Welcome to Episode 91 of the Bandhive Podcast.

It is time for another episode of the Bandhive podcast. My name's James Cross and I do not have matt hose of alive in Barcelona here today, but I do have Adam Fiasco of the Fiasco joining us all the way from the U. K. How are you doing today Adam?

Yeah, I'm great. Thanks brilliant to be here. Thanks for having us, How are you? That's great to hear. And I'm doing super well. I'm excited because we actually have a weather report that shows for the next week. We're not supposed to get rain. We've had very british or german whether these last few weeks and I love rain, but it's been too much. So I'm excited for some sun as well. That's good news. Yeah, it's pretty all over the place here too. I'm having a load of building work done at the moment as well, so fingers crossed that there isn't any way because that means that that will be delayed.

Oh boy, yeah, and you're pretty far up north in England, right? Yeah. So in leeds kind of like in the middle, we consider ourselves northern, but I'm sure people from like Newcastle would be like, yeah, you're not, not even, yeah, as with probably most american music fans. The only reason I know leads is leeds festival. Sure, yeah, iconic. Yeah, absolutely that and reading and um glass and very you guys get all the good festivals we do. Yeah, we have a great festival scene over here. Leads is insane.

Like one of the best festivals ever. That's great. So here's first of all to the Fiasco playing that festival in future years. Before we get there. Can you tell us a little bit about your background as a musician, how you got started and what inspired you to go down this path and become a producer because you're now a full time producer. Right? Absolutely, yeah. So I've always been interested in music ever since, as long as I can remember, remember when I was literally just old enough to sit upright wearing headphones.

My dad had def Leppard hysteria on vinyl, that was probably like the first album that I listened to. An absolutely got obsessed with it from there. I got the opportunity to take piano lessons, which is a bit a bit different to def Leppard. But yeah, I did it. And then my music taste kind of changed again, sort of like when I hit my teens back towards kind of like pop punk, you know, like the late nineties, early two thousand's era of pop punk, you know, bands like Green Day blink 18 to some 41 the offspring, all those guys just kind of became my idol.

So I did what any other 13 year old person would do and learn to play the guitar and started a band. And then yeah, from there, you know, I always enjoyed performing and writing music myself and going out playing live and stuff like that. And I still do enjoy doing that, but I kind of gravitated more towards the production, became fascinated with The way certain album sounded just vividly remember offspring conspiracy of one um Fallout by Infinity on High Daughtry's self titled album. Those are sonically perfect in my opinion.

And I just became fascinated in how that all works. You know, how the production was done and how the mixing was done. And so yeah, I started to go down that route. I ended up enjoying the process of recording and producing more. Then I did going out and playing live. That's kind of why I gravitated more towards the production side of things. Got very cool. Well, as much as we don't typically talk about the skills of production on the podcast and more business focused. I do have one question, do you think learning piano when you were young, help you with the production side of things?

Because one thing is when you're taught piano, at least from my understanding, there's more theory involved. When you go play guitar, when you learn guitar, it's just like, oh, here's how to play songs. So did that tie into your production career in any way? Absolutely. I certainly don't think that it's a necessity. You know, there's thousands of incredible songwriters, musicians, producers that don't have that kind of background are kind of skill set, but I certainly think it helped me. I picked up the guitar very, very quickly.

Just kind of taught myself saying with things like drums and learning how to arrange parts like strings and all that kind of stuff. Just kind of came a little bit more naturally from studying the theory and learning piano, I guess. So it definitely helped and I'm glad that I kept it because I remember there was a point where I was like, this is awful. Like I need to stop doing these piano lessons, but I was kind of so far into it and I was doing the grades.

I was like, no, I've just got to see it through now. Okay, that's really interesting because in the business world there's a term sunk cost, which basically means what you've already put into something. And they always say to ignore the sunk cost, ignore what you've already put into it. But it sounds like in this case not ignoring it helped you quite a bit because it gave you more experience, Which then helped you learn other things that you were interested in. 100%. There's no way that I would have picked up that other stuff half as quickly if I have not had the background in piano nowadays.

