SR 11 - Band Foundations Overview - HD 1080p
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[00:00:00] Jon Con: Okay. hello. Welcome to another episode of The Session Recall podcast. Today is gonna be a solo episode just cuz we're in the middle of sessions. Nick's recently be at Rockfield with Nada Surfing the Coach House. And what we actually did is we batched episodes just before. Actually in the summer last year before the podcast actually got launched and I think we actually managed to get about 10 episodes and I was just getting the feedback really about, you know, what's working and what we can kind of improve on.
[00:00:25] Jon Con: There's still a lot more stuff we've got planned. I'm, look, we're looking to get more, some more guests in, in the near future, but if you new here, my name's John. I'm one of the hosts for session recall. I've been studio engineer at Rockfield and I've run a studio with Nick called Leaders Veil. And this podcast really.
[00:00:39] Jon Con: Aim towards musicians, songwriters, studio engineers, producers, anyone involved in music really who's looking to help foster their career in a few of the previous episodes is we've been mentioned in this band checklist which like a foundation's guide for any band or musicians starting out just to kind of help 'em with social media, like a marketing approach and what's really kind of needed at the start, just to get them kind off the ground and also, What works for musicians, what works for bands when they're thinking about approaching promoters, venues entering into the studio.
[00:01:09] Jon Con: And it was something I put together when I was working at Leaders Veil a lot more and working for bands and as we've mentioned previously in the podcast, and we're always having the same recurring questions that were coming up. So what happens next? What should we do? And in the studio, you know, we, we do spend a lot of time talking to bands.
[00:01:23] Jon Con: Okay? Right. You're not gonna be able to do everything on your own. Try and split out the jobs in between yourselves. And this is really. Kind of guide came through. So I'm doing a screen recording of this checklist and it is available. So if you wanted to download this checklist now, if you head to session recall.com/band checklist there, there's a little form to fill out.
[00:01:41] Jon Con: As soon as you submit that form. I'll send you an email straight away just with a link to download. And you can kind of use this, you can print it out or like I think the PDF is, is you can actually type on it as well and make notes. So just follow along with this and write it out as we go along. So hopeful.
[00:01:56] Jon Con: I'll just bring the screen up now, hopefully that you can see this. So I'll just quickly show you an overview. It's like band foundation checklist. There's a couple of nice little images that's front saying, well, these are some things to think about. And then let's have a look. You probably just click on here.
[00:02:07] Jon Con: Let's go back out. Zoom out a little bit. Let's go to the next page. So there's basically, there's four pages. And what I'm really gonna focus on today is probably the first two pages we might come back to, like the recording schedule and the live show schedule in the future, because they might be things like a bit later down the line when we're looking at live music and so on.
[00:02:25] Jon Con: So with this band checklist, one thing to bear in mind is that. This is just a guide. This isn't set in stone. This isn't exactly what you should be doing. It's just to try and trigger certain points and just think, okay, how have you thought about this? How have you thought about These are kind of elements towards it.
[00:02:39] Jon Con: And sometimes, you know, some of this may be really like basic or really obvious for some people, but this helps you in any way whatsoever. If there's anything that's like triggered a thought process or like a different approach, let me know in the comments. Let me know what's working. If there's anything you don't quite understand, please leave a comment and I'll, I'll send us an email.
[00:02:55] Jon Con: [email protected]. So again, we're back onto the first page. We're just gonna zoom in a little bit here. So now we go back, right? So zooming in. So band checklist, what we have is there's a couple of topics that we're gonna be talking about today. Sorting out your socials, band member roles, planning band agreements, and then we'll probably be looking at networking.
[00:03:13] Jon Con: So the first one that we'll probably be looking at today is sorting out your socials. So what I mean by this sorting out your socials is as in. To when we're thinking about coming up with a band name, it's trying to work out a social media handle or username that translates across all the different platforms.
[00:03:28] Jon Con: What we're trying to say here is, if you can, it's not always necessarily that you're able to, but if you're able to get this, Same username on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, and Twitter. It makes it far easier to have the same name each time. For instance, the session recall it was available on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube and Twitter and YouTube's our main focus for the social media channels.
[00:03:52] Jon Con: Facebook was the only channel that wasn't available, so we've got call it session record, but I might change it to the session record podcast. . The first thing is just thinking about like the tools and having a thought process towards like the branding that you want to have. So it's always like the same imagery, the same color schemes to some degree, and the same kind of post across all the platforms.
