5 Things Your Band Needs To Stop Doing On Facebook

One of the biggest challenges in starting a brand new project, of course, is building a fanbase.  I've actually been spending a fair amount of time trying to get the word out through a variety of different methods, but of course the most effective way to do that is through "social media."  Unfortunately, the most popular way to do this is through Facebook, which is not exactly the ideal platform.  I would prefer a site that actually was designed for music fans instead of for pictures of your children, but that's just me.  Most of the music-based social media sites tend to have pretty low traffic, or seem to be comprised entirely of musicians.  So for the time being, Facebook it is.

I "like" quite a few bands on Facebook, and even as an artist myself, most of these pages piss me off.  I can't imagine how annoying it must be purely as a fan.  Here are 5 of the most annoying "marketing" "strategies" I see too often.

1. PLEASE HELP ME GET TO ARBITRARY NUMBER OF LIKES/DOWNLOADS/CHART POSITIONS!!!!11

Look, I know occasionally these kind of milestones can be cool.  Earlier this week I got 100 plays on Soundcloud in one day and it felt good.  It's one thing to set goals for yourself.  But if you are sitting at 925 likes and you feel the need to beg for the last 75, then the last 50, then 20, etc. then you are not engaging your fanbase in a positive way.  Most people don't care about these things.  Trust me, as your fan it's annoying.  Likewise...

2. IF THIS GETS 100 LIKES I WILL POST A NEW SONG/VIDEO/WHATEVER

Dude.  You're going to post it anyways.  Let's not kid ourselves here.  Your fans shouldn't have to "earn" the privilege to hear you.

3. SUPER SECRET THING COMING SOON KEEP CHECKING WWW.MYBAND.COM EVERY DAY FOR UPDATES

Building anticipation is one thing and you do have to withhold some information.  Maybe you have a show coming up that you can't announce yet or you are close to releasing something really exciting and that's great.  But just do the damn thing and post it.  Don't expect that I'm going to F5 your website all day long in anticipation of your upcoming gig in Iowa City.

4. DON'T FORGET TO SHARE THIS PAGE WITH YOUR FRIENDS!  TELL YOUR FRIENDS HOW GREAT WE ARE

You know what?  If you are really that good, your biggest fans are going to do this anyways.  The percentage of people who would actually promote your page just because you told them to is probably lower than the percentage of people who scan those fucking QR code things on advertisements.  Which, by the way, is zero.  Trust me, if anyone used those things I would have Goatse'd the world a long time ago.

5. PRODUCTION PROMOTIONS PRESENTS: SOME BIG MUSIC EVENT EVERY DAY SOMEWHERE 1000 MILES AWAY FROM YOU

This one is tough, because as far as I can tell Facebook events are based off of your personal profile and not your artist page, which means that if someone I don't know is a fan of my page I couldn't even invite them to an event if I wanted to.  But seriously take the time to create some lists on Facebook.  Group them by city, state, region, scene, whatever and work locally.  Greg Brendel might be my biggest fan, but when I'm ready to play my debut gig at the dive bar down the street on a Tuesday night, he's probably not going to make the drive from Pittsburgh to Madison to come see me play.

Unfortunately, there is a ton of noise out there on Facebook, and no matter how much you try you will still probably get grouped in with most bands who employ these strategies.  Even worse, you will get lost.  This is the truth.  But please, please show some restraint and some respect for your fans.  We have to improve the signal to noise ratio, no matter what scene you're in.  Taking the extra time to not come off as a douche will help you maintain a less cringe-worthy social media presence.

Video for "New Storms"

Lots of firsts.  Well here's the first Odd-Sky music video.  Check it out: http://youtu.be/hu2xo4xRwHc

What and When to Release?

Certainly one of the biggest goals of the Odd-Sky project is to release a full-length record at some point in time (and I do mean record as in vinyl, by the way, but I'm probably getting ahead of myself.)  Despite the fact that many people seem to just release music individually as singles, I still enjoy full albums.  Almost all of my music collection is full albums.  Of course I like going on Soundcloud and listening to individual tracks, but I rarely download these tracks.  I would rather wait for the "finished album" before adding it to my collection.  Unfortunately, most of these albums go unfinished, and often times one might not have ever been planned.

