn't meet a single > person who > had heard of me before. If I could somehow get in touch > with that 80 > to 200 people, that would make a significant difference in > my current > (dismal) attempts to book a tour. > > So what to do? Hmmm.... > > ...and if my math comes up with 80 to 200 people, imagine > how it > calculates for you folks who have actual talent and/or > charisma! > > -- > Matt Davignon > mattdavignon@gmail.com > www.ribosomemusic.com > Podcast! http://ribosomematt.podomatic.com > Rigs! http://www.youtube.com/user/ribosomematt > >