[00:04:11] Jon Con: So if you looked at it, if you looked at one channel or if you looked at like the different platforms, you could identify, oh yeah, that session we call, oh, that's this band. Like it's all kind of. One of the things I would say about the social media aspect is you don't have to, I wouldn't re try recommending, trying to be across all platforms.
[00:04:27] Jon Con: I'd probably say to start with, as you're growing, just, just focus on one. There is a big focus or shift now towards like the shorts, reels, or TikTok videos, like the vertical platforms, and these can be really useful tools to help grow your audience and work out what's working. I've, you know, I'm in a really lucky position where I'm talking to bands quite a bit and artists and I.
[00:04:48] Jon Con: Some people from like a traditional aspect may not be doing this as much, but I would say just have it go at trying things out. You don't, nothing has to be perfect, but just try things out and figure out what's gonna work and what doesn't. A friend of mine was doing cashing videos on everyday house items.
[00:05:04] Jon Con: That's worked out really well for on TikTok initially, and he switched over to YouTube now. So all we need to do really is just think about, well, let's just concentrate on one. And then let's build out all the other platforms as we go along. So, I mean, a session recall at the moment we're, we're at this stage at the moment where our primary focus is YouTube.
[00:05:22] Jon Con: We make one long form podcast as a video. And then what we are doing is we're adapt reading the video down, and then we're uploading it. I export the video out into an mp3 and that goes on to our podcast Post and provider, and that goes to Spotify, apple Music, and everywhere else the podcast has been submitted.
[00:05:41] Jon Con: What we're also then doing is we're taking snippets of the clips on the podcast and converting them into like vertical format for TikTok, Instagram Facebook as. On the reels and also sh YouTube as well, like the YouTube shorts has been actually really good discovery platform for us because the reach on that I, I'll try and get some images and stuff on the short, on the the reach.
[00:06:03] Jon Con: But sh shorts at the moment on YouTube is probably about 75% of exposure at the moment on the channel. The subscriber base is still probably coming from the videos. But there is huge impact on terms of keynote shorts and reels, so I wouldn't discount it. The other thing is when I've seen, when we've had like advice from like social media platforms, he said, just try things out.
[00:06:23] Jon Con: Doesn't have to be perfect. Just try, you know, just work out what, what people are doing, what, what's working for you, what's working for other artists as well. And just see, cuz something you, you never really know with all these platforms, you don't know what's gonna be a successful post. You don't know what's.
[00:06:38] Jon Con: Actually you like blow up or what's actually gonna take off for you. So just try things out to start with. It might be that no one sees them or, you know, it could be something that like we can kind of develop as we go along. The other thing I'd recommend thinking about is rather than trying to post on the day, what you can actually do is schedule posts and batch them.
[00:06:54] Jon Con: So you could look at recording a few videos, a few like snippets behind the scenes like recording process, like what you've been doing in the studio. band practices, like little bits of banter and just little sketch sketches or something, or like what's going on nearby. Reaction videos could be good.
[00:07:11] Jon Con: What we could look at doing is like you could look at just doing a day of content and then having that scheduled out. So I think with TikTok, You have, I think TikTok give you up to 10 days in advance with Instagram. With YouTube, Facebook, what you can do is you can actually schedule these with like a business account or like a, a creative account.
[00:07:29] Jon Con: You'd have like a month's worth of content in advance. So just like, for example, for us on YouTube, this video I think was, this isn't like an outlier. , but this video's being being recorded on the 2nd of February, but we've got snippets of previous podcasts that get released every other day on the channel, just as easy way of actually kind of reaching new audiences.
[00:07:47] Jon Con: So we're not trying to like always post brand new things. Sometimes we could be taking snippets of that. And that's another point which has been really interesting and really useful is some of our best performing shorts on YouTube have just been remixed videos from YouTube. So we've literally gone on the YouTube app.
[00:08:03] Jon Con: Taking a video of like taking an episode that's already done, taking the 15 second clip on our phone done remix and then that's actually like blown up for us a couple of times. Again, we are a very small channel, so obviously we're not looking at like Mr. Beast levels, but it is something to think about using the remix of like previous videos and just would that work could actually help boost views for posts that may not be seen a lot.