I'm a little torn on how to release new Odd-Sky material.  These first few songs obviously I wanted to post online ASAP, mostly because now I can actually say Odd-Sky, you know, exists and I have something to show for it, but also because quite honestly I'm proud of how quickly these tracks came together and how good (at least to me) they sound.  Also being able to promote a new track every week or two seems like a good way to build a fan base, in theory at least.  But if I do that with the end goal of releasing an album, what do I hold back?  It creates a tough situation.  Some would say put everything online.  Some would say wait with the whole thing and maybe release some teasers to maintain interest.

I should also say that I really enjoy the instant gratification of being able to click the upload button and getting feedback just a few minutes later.  It's hard to keep a good secret, you know?  And of course I always go in with the idea that each track I write should be better than the one before it, so in theory I am always releasing the best stuff I have, but holding off on the (yet-unwritten) very best stuff to come.

What do you guys think?  I want as many opinions on this as possible, because it matters a lot to the future outcome of this project.

I Don't Wanna Work Today

Here is another ODD-SKY demo for you to enjoy.  It was meant as a song to wake up to.  It also includes a secret shoutout to my new Madison peeps.

I Don't Wanna Work Today (demo)

Studio News

So the truth is, the New Storms track was a bit of an accident.  The studio isn't even completely built yet, but the room has such a great vibe.  It is the third floor of the house and overlooks the entire street below.  I can sit in the window and just watch things go by.  Anyways, the plan for the day was to continue gathering samples.  This has still been ongoing, but the main idea is to get most of the sampling out of the way first so I don't have to worry about it later.  But then I decided I had better at least load a couple of things up and sequence some beats together just to see if I was on the right track.  Then I decided it would be fun to do a sludgy industrial cover of a terrible early 90's R&B track.  Well, that didn't work so instead I ended up with New Storms.  Written in the middle of a crazy thunderstorm, appropriately enough.

Day Three: New Song!

I can't say I expected this to happen.  I sat down this morning with some of my samples and loops I made yesterday (you will notice they were not all drums after all) and 8 hours later I have something I can consider the first ODD-SKY "song."  Enjoy!

New Storms

Day Two: Drums

In getting started, the first thing I had to decide was how I wanted the drums to sound.  I am certainly a fan of the slicker, newer production when it comes to drums: composite kick drums, snappy snares, crystal clear hats, crazy fun loud toms, and everything else.  But most of my favourite albums don't have this.  In fact, the slick "perfect" production is exactly why a lot of newer releases from some of my favourite bands just fail to stack up.  Albums like Skinny Puppy's "Last Rights"or Nine Inch Nails' "The Downward Spiral" introduced colours and noise and soundscapes to me in a way I never knew possible in music, and in a way that I've rarely heard since.  And obviously both of these bands made extensive use of sampling, in an era where storage space was ridiculously small and they had to do things like pitch stretch a sample up 200% and then play it back at half speed for storage space.

In relation to my music, it reminds me a bit of the tracker scene.  I wrote some pretty crazy music, of which I could have nearly fit an entire album onto a 3.5" floppy disk.  But holy moly was some of it dark and noisy.  I suppose that's what happens when you are pitch shifting literally everything.  As I moved onto better software, my music sounded a lot better, but in some ways things were sometimes a little too clean-feeling.  So when it came to deciding upon techniques to use for ODD-SKY, the answer was obvious:  fucking sample everything.

So that's what I spent today doing.  Chopping and mangling, distorting and reversing, splicing and effecting some of my favourite parts of some of my favourite records.  Some of it I hope to be blatant about, some of it I will try to be sneaky about.  It's going to be a lot of work.  But it's also really fun.  And I feel I can use what I've learned about modern techniques to take a bunch of old stuff and make it sound new.