You know, I'm producing a lot of country music and music that has piano in it. So I'm kind of glad that I kept it off. I'm nowhere near as good as I should be to say that I've got like grade eight piano, but I can write piano parts and I can play pretty well. Although, you know, in like my early teenage years and stuff like that, I was just playing really aggressive, angsty emo punk music on the guitar. I'm certainly using the piano a lot more now.

So yeah, I'm happy. I can keep that up. Yeah, that's really cool. And I think it's, it's always interesting to see how creativity and again, you know, I won't pick on this too long since we're trying to get to the business topics. So listeners please don't feel like we're going too far off the path here. But I feel like creativity is really inspired by so many different things. So it's quite possible that your musical style would be different if you hadn't learned piano, even if you are still making email or pop punk now it would still be different stylistically because you wouldn't have the same knowledge almost.

Certainly, it's really difficult to kind of put my finger on what it is, but it's just kind of like in eight, isn't it? When you start something that young, it just becomes ingrained in your brain almost, isn't it? And just kind of part of what you do beyond then. So that's certainly the case here. Yeah, exactly. Well, thanks so much for sharing a little bit about your background and your story and what inspires you. Now, listeners for the promised part of the business topics, jumping right into it as a producer Adam, you work with a lot of clients and you seem to see a common thread among them.

So, you started a community called Label Worthy. Can you talk a little bit about what those common aspects were between your clients that made you decide to help them become Label were the first of all, a massive common theme that are seeing a lot of certainly all the artists that I work with in a lot of those that I interact within the group is that they are incredibly talented songwriters and musicians where they tend to struggle is everything beyond that is the business side of things. And I think as creatives that tends to be the side that people kind of feel weird about.

So yeah, there's so much talent out there, but I also see a lot of it going to waste as well. Often a lot of artists that come to me when we start working together, they're stuck the confused about where to go next. They might have tried a few different things. It's just not worked out maybe the lack focus and just overall missing the bigger picture. And that's what I try to incorporate into what I do, you know, as a producer, but also as a mentor, just kind of keeping the bigger picture in mind so that yes, they get the great songs that get the songs match the vision that they want, but also we're keeping that end goal in mind so that they can get closer to what that is gotcha.

So when you're working with an artist, is this a discussion you have before production starts in the pre production phase of saying, what are your goals? How do you want to go about this and then coaching them from that point on? Or how does that work? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I mean, I've got a specific set of skills, I guess it's important when we work together, that there's a match, because if I can help an artist get at least close to where they want to be, then there's no point in his working together.

And similarly, if an artist isn't committed and they're not ready to kind of take those next steps, then there's just no point. So we have to have a conversation and see if it all lines up really, see if where they want to be, where they are now, can I help them to get there and yeah, we just kind of go through those stages really. All right, so basically you are acting as an A and R. Rep for your studio rather than acting as an A and R. Rep for a label, you're saying, hey, are you the right fit to work with me?

So I can give you the best product possible? Absolutely. It's not in my interest to work with someone who I can't help and it's certainly not in the artist's interests as well. I strongly believe that there's got to be a good match between the arctic, that's why I work with only rock and country artist because if I E D. M artist came to me, like, I don't really know that market at all saying with rap saying with metal, I wouldn't be able to help those people. So It has to be a good fit.

Some of the other common themes I see as well is the might be struggling to make money from the music, they just lacking a real long-term plan. You know, many artists know where they want to be in 12 months time and beyond, but they just don't have the steps in place in order to get there. That's a big part of the process. God, here, as part of this, when you come across artists who do have the right things in place, who do have the right mindset, do you see a common thread between those artists?

Perhaps either the things they read or the media they consume or something as deep as their upbringing, how they came up in the world anything like that. So, I think for certain there are mega passionate about creating music, it's not a want, it's a need, it's just something that they have to do to feel fulfilled in life, I guess, and I think that's one of the main driving force is really if there is no other option, you've got to make it as an artist or I don't know, the world is going to end.

