This is a part of a series of a tip-off I give in front of the showcase Live at Heart that is going on in Örebro 2 of September to 8 of September. The tip-off is not just for Live at Heart would work on any showcase festival.

Bring your music

Yes, it’s kind of usual that I meet artists that don’t have their music with them to give me. Sometimes they want me to listen to songs on a phone right there and then. That never works for me. I want to listen in my office when nothing is disturbing me.

But then you have the people that bring CD:s. I remember when I got to showcase festivals in the 90:s and you got a suitcase full of CD:s, to be honest with you, I never listen to CD:s. mainly because of the only CD player, we have now is on the Xbox that is in the living room. I won’t have time to get there to listen to a CD. So they are mainly just lying around.

Here is a picture of CD:s that I got the past year. Last year we went to the land fill with the CD:s I got over the past five years, and just dumped them. Now I try to say no to CD:s

So what is better a USB stick? Well better, but today I took one of these USB sticks and erased it since I needed space on it. Did I listen to it? No! Same with all these download cards I get, also very hard to do, you have to go to pages and put in a hell of a long code and then download it. In reality, I’m lazy and there is to many steps to be worth it.

The most I know people I know in the business prefer to get links. And prefer video links so you can see the band. You get approached by several so you won’t remember their names, but if you see them you usually remember who they were.

The trick is to make business cards, cost almost nothing (Vistaprint or similar). Put your contact details there (email, phone, and homepage. Then put a link to your songs (a direct link). Okay, some one says that would be a hell of a long link on the card, that will be trouble to put in for you.
True but do it this way. Do a secret page on your homepage ( yes you need a homepage, if you go on a showcase festival with just a facebook page or Bandcamp page you are out of the game, a homepage with bio and contacts is a most). Then on this secret page, you put in links to secret songs from Soundcloud, better even embedded. So the link would look like
www.rockband.com/LAHsongs. Easy to put in.
And yes put videos there as well embedded.

Another thing you should do is try to get the address of the person you speak with and then send an e-mail with the links to that person on the same evening. Don’t expect them to answer, but you got the links in front of them.

If you are really good, put your gig times on the card, but also space for changes. Then you have to print cards to every showcase, still, a low cost to do.