It had been four days since I checked my MySpace page – my personal one, not the one connected with any festival or bands who I work for – and I had 14 new “friend” invites.  One was a girl I knew in high school, 13 were from bands I’d never heard of.  Some of them had put a quick message in the “notes” section of the invite – usually something dashing and clever like “New songs added! Check us out!”

Yeah, no thanks.  From that invitation, I learned four things: 1) the band name, 2) the band’s idea of a great promo picture (or logo!  Wow!), 3) the band used a robot or illiterate friend to work on inviting people, and didn’t bother reading my page and subsequently learning what I do for a living, and 4) that the band simply values quantity over quality when it comes to interactions.

You want me to come to your show when you’re in town, and bring my music business friends?  A MySpace message is NOT going to cut it.  Send me a handwritten note and a ticket (NOT a promise for a guest list appearance – I’m perma-guestlisted thanks to my local connections and/or press credentials – a ticket is something that I can stick in my wallet and see every day when I’m paying for my coffee).  Talk to the venue where you’re playing and see if you can get them to make up gift certificates for beers or cocktails, and send me one of those.  Show up at my office with your acoustic instruments and play me a song.  Bring me a pie.  Take a few minutes to read the blog on my website, and send me an email telling me what you thought, adding insight and asking questions.  In short: ENGAGE ME!  GET MY ATTENTION!  BE UNIQUE!

Those examples were not, in fact, from my own imagination.  Bands have done all of these things for me and my colleagues, and you know what?  We went to those shows, and usually those bands had their careers advanced because of it – they got a festival set, or an fantastic opening slot at a good venue, or a column written on my website, or – perhaps most importantly – their name brought up in conversations with other people who do jobs like mine.  Was it worth the $40 investment in drink coupons, or the $10 investment in a dozen cupcakes, or the 30-minute investment in getting to my office and showing us what you do, guerrilla-style?  Absolutely.

The MySpace invites?  Ignore, ignore, ignore, ignore….

Getting my attention is only half the battle, of course.  You have to deliver on your promise.  You can rent a limousine to pick me and a dozen of my colleagues up and take us to your show, but if you’re terrible, forget it.  So make sure your ducks are in a row before you get creative with the marketing.  Most bands are pretty bad when they start out – that’s okay!  Play a few gigs, get comfortable in front of an audience, get your head wrapped around the way sound systems work, then engage me*.
*By “me”, I mean any mid-to-high-level performing arts employee, music writer, booking agent, record label exec or other tastemaker or mover-and-shaker in any big city or small town in the world.  If you don’t know who to hit up in any given town, ask the venue manager or a local friend.  It’s not hard.