What’s the Value of a Concert to Your Audience?

One of the musicians I help on a frequent basis surprised me when he said that the band he’s been in for nearly three years, have recorded nearly every one of their live performances. Like the professionals they aspire to be, the band apparently reviews the recordings like they were game tapes, attempting to figure out what could be done to improve their performance and who screwed up where. While I had previously encouraged this band to post an open audio taping policy on their website, I’ve begun to consider something more sinister. (cue the notorious laughter)

While it’s great exposure for bands to get their live music heard by thousands, on free music torrent sites like DimeADozen.org (with their 100,000+ users (wow- I really downloaded nearly 2 terabytes of live audio & video?)) and TheTradersDen.com and etree’s live music archive (with over 3,300 bands), what if your band benefited from an open taping policy with one caveat?

Here’s the scenario;

You’re on stage in front of 600 screaming fans. You are 25 minutes into your set, in between songs, and the lead singer leans into the mic and announces, “Just so you know, we’re recording tonights show.  (Cheers)  If you want us to send you a link to download it free, put your address on the sheet by the t-shirt booth.”  That’s it.

The result? Depending on your performance, you’re likely to find a nice crowd of people surrounding your booth after the show.  Just drawing them to your booth is bound to help merch sales, because while waiting to put their name, email and zip code (ALWAYS get the zip/postal code!) down on your free concert recording list, they can’t help but stare at your cool t-shirts, CDs, 8-tracks, lunchboxes and what-have-you.  And how hard is it to create a printed form with a column for name, email and zip code?  Not hard, I just created one in 10 minutes (a PDF example is attached, but sign-up for my free SMMuG Email list off to the right and I’ll email you the Excel version so you can put in your own band logo). —> Make a dozen copies of your form, invest in a clipboard or two, and you are in business!

Now, the show is over, you dump your recording to the laptop, edit the tracks and compress to MP3.  Post the tracks up to your website using a unique path for each show; something like yourbandname.com/2009/pittsbrgmp3s/.  Email everyone on your new list, thank them for coming out, apologize for the exploding drummer and include the link to the mp3s.  You, my friend, have  just made a bunch of your people VERY happy!   And what do you have, beyond some great karma?  Well lookie there; you now have a list of fans/friends and followers who you can reach out to next time you’re coming to town! Or next time you’re releasing a new CD.  Or next time you’ve got a new t-shirt.  Or next time… You get the idea. Put that list in Excel, a database or better yet your favorite email campaign system, like MyEmma.  A few years from now you can send me a thank you card when you have 5,000 people in your system and can go just about anywhere and draw a crowd.

Now, how does this play with your taping recording policy that you’ve posted on your website? If you actually do tape all of your shows as my friend does, I would encourage the audio recording and free trading of your shows, but request a 30 day grace period before audience recorded live shows hit the trading networks.  This will increase the value for the people receiving the links to the bands mp3s since they will be the first recordings of that show available.  Not to mention that the band recordings will be from the soundboard and the other recordings are mostly audience mics. Keep in mind that tapers take their passion very seriously and it is not usual for them to get recordings from a live show up and available via bit torrents in the same day, which is why the 30 day grace period in critical to this process.    The other thing that this new process addresses are some venues who have strict policies against the audience carrying in mics, booms, laptops and harddrives to capture your show.

One last thing to consider, a lesson learned from prior Pearl Jam tours. Some of your audience members haven’t figured out how to download Mp3’s or use Torrents.  A few of your audience members haven’t figured out how to get music to their iPod. And some of your audience members would rather BUY a CD of the live show they attended, because of the convenience, or as a gift or because of the lossless quality of the music.  How easy would it be to offer that low price live CD option up to all of those who attended within the email notification to show goers? Easy. Easy money baby.

Let me now how it goes!

-pjc

I get emails from bands every week thanking me for the website and asking how they can contribute.  The best thing to do is post your comments, concerns, questions below and create a dialog with other bands and musicians.  Who knows, you might find a new collaboration amongst this little community!  Make sure your comment below has a link to your website or social media page (Myspace/Facebook/Twitter, etc.) otherwise it will not be approved.