The D-List 15 : The Money Gig
by D. Scott Morris
Reprinted with Permission from Colorado Music Buzz Magazine - www.ColoradoMusicBuzz.com.

Building a good fan base is a critical task when your band is on the D-List. While working towards that goal, you may opt to take advantage of opportunities that may seemingly have a lot of potential, but pay the band very little in terms of cash – if anything at all. These so-called “exposure gigs” may offer help by getting the band in front of potentially hundreds of new fans and can be “resume builders” of sorts for future gig prospects – but without some good cash flow coming to the band, studio rent, recording, and other, more immediate costs can get expensive. ...

The D-List 14 : Fighting the Good Fight
by D. Scott Morris
Reprinted with Permission from Colorado Music Buzz Magazine - www.ColoradoMusicBuzz.com.

There’s no doubt that every band or artist will play on a stage where the conditions are “less than optimal” – to put it lightly.  Whether it is the monitor mix, equipment problems, illness, or something else, Murphy’s Law will inevitably catch up to you at one time or another while you are playing.  It’s important to know however, that regardless of the conditions that you are experiencing on stage, that it is quite possible that the audience is absolutely oblivious to them.  Your audience most likely won’t know that you are having problems unless you let them know about it. ...

The D-List 13 : Increasing Your Playability
by D. Scott Morris
Reprinted with Permission from Colorado Music Buzz Magazine - www.ColoradoMusicBuzz.com.

If you're on the D-List, it's a treat to be able to see your works get some kind of play. Regardless if it's a song of yours being included on a compilation disk, getting internet airplay or even radio airplay, it's a good thing when people promote your music. Generally-speaking however, it's tougher to get airplay on a major radio station as an independent musician without strong label representation. ...

The D-List 12 : Sponsorships and Endorsements
by D. Scott Morris
Reprinted with Permission from Colorado Music Buzz Magazine - www.ColoradoMusicBuzz.com.

As bands and artists become more established and get better known in the town or region that they play in, they may begin to build stronger relationships with the people that they work with. Whether those people are other bands and artists, venues, promoters, managers, fans, or whomever – they will start to gain a reputation as they build greater awareness of themselves. What they may not realize however, is that businesses may also be taking note of their progress. If a band or artist shows that they are drawing decent attendances to their shows on a more-or less consistent basis, businesses may want to hop on the bandwagon (so to speak) so that they can use the band or artist as a platform to promote their business. ...

The D-List 11 : Jump on the Bandwagon
by D. Scott Morris
Reprinted with Permission from Colorado Music Buzz Magazine - www.ColoradoMusicBuzz.com.

There’s no question that October has been a unique month in Colorado history: we have a World Series coming to town. For baseball fans here (and there are a lot of us), this is nothing short of a monumental accomplishment – one that will go down in history as being one of the all-time greatest sports achievements in Colorado.

No doubt, the spectacle of a Major League Baseball postseason in Colorado commands attention, as well as draws some huge crowds out of the suburbs, surrounding cities, counties, and even states to lower downtown Denver. The streets in LoDo become flooded with fans, there’s a ton of festivity, and a lot of money is pumped into the local economy. It’s a good thing for Baseball, an even better thing for Colorado, and believe it or not, it’s also a great thing for local music. ...

The D-List 10 : Building Bridges With Your Fans
by D. Scott Morris
Reprinted with Permission from Colorado Music Buzz Magazine - www.ColoradoMusicBuzz.com.

Some bands that play music not considered “mainstream” struggle with their rate of success. Once these bands get started and play their scene for awhile, they may find that attracting new fans becomes a challenge. Their band could even be well-respected among other musicians and have some amazing talent and technical ability – but despite their marketing and promotional efforts, the attendance of their shows becomes relatively low.

This pattern can become especially frustrating for the band, because putting in all that hard work doesn’t seem to pay off. As a result, individual band members might become a bit jaded with their project. Frustrating as it may be however, there’s good reason for these genre-bending bands to “keep on keepin’ on,” so to speak: ...

The D-List 09 : The Black Art of Getting Press
by D. Scott Morris
Reprinted with Permission from Colorado Music Buzz Magazine - www.ColoradoMusicBuzz.com.

For many, getting press is a big challenge. I have heard many folks make reference to getting press as a sort of 'black art' that, regardless of what they try, they cannot seem to get any media mention. Some get so frustrated that they cease vying for the press's attention at all. Others get press, but not the press that they necessarily want, and become jaded at the prospect of getting more attention.

If you get unfavorable press, just "roll with the punches" and "keep on keepin' on". I've always subscribed to the idea that any press about you and/or your band is 'good press'. True, some of it may be negative and some of it may be positive, but the fact that you are being written about at all promotes two things among others: first, it promotes ...

The D-List 08 : The Tao of Back-Scratching
by D. Scott Morris
Reprinted with Permission from Colorado Music Buzz Magazine - www.ColoradoMusicBuzz.com.

I described in last month's column how bands can build better relationships with venues to accomplish similar goals. This month, I'd like to address how the same is true with band-to-band relationships.

The D-List 07 : Building Better Relationships
by D. Scott Morris
Reprinted with Permission from Colorado Music Buzz Magazine - www.ColoradoMusicBuzz.com.