[00:08:23] Jon Con: As much love from the YouTube algorithm. . So on page two what we have is this top section here, which is obviously the email address, website address. This could just be a bit, the link tree, link tree's. Really useful I think for new artists cuz you can kind of link to videos, direct people to your, like the platform for a new release or a new single from Spotify and having everything kind of there.
[00:08:44] Jon Con: But it is just to try and make sure that if there are any differences for social media channels, this is where we can kind of find it. If you can try and get the same username for all the platforms, it'll be much, much easier. when it comes to like writing press packs, releases, and new websites because you just do at band name and it's the same for all of them.
[00:09:01] Jon Con: And this is something I think YouTube recently introduced was the handles now is before you had to get to a hundred subscribers before you could get a username, but now they've actually copied TikTok with the AT and then the handle pretty easily. So that's the first thing really. Social media is. Just have a look at that, try and get the same usernames and try and get the branding across.
[00:09:18] Jon Con: One thing I will mention something that we actually use this actual platform, sorry, this, this guide who actually made on canva.com. There is a combination of free and premium tools you can help you with like videos and stuff as well and like shorts and stories and everything. There's a couple of links in there that you should be able to click on and they're just, just useful time savers to have a look at.
[00:09:38] Jon Con: So that's social media like aspect. Let's go back to the previous page. And the next thing we're gonna be talking about is the band member roles. So one of the examples that we gave in the previous podcast was with Burning Gros. I remember when they were talking about it, they, they were really good in terms of making sure that everyone in the band had a set role for.
[00:09:58] Jon Con: What they were doing. Whips is doing a lot of songwriting and there's a lot of content for the, when they were doing like fundraisers, either work some, I think Lance or Chris were one of the people who would be involved in like the bookings all the time and like the logistics or touring and everything.
[00:10:10] Jon Con: So like when we are sitting down, there's like, one of the things that can happen in bands is sometimes it goes untalked about or unnoticed. There's sometimes could be an underlying resentment where you feel like one member might feel like, well, I'm doing all the work. Why aren't other people doing like extra bits and pieces?
[00:10:24] Jon Con: And sometimes it comes down to haven't really, like no one's really sat down and discussed what they're gonna do. So like, this is something, when I was talking to was it Wayne from Secret Faces? I think he like, just, just to the nature of the band. I think he mentioned that like he. And consciously was trying to take on all the roles and responsibilities of the band.
[00:10:40] Jon Con: And this is something that can happen for bands as well. This is my baby, these are my songs. I wanna try and make sure I'm doing it. But then you're not giving other members like the authority of the opportunity to do stuff. And this is why like having people thinking about, well, who's good at what? Who, what are your strengths and what your weaknesses in the band.
[00:10:55] Jon Con: Someone could be really good at the social media aspect. Someone could be really good at design work. There might be one or two people working on the songwriting outside of like pr, practicing rehearsals. And we've mentioned this I think, in previous episodes in like the songwriting ones and also like the preparing for the studio aspect when we're actually forming a band or we're looking at like groups and stuff.
[00:11:13] Jon Con: Is there anything people can do to help each other out? and just writing a down and saying, well, look, if, so, if an inquiry comes in on like Gmail or whatever email platform you're using, it's saying, well, everyone has access to emails and like an inquiry comes in that you know that the drummer is gonna be taken care of all the bookings and they know exactly what to be asking for.
[00:11:32] Jon Con: So you don't get a situation where two people reply, two different, two different answers and quotes and just trying to avoid that conclusions. Now one of the things you can do with Google. Or like Gmail is, you can add labels. So you could actually identify, you know, at an early stage for bands, you could identify who's actually in charge of this conversation.
[00:11:48] Jon Con: The basis is taking care of this, the drummer's like dealing with this inquiry, so it keeps track of who's doing what. But that's just something that I've seen before where I was I remember like sending mixes to a band once Bass got really excited and was replying to me at two in the morning.
[00:12:02] Jon Con: Facebook in an email as well, saying that they also, like songs sounded great and everything, but I think there were one or two more revisions that needed to be done. And it was just, I think sometimes you can get jumping the guns, you can jump the gun a little bit. And if I think having someone just to take a moment and like just check, like speak to the band or like go through the process together, it can really help.
[00:12:20] Jon Con: and just having, like figuring out who's gonna be doing what and trying to share responsibilities between everyone's really, really helpful. What can happen is sometimes there might be two members in the band who are driving the band. The main point about this band member all idea is it's accountability.