That is the driving force and for many artists, that is literally what it feels like. It's either they carry on the crappy job that they're currently doing, are they be a full time musician, and it's literally a no brainer and I think just having that driving force is hugely important. Yeah. So it's the people who live and breathe music, those are the ones who are going to make it 100%. Yeah, If it's almost as if like having a plan B is not necessarily a great thing because so what, it doesn't matter, like you've always got plan B. Whoever's people like, no, this is it, I have to make this work.

They're the ones that really kind of drive forward and see the most successful. You just make it happen, don't you? I have to say, I fully agree with that. I see that in So many artists and just to put one example out there who is probably quite relevant right now, especially in the UK. But Frank Carter everything he touches is gold because he doesn't do anything unless he's 100% in it. Every single one of his band's his tattoo shop, everything he just goes all in and does nothing else for that time and says, this is what I'm doing.

I completely agree. It's just a case of just keeping going, isn't it? It's like if you start something and you don't see results in the first two weeks, that doesn't mean it's not gonna work. It's crazy, isn't it? You know, like people will train for eight years to become a doctor, however many years to become a lawyer, but then there's a band, you don't see results in six months and you give up, it just makes no sense. Yeah, agreed. And I know you're a fellow listener of the six figure Home studio podcast now known as Six Figure Creative.

And one of the things that one of the hosts there, brian Hood always says is motivation is not good. You need to have a habit over motivation and that's what you're talking about right there is, you know, a doctor goes in for eight years and says, I'm going to do this and they have the habit of working on their craft every single day or at least every weekday where as a musician and I'm guilty of this myself, I'm not trying to say you're preaching to the choir here.

I could play more music every day, but I don't, I play most days, but sometimes I'm just like, I don't feel like it and ultimately that's a detriment for me and my musical skills. So I hope that the listeners on the podcast here understanding like, hey, not only do you need to practice your instrument every day, but from what you're saying Adam with so many of your clients having that common thread of lacking in business skills, artists should practice their business skills every day. Whether you say I'm going to listen to one podcast episode, I'm going to read one blog post, I'm going to learn how google sheets works or something like that.

Just something to keep moving forward so you can build your business skills as well. And that's why we do this podcast because business is so important for artists. But I think that the way you're describing it, Adam is really perhaps going to unlock things for artists who hadn't thought of it this way, Most of the people who listen to this podcast are probably business minded already, but if they were on the fence, I think what you're saying might unlock that for them. 100% motivation isn't enough because there's gonna be times when you just don't feel motivated and that's where being disciplined and have, it comes into mind being disciplined is doing stuff when you don't feel motivated and those times are going to become, you can't just rely on being motivated because that's not going to be sustainable.

Yeah, there's always gonna be that one day and then that one day turns into two turns into three and as soon as, you know, it's been six months and you haven't done anything and then you look back and you feel like a failure like I've been there, I've done that and it's no fun, It doesn't feel good and then it's that much more difficult to get back on the horse and keep going. Exactly. It's always hard to try and start things up after taking a week, two weeks a month off, where it's just so much easier than it just to keep going and just keep building the traction.

That's what I always try to say to the artist that I work with it. It's a snowball effect, isn't it? The more you keep it going, the bigger it grows and the easier it becomes. Yeah. And you know, to illustrate that I have a friend who crossed, I want to say 18 k on Tiktok just a couple of weeks ago and it took him five months to get the 1st 10 k. He's at 10-K about a month ago. So in one month, he's almost doubled that, that's the snowball effect and he is a musician, but he's not doing a banned Tiktok.

I'm not saying Tiktok is the route to go for everyone. What I am saying is the snowball effect that Adam is describing is very real. It happens and you have to harness that power. If my friend had said, hey, I'm at 10-K now, I'm going to stop, he'd have 10-K. But what use is that? It's not something that you can just say, okay, I'm going to take a break for six months. You have to keep going at the same time. You also have to take a break and we're getting into the weeds here.

