datamusicata

So in these uncertain economic times, how do we get people to actually come to our shows? How do we get them out of the house and into their gas guzzling cars and down to the gigs?

My first thought is to make certain that you’ve practiced and you are ON your game. You can’t practice too much and the more you do, the more addicting it is. And the inverse is true as well. The less you practice the less you feel like practicing.

It has to do with the paths that you wear into your brain, I think. And once those paths are worn in, there is some kind of unconscious pleasure we derive from going down that path again, so we do...and the more we do, the more pleasure we derive the more the path is worn. You can shape your brain, so shape it how you want.

Secondly, there are so very many guitar players in the world; so many singers; so many songwriters who are just going to a gig and playing whatever songs they want, preceeded by an explanation of what the song is about (entertainment death, I’m telling you), that fewer and fewer people (except your immediate family) want to go out and watch that; watch you not be great.

So put together a show. It’s fine to play whatever you want at practice, but if you are actually going to go into the spotlight and say, in essence, “watch me, hear me, see me!” then you better be entertaining, otherwise why would those folks be there?

If you want to be in front of people and be boring, go be a bad teacher. People have to come to your class no matter what and there you are, the center of attention. Show biz is not like that. I have seen buzzes created on all sorts of unprepared, marginally gifted people through the years. Without the talent, drive and recognition that you must entertain people, if you expect them to pay to see you, the audience dwindles and soon you are selling insurance.

So BE entertaining.

If you don’t know how to do it, then go see folks that do know how to do it. And I’m not talking about celebrity. I am a huge Bob Dylan fan, as you know. He has become an icon. He is NOT entertaining. People go to see him because he wrote some of the most impactful songs of my generation. Except for those died in the wool fans, most folks don’t go to see him twice.

So if you can't be entertaining, should you just be an icon?

If you can swing it, why not? Except for the lack of satisfaction from not mastering your instrument, your voice and your presentation, you should be fine. We are actually living in an age when you can get famous for being famous. Can you say Paris Hilton or la bimbas kardashian?

What about mailing lists? Do they work? Are they cost effective? Are they worth the effort.

At one time, I sent out personal post cards to everyone that gave me an address at one of my concerts. I never just looked for addresses. They must be addresses that count or there’s no point in going to the expense of the mailing.

And when post cards were .12 cents a piece that came out to eight for a dollar. Cost effective I thought, but now that they’r .27 cents a piece, that’s less than four per dollar. I have about six hundred people on my mailing list in Los Angeles alone. That comes to a tidy sum...about $175.00 in postage, not to mention the effort, the printing costs and the labels and labeling application. So say $300.00

Usually you can count on 10 percent of your list, so is it worth it to spend that much? Ten percent of six hundred people is 60 people, at $15.00 a ticket and say I get $12.00 of that, $720.00, minus the $300.00 and I’m looking at almost fifty percent of the evening’s income spent on postcards.

But factor in CD sales and perhaps it is worth it. But if you have a lot of gigs, that’s a lot of postcards and a lot of time preparing them. You have to do your own math and factor in what you get in an evening, what the ticket price is, etc.

That’s why people do emails...but the down side of emails is that nobody sticks them to their refrigerator and sees them everytime they go for the hagen daz. They read them and then they are buried under all the other emails that show up.

So you have to send them out in advance and then again the week before and then the week of and then the day of and still you get around four percent at best. And everyone thinks that you are a pain in the ass. Tho perhaps we are accustomed to that by now?

That’s enough for today, we’ll continue this after the weekend, when I have had more time to consider what does work, what might work and what should work.