[00:12:35] Jon Con: It's trying to make sure that everyone's doing stuff. So sometimes what might happen is, That everyone sits down and they agree the roles, but then it might be that one or only one or two members are actually carrying out and doing what they say they do. So it is just trying to say, well, you said you're gonna do this, please carry on doing it.
[00:12:50] Jon Con: Otherwise, does it need to be, do we need to revisit it? Do we need to think about finding someone else to kind of cover these roles and help us? Because like ideally what would happen is, as we're thinking about this, that in the future you get to a point where, , you wanna be focusing more time on songwriting and have someone else come on board to take over some of these duties.
[00:13:09] Jon Con: And this is something I suppose that actually comes onto the next bit, which is talking really about the, like the visions and goals and your plan for the next year. So this is something that comes up quite a bit. Whenever I go to like conferences, whenever I have like master classes from people, I'm talking about their role in the industry.
[00:13:25] Jon Con: So if it's like a booking agent management, if it's radio, What they're looking for is they want to hear a story. They want to hear about, well, what's your plans for the next year? What's your plans for the next two, three years from a booking agent or promoter's role? What they're probably, look, what they'd probably be looking for is like a band of a vision and an idea of what they want to do.
[00:13:41] Jon Con: If they can get, if the late, if a venue can get in, develop a really strong relationship with these people. It might be that they could be headliners in the air down. and having that kind of vision of what you want to try and achieve is something that can kind of help convince other people to come and come on board with your vision for the band.
[00:13:58] Jon Con: I'm just gonna jump over to page two. . So what I have here is there is these two sections we have in five years time we will, and by this time next year, the idea behind it is like sometimes people can overestimate what can be achieved in a year and sometimes underestimate what can be done in 10. I think it came from Bill Gates.
[00:14:15] Jon Con: I'll double check that and find out. But I was just saying like for five years time as a new artist, as a new band, Have a think about, well, where do you wanna be in five years time? What do you wanna be doing? Dream big? Well, what do you wanna try and do? And then it's okay, right? I wanna be playing reading festival.
[00:14:28] Jon Con: I wanna be playing, get on a stage at Glass Andry and then say, okay, well what do I need to do that? How now? Work your way back and make the steps available. And the benefit to that is just visualizing what we're gonna be doing. So it's all right. Okay. So to get onto festivals, we need to be gigging. We need to be demonstrating, we've got an audience and a following, and we need to have some recordings out.
[00:14:44] Jon Con: So then it's like right in this next. By the end of this year, we want to have, I dunno, a release on district or release onto Spotify and Apple Music. We want to have a headline gig or we want to get on a couple of supports. The main reason we want to try and show like a plan for the band, we're trying to odd the artists and say, oh, this is where we on be for next year.
[00:15:02] Jon Con: And it also helps you kind of visualize it yourself. So there's like a checklist of things to be done that we can cross off having. Those ideas to cross off in the future, it's gonna be really, really beneficial for you. And like sometimes visualizing it, writing it down is this like idea of just something that kind of gets ingrained in the memory and you can kind of refer back to it.
[00:15:19] Jon Con: Whereas if it's just like an idea, we don't write it down or we don't have it somewhere, we can refer back to it like on a band meeting or something, then we might forget about it. And then like the direction of the bank kind of gets aimless and then that's another year down the line and we're in exactly the same place.
[00:15:31] Jon Con: No one wants that. So as I saying, I think. when we're looking at this for this first year, when we say we, like people can overestimate, what can we achieve in the first year as a new artist? It's very unlikely, not impossible, but very unlikely that we're gonna be looking at regular like festival slots across the UK having a booking agent.
[00:15:49] Jon Con: But we could be looking at, well, let's get on some like local gigs, some local festivals, and just build up our rep, like live performance set there. So build up our live. But what it might be is that we're looking at trying to get some reviews from some live shows, looking at getting some reviews to the demos and recordings and everything.
[00:16:05] Jon Con: And getting this social proof is what's sometimes called at, is to try and build up these reviews and achievements for press kits, which become really important when we comes to the point of applying for festivals, going to radio stations as well. And the more information that we can provide, the more stories, the more positive press that we can.
[00:16:26] Jon Con: Actually may help us achieve some of the goals, make us stand out against the other bands or other artists that we're working with. Now, music isn't a competition. What we wanna try and do is just paint ourselves in the best possible light and try and people bring people on board with our vision as we're developing.
