How to Promote a Prog album in 2015

Davesax, I think the major issue you have is simply the genre you chose. Is there even a single band today, formed in the last 20 years let's say, making a living making progressive electronic music? Or even coming close to it? I'm not saying you would necessarily be more successful if you had formed, say, a symphonic prog band, but at least I can name several of those who do it full time, touring, recording albums, and so on.

Edited by Stereolab - December 28 2014 at 17:43

Guldbamsen wrote: How about Boards Of Canada?

PS My visit stats for the last few days..... "progressive electronic" is near the top of the list.  In there are also Tangerine Dream and Electronic rock. Just because my music can be labelled in a certain way doesn't mean that it shows up as that under searches. Different meta tags. 

Edited by Davesax1965 - December 29 2014 at 06:19

The most telling ones there are that direct visits to the site far outweigh any advertising or tags.

Lewa, thank you very much - I noticed you'd downloaded them and you really made my day. ;-) I've been very depressed recently (a bereavement) and this really cheered me up. I'm delighted you liked the downloads. :-) ---x-x-x-x--x-x-

Whilst I'm here - here's a video of part of the main track off Trip Hazard. This is the first quarter of "Hin und Zuruck". Graphics by Electric Sheep.

Frank Zappa Music Industry Decline - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GowCEiZkU70

Hi!

I'm new to this forum and I just read the whole thread.
We released our first album before christmas. I realized that the market sucks and I don't even want to get involved in it cause it is full of negative energy and I don't want that in our music.

We payed a lot to record the album in a professional studio, we used all analog gear (hiwatts, binson echorecs, mellotron, rhodes, hammond, vintage bass amps, drums) and after the recording we bought the gear to reproduce the album faithfully.

Now we have over 500kg of equipment (including hammond and leslie speaker) and no one is even considering booking us for the cost of transportation and $100 for the band.

And we don't mind. The problem is that people don't appreciate music as much as they did before and they see it only as a merchandise and that is what we don't want to do with our music - make it merchandise.

We decided to turn to people who appreciate music.

We were all lucky to acquire some cash and buy real equipment. If we were buying it from gigs and sold releases, we wouldn't have money for a set of guitar strings but it seems like that is the reality.

We are also considering finding a label that will publish a vinyl for us and we're well aware that if we get 15% of the copies that it is a good deal cause the labels don't care - they only want to make money and thats it. Our goal is to make it permanent on vinyl and to make someone smile when he/she listens to it.

The problem is that we don't have 3000€ for making our own vinyls and if we had, we would do so.

And I'm still very young in all this and I don't know many places for promotion.

I came here in hope to find some new audience. It would be great to get a few good reviews and to make our music even closer to the targeted audience.

Thank you very much for reading this.

My first impression is that you can't live off prog music nowadays, but noone knows - it all depends on how crazy you are :)

And yes, here the link on the aforementioned album:
https://lizardsexist.bandcamp.com/releases

LizardsExist wrote: Hi! My first impression is that you can't live off prog music nowadays, but noone knows - it all depends on how crazy you are :)

I think there is a lot to be said for accepting that you're unlikely to make a living from prog. It's not impossible and you might manage it, but it's unlikely. You either choose to make the music that you want to, and enjoy it for what it is (and hopefully some people will still listen and buy it), or else you view music as a business and face the fact that you have to make commercial decisions about what you need to be playing to appeal to the market.

If music is a living, why should it be different from any other job? After all, no-one in a normal office job gets to say, "I don't care if the company pays me to write sales reports, what really interests me is drawing a new company logo so I'm going to do that and it'll be good so they should pay me anyway."

LizardsExist wrote: And yes, here the link on the aforementioned album: https://lizardsexist.bandcamp.com/releases

First listen and I like what I hear. I've tweeted it and sent a link to a couple of friends whose buttons I think it might push. I'd be interested in a a CD copy if you make them.



Edited by benbell - January 04 2015 at 06:32

The Hammond alone weighs 200kg give or take, this does not define music, a recognizable sound yet unique will stand out.