Tasmanian Musicians. Carry That Weight

Since recently dabbling in assisting bands increase their public profile by way of an online music newspaper that was initially called "Music In Tasmania," I was underwhelmed by the lack of responses that I received after contacting them. The major response was/is a surefire winner. A chap called Mat from "Argusband" contacted me with other websites that the band is on so I have tweeted them with the relevant hashtags with moderate success at this stage.

I didn't bother contacting Rod Fritz as his online presence is making my job pretty easy as far as "Music In Tasmania" goes.

What took me aback was that I received four letters complaining that they hadn't been featured and the bands that I have featured are "....crap...." "rubbish...." "....wankers...." and so forth. Such letters were the first correspondence that I had received from these bands. Needless to say, they're off my schedule.

Having a small population base put me behind the eightball to start with. Having such useless and pointless comments from some bands narrowed my field even more. This saw me launch straight into 'Plan B.' This entails a name and content change for the paper. It is now called "Music And Arts In Tasmania." It is now including tourism, art, photography and theatre as well as the original topic of music.

Where am I going with this blog? I was heading away from my original theme of discouraging musicians from being aloof when nobody knows who they are for a start. Added to this, it's not a good idea to send unprofessional slurs about other bands to the likes of myself with my mere 26 years as a professional musician. My word travels far and fast. Make it work FOR you. It's not rocket science!

If any bands are viewing this entry as criticism, then you're way wrong. It's the music business. Are you into your music as a hobby or are you treating it as a business? If your answer is the latter then I suggest spending some time exploring legitimate and worthwhile to your specific needs. It really is worth it. You don't have to upload you're entire catalogue of music to each site. I do recommend, however, having a consistent bio. and profile picture.

The music business has been around longer than we have so they know all the tricks. You can make yourself stand out simply by being easily reachable via Google search. This is where consistency comes in. People will be more likely to 'join you' on another site if your presentation is consistent with the other sites that you're on.

It takes time for each site to 'generate' you and make you Google friendly. Patience is a virtue.

The best promotion that I can offer you is via "Music And Arts In Tasmania" (below) which is heavily reliant on my Twitter activity. All you have to do is send an occasional tweet my way and I can get you great mileage; namely in the form of a "featured article." In order to keep up to speed, simply subscribe to the daily edition of my newspaper.