[00:16:39] Jon Con: And this is something with booking agents, the likelihood is rather than you kind of go to thems, like most likelihood is that they're gonna come to you when you're ready. So just literally just keep doing what you're doing, but like making like a positive, positive connections to the local music. Just to give you an example for, for this year now, the one goal I've got for this year is with session Rico.
[00:16:56] Jon Con: Again, we're really, really early stages. What I'm trying to do is I've set, set myself the goal again, 1000 subscribers. By the end of the year, we're posting, trying to make sure that we keep to the podcast episodes of one podcast a week, and then trying to post like some snippets and shorts around that.
[00:17:12] Jon Con: But the main goal is a thousand subscribers. An asset. It might be adapted. If we achieve it, it's great, but it's just something that. , it's in the back of my mind. We're at Edison. Well, when we're making stuff that, like, that's the, our goal for session. So as you can probably see, we're in exact same position as you guys at this moment in time.
[00:17:28] Jon Con: I've done this with other bands. I've done this with my own channel on YouTube and my old studio channel that I've had. So I'm starting from a different position from like, I suppose I've had the experience that I can take into that. And this is where the community that we've got Will, can kind of share best practices between each other.
[00:17:42] Jon Con: So that was one of the. When we're talking about, like these two goals here, so we're saying in five years time, we wanna be doing this our goals for this time next year, we want to make, make a list and cross off as you do it. That's all we need to do. What? The other thing I actually said on the bottom is talking about following your idols.
[00:17:59] Jon Con: It doesn't have to be idols, but just have a look at artists who might be a couple of stages favor ahead of you, or some established acts on like major labels. And just have a look at what they're doing. How are they posting? What are they posting? Is it always the same thing? Biggest fallback I see from bands is going singles out by my single, by my single.
[00:18:18] Jon Con: We got a gig, got a gig. Here's my single, here's a gig. It's like, cool. You're gonna just everything can get tired to listen to that message, to see what other people are doing. How are they engaging with people? What makes it interesting? What I always, what we've, we've mentioned this a few times on in the podcast, is like, when bands come into the studio, This is a really good opportunity just to record as much as possible, take tons and tons of pictures.
[00:18:39] Jon Con: There's a band that I work with called Savage Messiah in Rockfield. I was just assisting, I think I was just an engineering for the drums. What they did really, really well was they took so many photos. They managed to make it look like they had been in the studio for like three months. I think they were in, they, they're in studio for 10 days just recording the drums, and then it, they went on to like edit a lot of record bass guitars and vocals at another studio after.
[00:19:01] Jon Con: Because they collected so much content, so much video footage, so much footage for photos, they're able to look at on the social media channels that they were still in studio, they were still recording. And it's like this story idea, like the story is just like it's embellishing on the truth, but it was actually obviously evidence of the stuff that they've been doing.
[00:19:17] Jon Con: And it just meant that they were staying top of mind with our audience. So we've shown what was going on. People could kind of see what was happening. And now with the likes of Pat, with the likes of YouTube and the subscriptions things, there's so many different ways that we can engage our audience. and that's something just to kind of think about and just see, well just have a quick look and see what other people are doing.
[00:19:36] Jon Con: Is there anything you can adapt from their approach? Is there any common themes between all these different channels? Are they all mainly posting videos? Are they all, are they, is live popular with them? Are they going live quite regularly? Is it photos, is it a mixture? Because what we are seeing is like we're probably a lot of these channels, again, when we go back to social media, A lot of these channels are now probably shifting over towards, more towards reels than they are maybe doing photos from a few years ago.
[00:19:58] Jon Con: I know maybe a few years back live was popular, but then also think about Twitch as well and think about the live streaming aspect there. So there's, there's loads of opportunities there to kind of think about, well what are the people doing? Like don't just look up like people on the scene in your, like in the local circuit.
[00:20:13] Jon Con: But I think they're ahead. What are more established bands doing? What are major label bands doing? What are independent artists? Doing really well that we could adapt, not necessarily copy, but we can adapt for our own platform and system, like making these ideas and brainstorming, seeing, well, just putting it down to this section of what's working really, really well.
[00:20:29] Jon Con: So what we've done so far, we have sorting out your socials, band member roles planning for the year ahead, the band agreements, and the networking as well. Having turned networking, that's a complete low. We're gonna do that now. Final thing that I wanted to talk about in this episode, really, this is something that really gets overlooked by a lot of bands, a lot of artists, a lot of musicians, university students, when they're doing like a business degree, sometimes there is a heavier reliance on social media and email.
