Tag Archives: churning attention for your band

Bacon Bloody Bacon: Matt Bacon on How To Not Lose Money As a Band

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One of the biggest problems that underground bands face is the grim reality that sometimes you are going to get services that are too big for your britches and it is going to screw you over. This can apply for anyone from PR to management by way of record labels. While it may be cool to have an awesome opportunity dangled in front of you it’s important to take context into consideration and to figure out what other components of your band you want to keep in mind before splurging for something. This is a constant money drain and source of stress for bands who don’t do the proper research before diving into a new venture and it leaves them all the worse for wear. It’s the sort of thing that would be combated if we spent time actually talking to each other about our experiences and not all constantly trying to get a leg up on each other. The biggest rule I want you to remember when going into this article that will hopefully save you literally thousands of dollars is to always ask your scene elders if something is a good idea, or at worst, me. Continue reading →


Bacon Bloody Bacon: Matt Bacon on Reaching Video Content Supremacy

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Hard to believe that I haven’t covered this here – it’s one of the most important things in the music industry after all. Video content is the key to hacking visibility and getting more people to check out what you have to do. Obviously, I’m someone who has made a lot of money over the years with his video content, but I want to assure you – I am not the only one whom can be productive with his use of video content. All bands can get more traction by creating video content and I am going to delve into a bunch of it, figuring out how to help you generate value and to dig deeper into the world of the heavy underground. Having video is probably the single most important thing that your band can do in 2019 and watching the bands who get this grow is going to be really exciting. Watching the ones who can’t hang fall apart is going to be a telling turn of events or those of us searching for some sort of answer to this grim spectacle. Continue reading →


Bacon Bloody Bacon: The Importance of Split Releases

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Splits are these days one of the most important things that you can do in order to grow your band. I think for a long time a lot of people have felt that splits were really just the place of hardcore bands trying to cross-promote with their friends or simply just do a record with another band that they like in order to save costs. Yet as with most of the ideas in the hardcore scene we are starting to see the culture of splits starting to infect the rest of the underground music world and it’s a really good thing in my eyes. Splits are a great way to diversify markets, to reach out and try new ideas without committing yourself to a full record and even get a chance to work with new people. Look around at major bands in the heavy underground and you are starting to see splits left and right. There’s a reason for that. And while the profits aren’t as significant that’s okay in my eyes because there are a ton of other benefits, benefits that we are going to get into, as well as strategies for best marketing and creating your side of a split. Continue reading →


Bacon Bloody Bacon: Matt Bacon on Mailing List Strategy and Your DIY Band

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So probably the most underused tool in the musician’s arsenal is their mailing list. Not enough musicians with free Mailchimp accounts take advantage of all that they can do with the power of their mailing list. This is a really tricky thing of course because it requires you to get off your ass and spend some time learning a back-end system, but guess what, even that isn’t that tricky. MailChimp and its peers make this an easy task and I think you’re going to actually end up getting a lot of value out of it. Look at it this way, if your band is making let’s say… $200 in the kitty off a show, that is to say, you are at a pretty decent level. All things considered, a single show is like 10 hours of work, so the band is making $20 an hour and probably investing a ton of time and money up front. Well, if you get good at emails then you can sell a few shirts with every email and your band will be making way more per hour, meaning that you can fund all sorts of other cool projects to better fuel your art. So let’s get granular on the basis of my strategy.

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