?Let's say you play in a band that drives 5 and 6 hours to play shows regionally. A person experiences your music in the live setting, it USUALLY is most effective. Most of us don't have the cash or resources to make a cd that can 100% compete with our favorite major label productions. So often recorded cds aren't quite as effective as they should be. When you factor in the pounding subwoofers and maybe a little alcohol, there is an “experience” that you can only create for your fans in the live arena. So touring certainly has it's place. However, before you set out on 8 hour drive, what are your goals for your cd?

I know. I know. Some bands feel a little odd sitting around analyzing their cd in this fashion. DO IT! Seriously ask, “how many cds do we want to sell?”. If your fellow band members get weird, then your band has problems, in my opinion. Here's why. If you are going to drive 4 hours away to play a show, you are doing it because you have some ambition. Most people don't enjoy driving 4 hours without a reason. No one likes driving 8 hours (round trip) for any reason. You are driving because you have at least some ambition for your music and you feel that playing shows far away from home is a good way of doing that. (I usually debate this, but that's a different article).

This is just another case where not having clear goals, leads to overkill in one area and complete underkill in another area. In this case, the band is driving 8 hours to sell cds / promote their music but they won't even talk about how many records they really want to sell. They are just sort of blindly going for it. (That has it's merits, sometimes). However, if the goal was to sell 200 cds, the band could have put that 8 hours of driving into really promoting a real show locally and sold the 200 cds. By not thinking and just driving, the band has wasted quite a bit of man hours to play a show that probably won't be promoted enough to meet the cd sales goal, anyway. This is just another example of not being clear about goals wasted a lot of time, energy, and gas money.