[00:20:56] Jon Con: I don't think there's enough people who are really perhaps going out and networking face-to-face or putting a face to the name. So what I've actually said here is go out and meet promoters, attend the band shows, support local music scene. Offer to play shows for free, just to get yourself known in local area.
[00:21:12] Jon Con: Organize events yourself in person or online, and just start building your presence. So when I was digging this, this happened just, just as. , my original bands. And then later on down the line when I was in like function bands and cover bands, more often than not the best relationships that we had with the venues were the ones we actually went out and tried to actually ask for the, like, go and speak to the promoters and go and speak to the venue managers and try and develop a relationship with 'em early on.
[00:21:35] Jon Con: So when, like in Cardiff, when Porters opened, myself and Lars in our band, we went down to speak to Dan and we gave him a business. and obviously that had the link, the website, which had a couple of live videos and everything. And from that we were able to get bookings and develop a relationship with Porters for the first few years if we hadn't have gone in, if we just tried sending an email or whatever.
[00:21:56] Jon Con: It's a, it's this different dynamic because you put a face to the name where you actually go out and actually meet to the people. You can get more across about your personality and the things that aren't. Just by talking to 'em, saying like, seeing that you're being proactive, you're easy to get on with.
[00:22:08] Jon Con: It just shows a little more. This just stands out a little bit more than just sending like an email. So it's the same with networking. This, this will happen as well for production work, for music work, if there's networking events, if there's anything that you can do just to meet artists and meet people.
[00:22:22] Jon Con: It's like sometimes it's a numbers game. , the people you meet, the people you go out and actually kind of speak to face to face, they're more likely to remember you. And so that might mean it's like positively reinforces like, okay, they're someone I wanna remember. They're the person I might wanna book. I remember this band.
[00:22:37] Jon Con: Just gonna have a look at it now. Each. Don't necessarily have to have business cards made up and like I've got thousands upon thousands of business cards You, like I say, maximum get a hundred. You probably won. Need more than that. But even if not, just like just take their contact email address or just follow up with 'em when you get back and say, Hey, thanks very much for taking time to speak with me today.
[00:22:56] Jon Con: Just to remind you, this is my band and this is like the things that we're doing, some links to some social media and everything, which is like the starting point of a press kit, but we can get into press kits at another point and hopefully we'll try and get some people on who develop press kits in the future.
[00:23:11] Jon Con: I've done this in production work, studio work. I've already mentioned that had it in the music world. Well just. Go into gigs like as a studio engineer, go and actually speaking to the bands and say, Hey, everybody, like what you're doing. And on that point, like I've taught networking, taught teaching, career development to people.
[00:23:24] Jon Con: Like one of the things actually, if you ever look for like elevator pitches or networking for musicians, is that the biggest issue with networking, I think sometimes is there's not many very many good videos about four musicians, four producers, engineers or whoever about this area. A lot of this idea, like an elevator pitch or networking spiel is sometimes very focused towards like business jargon and obviously for music in the creative industries.
[00:23:51] Jon Con: How you kind of approach the conversation for creative industries is not gonna be the same as it might be for, say, , you know, a 14, 500 company or a business to business facing company. So how you kind of approach that, like how you talk about things or if you are looking for a job in a certain way, you might be like approaching it a different way.
[00:24:10] Jon Con: So what I'm basically saying is that like it's a couple of sentences about who you are. Your music and what you're looking to try and get out of the conversation. And the main thing is, is to try and keep the language casual. So with the business things, if you ever watch any business networking tips, there's always, there's always just to talk about, I've done this, I've achieved this, or, and like, just the way they kind of talk about the wordings a bit wrong.
[00:24:32] Jon Con: So just like give you an example is I just wrote something down here. It's like, I'm gonna use secret faces just because I'm working with 'em. I think I'm in the studio of. Next weekend. So just a Hi, I'm waiting for Secret Faces. We're a four piece indie band from South Wales. We've supported bands such as X, Y, and Z.
[00:24:47] Jon Con: Insert the bands that you wanna put in there. And I was just wondering who might be the best person to speak to about support starts or playing at your venue in the future. Now if you have that as like El elevator pitch and that's who you're gonna go and speak to, like you're going to talk to Rosa for a venue and you do that in person.
