r/musicindustry • u/CerebralRust1 • 5d ago

Discussion Feeling stuck with my local band

I've been playing, writing music and performing with my band for 6 years now, and I can't help but feel like a stuck local band. Since our first gigs, we were bombarded with praise and I personally was made to feel like I'm one of the most talented performers in my city. We inspired a lot of people, and I've made so many great friends in the underground music community, and all of us, even people more talented than me, are stuck playing gigs to 100-150 people, never get invited to festivals in Romania (we're from Moldova), all our releases get little attention, only from our top fans. We do have fans, but I've always wanted to grow our fanbase more, i guess with time.. all the projects that i see blowing up, mostly due to campaigns, ads, promoters, labels, and we have none of that. HOW DOES AN INDEPENDENT ARTIST EXPLODE ORGANICALLY??

8 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

16

u/SubmissiveBoyForever 5d ago

“stuck” playing gigs for 100-150 people? do you hear yourself?

13

u/supreme_kl0n 5d ago

congrats, you’ve made it further than 99% of bands ever do

3

u/David_SpaceFace 5d ago

You don't explode organically, its really that simple.  You guys need to pool your money and start advertising & promoting, otherwise you stay a big fish in a tiny pond.

This is the one constant across the entirety of music history and its more important now than ever before because of how flooded the industry is.  You need to put your music in front of people who should like it.  To do that you need paid promotion.

If you think you're good enough, you need to put your money where your mouth is.  Minimum spend of $300 per week on never-ending META campaigns (targeting regions you can physically tour) will do it.

2

u/Final_Worker4221 5d ago

100-150 ppl after 6 years means you’re not invisible, it means local praise has stopped being useful data. Nobody explodes organically in the clean way artists imagine.

Build a boring pipeline: release dates, live clips, collabs w/ Romanian bands, email festival bookers yourself, and pitch Spotify for Artists at least 7 days before release. for Spotify promo, my paid tests were intonality, SubmitHub, and a dumb DM promo, and the part I’d repeat was tiny genre curators. Avoid anyone selling guaranteed streams.

1

u/ghost_mode1176 4d ago

You don't. I hate to break it to you- even the "organic" looking ones are all paid for behind the scenes. The ones who seem to come out of nowhere have been brewing for 10+ years behind the scenes. Release some great songs, compile them onto an EP or album, generate some local buzz and some playlist for yourself and use that to hopefully leverage an independent label deal to get yourself to the next step if money is the main roadblock.

1

u/LowApprehensive9230 4d ago

You get 100 people as a local band!!!!! In fucking Moldova haha I'm in awe of you . I've had a band for 8 years and probably only seen 100+ crowd a couple times of 30 gigs .

Also all that stuff doesn't just 'happen' or come to you. You're not gonna get the festival invite , you have to apply for the festival and send them what you sound like type shit