Previous Works

So what the hell should you expect from ODD-SKY?  I have a lot of great ideas which I will get into later, but the honest truth is that I don't exactly know yet.  It will definitely be primarily electronic, with 80's and 90's industrial and even some dance influences, but I never know exactly what the overall sound will be like because I just tend to write what comes natural to me.  I can count on one hand the number of times I have said "Okay, let's try to write a (X genre) song now."  It just doesn't work for me.  The only thing I can safely say is that it will be a logical continuation of many projects I've worked on in the past, although it will sound nothing like them.

What projects have you worked on in the past?  I'm glad you asked.

Mentiras:  An industrial metal band I founded.  I was the vocalist, wrote the music to some early songs, and played synth on a few tracks.  Had a ton of fun with these guys, and I fucking hope they are still going strong.

DEADinSECTS.:  This project is still active.  It is mostly ambient, IDM, and soundtrack-type music.

12 Step Staircase:  This is the oldest project I've had, actually dating back to the late 1990's.  For that reason it sounds a bit dated to me.  It is, however, some of the most honest and raw music I've ever recorded.

I also have a pretty sweet Soundcloud where you can hear some stuff I never officially released, including an awesome(ly bad) Hall & Oates cover.  So all in all, if you smashed all of these projects together you might get something that sounds nothing like ODD-SKY.

Aura and Mystique

Another way I have my head completely up my ass is that I am of the opinion that generally the less the listener knows about the artist, the better.  The press release that comes out every year or two with a new album is usually good enough for me, and if I care to know more I can seek out the occasional interview.  I don't want to hear about their day jobs or see pictures of their kids or even interact with artists I am a fan of on a personal basis, because for some reason that seems to cheapen the experience for me.

That said, I've actually tried to write up press releases before, and my god they are terrible.  Hell I can barely write up a resume.  So what you've ended up with from me is pretty much zero information, which is not good either.  So with this blog experiment, I want to attempt to peel back some of those layers.  I'm still a pretty guarded person so this might be difficult.  But I am noticing especially now as I have moved into a new city with new ambitions, if no one knows anything about me, nobody cares.  So that is one of my motives behind this experiment, and I hope I can keep you interested.

Does anyone here work in advertising and marketing?

I've been recording and independently releasing music for around 15 years now, admittedly with limited success.  (My last album has sold exactly one copy, thanks Greg Brendel!)  At one point in time I actually thought I was somewhat ahead of the game as far as promotion went.  Back then the idea was simple:  write awesome music, post it to friends on a message board, use that momentum to climb the charts on a couple of music sites, and that was about it.  Unfortunately, at some point in time the scene became incredibly saturated with spammers.  (Hey guys if you like Bands X, Y, and Z, you'll love My Shitty Band which sounds nothing like them.  Thanks!)  Ever since then, I've found it difficult to get my music out there without feeling like a dick.

I don't like marketing.  Quite the opposite, really.  I guess I figured that someone else would take care of that stuff.  Or maybe my stuff was just So Fucking Good that it wouldn't matter.  After all, experimental groups like Coil or Autechre must have just released albums and hoped for the best, right?  Or what about guys like Richard D. James or J.G. Thirlwell who put out stuff under a bunch of different aliases?  In my mind these records just existed, I never thought for a second about why.

My experience with playing live shows has been similar.  What do you mean you want me to bring X number of people?  How about I show up and be awesome, and hopefully some people there enjoy themselves?  Some of my favourite local shows I ever went to were those where I just seemed to be in the right place at the right time.  Especially when dealing with experimental music, I never really thought much about promotion at all.  As an artist, fuck advertising.

"So then how will you ever get anyone to listen to you?" you might ask.  I suppose my answer would be by getting better?  Or maybe by writing a blog and getting you to subscribe to it.

Introduction

This blog's purpose is to provide updates, developments, and random thoughts regarding Craig Allien's new musical project, ODD-SKY.  How new is this project? Well, it was just conceived today.  Not a single note of ODD-SKY music exists just yet, but I would like to welcome you into my process.  I will try to keep you updated as much as possible.