But if you're working on social media, I'm a big fan of matching content. I'll sit down and do three or four videos In 20 minutes and that's my content for the next half a week. And I feel like that is so important because I hate doing videos. I used to do weekly videos and I hated it so much. That's why I stopped and started the podcast. And I know for artists that is a huge struggle as well. So on that note, I feel like this is a good pivot Adam, you're an expert in audience growth.

So why don't we talk about ways that artists can grow their audience and I've got a few different methods outlined just to give the listeners an overview of that. We have organic social media, paid social media in the real world that shows and in the real world everywhere else, you know, it's not a show, but if we could just dive into that, I think probably the biggest question for most artists is how to grow organically on social media. Sure, So, I mean, first of all, I strongly believe as an artist, you've got to be living in the land of consistency because Where you are now is 100% of reflection on what you did 6 to 12 months ago.

And like we've already spoke about a little bit, I think artists need to start seeing their music as a business and treating it as such. You know, businesses need investment, they need a solid business plan that you're gonna constantly stick to and adapt as necessary. Prime example of that is what we've just been through over the last 12 months in terms of the coronavirus and lockdowns. I saw so many artists just literally stand still for 12 months and do nothing and now it's almost as if they've moved backwards and so it's a real struggle to try and get that engine going again.

Whereas I also saw loads of artist pivot the business during those times, you know, live shows weren't possible during the lockdowns, but streaming was a great alternative. One of the guys that I worked with In the first UK Lockdown, he grew his fan base by 10 X, literally just by doing live streams on Facebook. It's just a case of doing it, isn't it? You know, the first live stream, the second live stream? The third probably it's gonna be slow, but that's the point where you don't give up and you just keep doing it.

It was also possible to still create music and release it remotely. It wasn't possible to go to the big studios, but you can still create music remotely. That's literally what I do for a living. It's still possible to sell merch. There's a lot artists could do and I think now they're the ones that are kind of reaping the rewards anyway. So I think the main point is just being consistent. You can't just kind of put something out and then go quiet for months on end, you've just got to have something that you can stick to and just be present and visible as much as possible.

Many artists are afraid to post content regularly on the social media accounts cause they're scared of like just annoying people. I don't really know what it is like imposter syndrome or they feel like they're selling out or something like that. But especially at the beginning of growing your fan base, you just need as many eyes on you as possible. It's a well known fact that organic reach on facebook and instagram is at an all time low and it's probably only going to get worse. So there's no excuse really for not posting every single day in my opinion.

Yeah, exactly. It's really one of those things where let's say social media is Maria Maria, count me in great song. Sorry, I had to because you said all time low of all time low. Oh, it's been a while since I made a band pun on the, on the show, so I had to drop that one. But yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And you're saying that Covid was a bit of a sidetrack, but I don't think so, because that illustrates your point perfectly, the artists who did nothing, maybe they didn't go backwards, but the other artists who did something leapt ahead because there was less competition.

So all eyes are on them. And once the other artists come back, you abandoned your fans for a year and a half. Why should we care? It's so bad. And I know making content during lockdown was difficult. You can't have banned photoshoots depending on where you are, you can't do music videos again, depending on how things were in each location, but that doesn't matter. You can do something back on episode 82 we interviewed tie christian of Lords of the trident and they started putting out, I want to say weekly videos where they just did everything remotely.

They did some really funny stuff like they covered the darkness, I believe in a thing called love, but it was, I believe in a thing called quarantine and it was an amazing parody and this was like the week that quarantine started, they just, boom, it was out there, they had the idea and they went for it, same thing with another guest we had on episode 85 Adam Loki of Pickwick Commons. They had the idea to cover WAP by Cardi B. Now they're a caveman Math Corps band is what they call themselves and they said there's going to be a metal core version of it at some point and we need to be the first ones to do it.

