Podcasting?

[Telestrastic]

A band mate and I have been throwing around the idea of doing a weekly post cast for our band. We are in the process of writing new material and gigging new and old stuff and we thought it would be a good way to keep fans up to date. Just give a run down on the latest stuff the band is doing and give some sneak peaks and play some rough song ideas on it aswell.

 

Do you guys thinks this would be something people would want to listen to? Have any of you done anything like this?

[WynnD]

I think it is a great idea. Your fans might not. Might want to try it as a once a month thing. (I hate getting unsolicited e-mails from companies I do business with. So less is more with me.) Ask for feedback from the people your sending to.

 

I've been an advocate of using sound to sell sound. Posters don't work as well.

[Li10]

I think it's a good idea, but not weekly. It would end up diluted (with boring stuff), there would not be enough good stuff. Once monthly would be better.

[SpaceNorman]

That's not a bad idea at all! Like WynnD said ... less is more in terms of getting the ol' email inbox stuffed with junk - but me personally, I'd cut a local act some slack if they sent me a email with a link to download a podcast once a month or so.

 

I suspect that your challenge will be in keeping the podcasts informative enough while not becoming the "same ol same ol" after a couple of months. Any of the archtypical "back stage with the band" theme stuff that consists of 4-6 guys clowning around about "life in the band" would get dumped in a second by me. Gig recaps (where you've been playing since the last podcast), maybe a couple of mentions of fans who you've met at each, audience celebrations ("we celebrated Jenny's b'day @ Max's last Friday" sorta thing) might help you build a little fan interest in the podcasts themselves. You might consider capturing some "live" audience comments on a handheld record to include in your podcasts as well. Include a little audience involvement in addition to your "public service announcements" about upcoming gigs and new tunes in the making and you might be able to generate some buzz within your fan base.

 

Just my thoughts on that one....

[blue2blue]

You can use services that will allow your fans to sign up to receive email alerts when your blog is updated (my blog offers that) but that's really an old technology.

 

The deal with blogs is that they already take advantage of RSS feeds, so your fans only need 'subscribe' to your blog (once it has RSS feeds properly set up) with their podcast aggregator (which could be in Firefox or another browser or in a standalone news reader).

 

With regard to content... keeping it fresh is the key to readership.

 

If people go to your blog and see the same post two or three times in a row, they get bored.

 

You don't have to write a "family Christmas letter" with every blog post. Just talk about interesting things the band has been doing, let people know about any new songs you may have posted, and that sort of thing.

 

Of course, if you've got a writer in the band, you might come up with some side content that's not just band-news, and that can help draw in other people.