For many bands that play primarily original music, their beginning starts with a song. The song then becomes the life-blood of the band – defining the band, giving it a kind of identity, giving the band a sense of purpose, and serving as both an inspiration and a benchmark for the band in creating other songs. The band can continue to create more songs and build an impressive repertoire, but if the band is planning on playing its music live, it must be able to call upon a consistent fan base in order for a band to be consistently sought after by venues and booking agents. As good as its repertoire can be, the songs alone will have a difficult time in sustaining the band’s livelihood.

While the music the band creates serves to drive itself internally, retaining and building a solid fan base becomes the externally-added fundamental ingredient to ensure its livelihood. After all, without anyone to listen, who is the band going to play to? If the band doesn’t have a fan base that they can call upon to attract to their shows, the band may ...

The D-List 06 : Podcasting 101
by D. Scott Morris
Reprinted with Permission from Colorado Music Buzz Magazine - www.ColoradoMusicBuzz.com.

You’ve heard about ‘Podcasts’ and the hype surrounding them, but what exactly are they? Well, the term is actually derived from two words – ‘iPod’, Apple’s portable music player, and ‘broadcast’. However, it’s more accurately described as a syndication of media files that Internet users can subscribe to and receive automatically whenever the syndication content is updated by its author.

The technology that distinguishes a Podcast from a simple MP3 or video download is that a Podcast is accompanied by a ‘feed’ file made accessible on a website via a hyperlink, and is written using a subset of Extensible Markup Language (XML) called RSS (standing for “Really Simple Syndication”). The RSS feed allows media publishers to easily create a list of media files available for download, along with names, descriptions, and other details accompanying the file. In addition, the RSS feed contains ...

The D-List 05 : Ticket Prices and the Economics of Booking
by D. Scott Morris
Reprinted with Permission from Colorado Music Buzz Magazine - www.ColoradoMusicBuzz.com.

There are many strategies the typical local band can use to earn money in order to fund themselves – the most obvious being ticket sales at gigs, CD sales, and merch sales. Several channels can be used by a band to market their product – and for many bands those channels can be different. It’s the discovery, creative use and leveraging of those channels, and time, dedication, and hard work that can make the band money.

For most of the smaller venues, ticket sales are not where the money is at. Love it or hate it, the money to be had is from the sales of alcoholic beverages. So where does the money come from to pay the band, and how can bands make that pay equitable for themselves?

For the typical startup band that does do not negotiate guarantees into their performance contract, the idea of ...

The D-List 04 : Building a Better Website
by D. Scott Morris
Reprinted with Permission from Colorado Music Buzz Magazine - www.ColoradoMusicBuzz.com.

As a webmaster by trade, I spend a lot of time browsing the web to find information about various topics. Nine times out of ten, I usually visit a given website with the intention of quickly acquiring whatever information that I set out to seek. I want to get to the information I’m trying to find as easily as possible – without being hassled by heavy web design gimmicks, mystery icons, and Flash movies. If the web page consists of only a Flash movie, I usually click the ‘skip’ link so that I can access whatever information I came to seek, without having to wait for the movie to end. The easier and more transparent the design is, the better experience I have visiting the site.

The ease of a website’s use is called “usability”. Jakob Nielson - a highly-regarded expert on the subject - describes the importance of usability at his website, www.useit.com: “On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave … There are plenty of other websites available; leaving is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty.” [http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html]

Visitors don't want to have to waste time and energy scouring the site to find the information that they came to get - they want it quick and easy to find so that they can get what they want, and then go about their business. There's nothing more annoying on the web than ...

The D-List 03 : The Lost Demographic
by D. Scott Morris
Reprinted with Permission from Colorado Music Buzz Magazine - www.ColoradoMusicBuzz.com.

When I was in high school, the places my friends and I could go see live music at were few and far between. It was impractical for us to go out to see live music: the venues were far away, the tickets were expensive, and while school was in session, we could only go to see music on the weekends. The only shows we typically could experience were the occasional ‘big label’ concerts at the major venues, and those shows were heavily promoted by the local radio stations.

Going out to see local music back then was an activity that was relatively unheard of. It was out of sight, and out of mind as well. It wasn’t that we weren’t into music – we were – it was just that we had no idea that a local music scene existed. Not until college were my friends and I exposed to local bands, and then we finally started taking the idea of going out to see local music seriously. But even at college, the number of places that we could go to see local bands at were minimal, since most of the venues featuring local music sold liquor, and didn’t cater to customers less than 21 years of age due to liquor laws.

If there was one thing that I wish I could have been exposed to when I was younger, it would have been ...

The D-List 02 : Denver’s So-Called ‘Problem’
by D. Scott Morris
Reprinted with Permission from Colorado Music Buzz Magazine - www.ColoradoMusicBuzz.com.

I have read and heard several Denver artists complain about our music scene. I keep hearing phrases like "What's the problem here?" or "What's Denver's problem?", associated with comparisons of Denver to places like Austin, San Francisco, New York, and other so-called 'hubs of musical culture' within the United States.

There may always be a 'problem', if that's what people want to call it – but I prefer to look at it more as a challenge rather than a problem. There may always be someone comparing our music scene to scenes in other cities. There may always be someone complaining, saying that our scene is lacking compared to other scenes. Constructive criticism is always welcome, but the fact is that we can't expect Denver to be Austin, Hollywood, San Francisco, New York, or Nashville. For better or worse, Denver is Denver, and we have our own, unique music scene that is maturing in its own right.

Granted, more people know Denver as ...

The D-List 01 : Introduction
by D. Scott Morris
Reprinted with Permission from Colorado Music Buzz Magazine - www.ColoradoMusicBuzz.com.