[00:25:03] Jon Con: that's a very good starting point because you kind of covered exactly what you wanna do. It doesn't take much of the time, and then they determine what they want, what they want from you or like who they can kind of pass it on for them. If you can get their name as well. This is really important because what you can do is you can link their, if they say you have to email this person and you ask the name, say you can email the person they've said, I said, Hey.
[00:25:21] Jon Con: Joe on the bar. I went, I went and spoke to Joe on the bar and they told me to get in touch with you about possible future things. So having that name recognition association means it's not, again, just a cold outreach. You've gone to the venue, you've gone to the, like the, the place. And that might again just help you take another step up.
[00:25:37] Jon Con: So that was like the idea, do it in person. This is my card, or here's a QR code of all the information, which might be a press pack. Very easy to set up and sort out. It might just be a bit easier than sending just an email. So what we're thinking about is with networking, with getting gigs, it's music is a bit of a game at times.
[00:25:54] Jon Con: It is a bit of a numbers game, but being proactive and putting yourself out there and meeting the right people can help develop your careers as well. There are bands that I know who've gone and got jobs in the music industry, which has helped propel, like the, the gigs that they're available. , it's absolutely a perfect thing to do.
[00:26:10] Jon Con: So just think about how can we be proactive and get ourselves out there. And it's like if you're going to gigs to support other bands, stay and see all the other bands, like to support them and develop relationships with them. Cause what you want them to do is reciprocally come back to see you in the future as well.
[00:26:26] Jon Con: So just recapping on all this, sort out your socials. Ideally just focus on one platform. You can adapt the content then to the other ones afterwards. And schedule it as well. So I, I, I might take one day every two to three weeks and get like the videos and the stuff scheduled so I don't have to keep thinking about what am I gonna post, what am I gonna post?
[00:26:47] Jon Con: We're coming to a stage now, I think we're gonna be doing a couple more posts at a time just to kind of. Cat, go back ahead of the video content. Agree. Band member rules. Highlight who's gonna be responsible for what. Regular check in as well. Just saying what are we still on track? Do we need to adapt stuff?
[00:27:00] Jon Con: Are people like falling behind on what they need to do, but just have an agreement of some kind band agreements as well, just in terms of royalty splits or like, are we all just splitting everything evenly? Have the conversation. You're Iran, as we've mentioned at the podcast, it saves a lot of hassle.
[00:27:13] Jon Con: Further down the line, setting yourself long term and SHORTTERM goals. Staff are the long term ones. What do you wanna achieve in five years? How do we work our way back and break it down? And the networking. Be active, try to go out and meet people. As well as doing the emails, as well as reaching out face-to-face contacts.
[00:27:27] Jon Con: Getting a name or a recommendation from someone can go a long way into making yourself stand out as, I suppose, just like what they call a cold email, which you're just kind of just firing off to people. Let me know your thoughts and the comments. Send us an email as well for feedback. I'd love to know what works for you guys.
[00:27:42] Jon Con: Is, has everything, has everything I say been complete bollocks, . It's absolutely fine. Is there anything you don't wanna agree with? Let me know. I'd love to hear, like, again, what can we adapt from this? What can we change? One thing I know I haven't mentioned is PS and PPR membership, but that could be something that we look at later down the line.
[00:27:59] Jon Con: The, first of all, let's just get like songs written and recorded before we start worrying about that just at the moment. If you're still with us at this stage, thanks very much for watching. I've got a small ask if just ask for you. We've recently opened our session record community and is that a discounted, dirty bird rate at the moment?
[00:28:15] Jon Con: This is an opportunity for like-minded musicians, studio professionals. Who are looking to develop the career over the next couple of years. Both myself and Nick are actively involved in this community, and we host and we also host monthly hangouts with like the members just to discuss what we're working on, queries and questions about their own development or just, and also an opportunity just to shoot breeds or the musicians ask questions and get feedback from each other as well.
[00:28:38] Jon Con: From early feedback. We've also included a introduction to production courses, a little bit more information on music industry and marketing. And if this is something that it sounds like you'd be quite interested in, please head over to session record.com/community and you'll be able to sign up and join us today.
[00:28:55] Jon Con: If you haven't already and you wanna download this checklist and have a look at what I've actually been looking at today, that's available [email protected] slash band checklist. We're also at this stage of the business of really early stages. Thanks so much again for watching. We'll see you all again in next episode, and love to hear your thoughts again.
[00:29:13] Jon Con: See you later.
