IRL Promotion Strategies EVERY Musician Meeds To Know

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Why Your Hometown Matters More Than You Think

I was hanging out with two managers who work with some pretty big artists, and we got talking about something that doesn't get discussed enough: having a real community in your actual city is what keeps artists going and able to create. When you have people around you meeting up in real life, it quiets a lot of the mental noise. Some of you may not have this available where you live, but in nearly any small city, there are people interested in the type of music you create. You just need to find them.

Whether you play live or not, doing some flyering and real-world promotion in your hometown is important. People are way more forgiving of a local act. They'll go with the vibe of supporting something they can see regularly, because people are often extroverted and want to go out and do things. That can get people to sign up with you and want to be part of what you do.

Here's something you can't unsee once you know it: when an artist is on a national label or big management, record companies consistently buy more billboards in their hometown than anywhere else. It makes the artist feel like they're really being promoted when everyone they know is texting them about seeing their billboard. Some artists will have a huge poster presence in their city, but if you went anywhere else, you'd see nothing. Labels flat-out tell me in meetings that they do this. It's one of the oldest practices in the book—go harder in their town. The added benefit is that it feels good to the artist when their friends acknowledge it and say they're really getting pushed on this record.

Because of those reasons, promoting yourself in your hometown is smart. It can open doors, and honestly, it's usually not that much work.

Cultural Signifiers Are Everything

Stickers and flyers are a really good way to make people understand what you're about, but there are tricks to them. Positioning yourself in a way that people identify which subculture you're in is important. The way you dress, what type of fonts you use, everything you do matters.

Here's a great example: The Dare playing with The Hellp and sausha. Let’s look at what makes the flyer work.

If you're in New York and see a guy with that haircut, you already know you're going to some hip Dime Square type party. You see "Freakquencies*," and it screams this is going to be some artsy dance thing. It's not going to be EDM club bangers. It's not going to be people wearing Axe body spray. It's going to be cool kids there.

The font, the paragraph style, and all the different type choices have cultural significance because of what other things in the culture do. If you're following guidelines around what other things in your cultural genre do, you signal to people that this is the place for them to be.

The other thing New York City parties do now is list guest hosts. A lot of the time, these are people who have just committed to coming to the thing, and it's basically a way to put a bunch of people who probably have big Instagram followings on the flyer. It's a great thing to do for shows. When you think you're not cool enough to do that, these people love seeing their names on a flyer.

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