It's simple. It costs money to properly promote your band. You need cash for equipment, gas, music recording, bumper stickers, cd printing, website, radio commercials, freebie cd handouts, etc. The list goes on and on and on. It's easy to say you are going to do these things cheaply, most of the time they cost more than you think. If you are printing up pro quality cds, you'll be set back $1000. If you want pro graphics, you may need to add another $400 on top of that. If someone in your band is qualified to build a website, you can save a ton of cash. A professional looking website is going to cost you a couple grand, minimum. Recording varies, but to get a high quality recording of your music is often expensive as well. When you toss in tshirts, pins, and all the various merchandise, you are looking at quite a bit of investment to properly push a band.

What Happens When One Band Member Pays For Everything

Unless your one band member happens to be the son/daughter of an oil tycoon, the odds are strong that they will have finite amount of funds to spend on the band. In fact, there may not be enough cash to go around. You'll have to compromise. Unfortunately, in this situation, compromising means that you'll have to settle for less. You'll have less money for your recording, so you may be making a product that the average Joe can't take seriously. You may scrape up enough cash to print 1000 cds, but will you spend the money to make them look great. People ask me all the time which cd replication house, they should go with. I tell them that it's not that big of deal. The quality is pretty much the same in my experience. The real issue is the graphics. When you scrape money from your budget, you are turning your pro cds into crap.

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Branding Your Band

Branding is extremely important. You want your name to pop to be crammed into a persons head as many times as possible. For example, Budweiser buys billboard ads all the time. Why? Simply to remind you of their product. You can't even drink and drive, but they are going to advertise to you in your car anyway. It's that important that they brand themselves. They want to stay in public view.

I'm not sure if it's this way everywhere, but in my neck of the woods, it's impossible to go anywhere without seeing a TOOL bumper sticker. This is a very effective branding tool. You want to remind your possible fans about your band constantly. If a person has never heard about your band, but has seen several of your bumper stickers, they are more inclined to give your band a try. It's the bandwagon approach. Your fans are telling anyone driving behind them about your band. It's not going to be make millions overnight, but why miss out on that opportunity. $100 in bumper stickers means that you have to get 20 extra people to see you in the entire year assuming you make $5 a head to break even.

Pick Your Poison

When it comes time to spending your hard earned cash, it's ultimately up to you to decide on how you want to spend it. You have the right to spend your money however you would like. However, if you are spending all kinds of cash on a cell phone, a massive DVD collection, or a fancy car that is losing value daily you may need to consider just how seriously you take your music. There is nothing wrong with spending your money anyway you choose. However, there is a BIG problem with preaching how important music is to you and how important it is for you to be a serious musicians when music obviously isn't that big of deal to you. I like to say, you vote with your dollar. Are you going to vote for music or a bunch of toys?