So they knocked it out in a week, They said, boom, it's done here, we go during lockdown, you gotta commit and go for it. All. I'm trying to say here is I think you're absolutely right Adam having the consistency there and being able to move quickly. And I'd like to actually pivot a little bit before we jump into talking more about audience growth As a producer, you've probably seen the artist who they work on something and it's never finished, they're afraid to put it out because they want it to be perfect.

And even though it's 99. 9% of the way there, there's something holding them back from putting that out there as a producer. When you work with those kind of clients, you kind of have to coach them through that. And I think it's a similar outlook that stops people from posting on social media. So can you talk a little bit about how artists might be able to get past that? Yeah, I think ultimately it just comes down to self awareness. I remember seeing a quote from Gary V, I don't agree with absolutely everything that Gary Visas, but this one kind of resonated with me, and it said it was basically saying something about perfectionism is insecurity with lipstick on or something like that, basically saying there is no such thing as perfect, it's just you're insecure about doing it if you're not releasing something, because she's saying it's not perfect, that comes from insecurity, I'm pretty sure that was it.

I think it was perfectionism is insecurity with lipstick on, there might have been a few curse words in there as well, that's amazing. I am not a huge Gary v follower myself, but obviously he's a name that pretty much everyone in the business or entrepreneurship world knows. So artists, his name is Gary Vaynerchuk, he's a split between a business coach and a life coach and does a little bit of mindset and he's one of the people who is very polarizing, but he does say some really great stuff like perfectionism is insecurity with lipstick on, if that's the quote, that's a great quote, and if that's not the quote, that means you just said it Adam and that's your quote now.

That's so true though, the fear of putting yourself out there, I think is another way to describe that same thing and getting out there on social media, I'm going to use myself as an example. Again, I used to have such a difficult time posting on social media and like what do people want? Like why would I post on social media? My life is boring and then I'm like, wait my life is not boring. I get to do fun stuff every day for work. Like I can talk about this.

I can share knowledge and everybody has so much to share. If you're in a band, just record everything. You go to rehearsal, put up a GoPro, record your rehearsal, you can do that. That's content. People will want to see that. Exactly. There's seven billion people on the planet. There's gonna be some people out there that are interested in what you're doing. You don't have to appeal to everybody. And I think that's the hang up that a lot of artists get scared of creating content because no one's going to like it, no one's gonna comment, no one's going to engage.

But at the end of the day, so what, There's always another video. There's always another post. It doesn't matter. It's just vanity metrics at the end of the day, if you're posting content for likes, you're doing it for the wrong reason. I think that's the hang up that a lot of people, not necessarily artist, but artists are one of those brackets of people that just need to create, just start. Yeah, exactly. And I want to touch out another thought there. Unless you're making the poppy ist of pop music, you're not going to appeal to everyone.

And then there are even people who don't like Pop, there's a lot of people who don't like Pop, but if you make Caveman Math Corps, You're making that knowing full well, you're probably never going to be headlining Madison Square garden or the 02 arena or anything like that because you are appealing to a very, very small subset of people. But those people will be like, Oh my God, this is the coolest thing ever. I need to learn everything about this band. And by all their merchant, go to all their shows.

And that can be more valuable because if that's the music you love creating and you can connect with fans who love that music, that's amazing. So don't appeal to everyone. You don't have to go and make Rihanna or One direction pop music insert artist's name who does generic Fortkord pop, but just make what is genuine and make it the best you can by working with a producer like Adam and put it out there. Absolutely. I think that's the real key messages and it is to just be authentic because if it's something that you truly love that you are truly passionate about and you believe in it, that will come across whether it's in the songwriting, whether it's in the content that you're making That passion and that belief that you truly 100% are in this that is going to come across and that is going to attract like minded people.

Whereas, you know, if you're doing something because you think it's going to get the most likes on Instagram, then you're probably not going to get that same emotion, that same passion, that same message across at you because you're doing it for the wrong reasons. At the end of the day, you just have to do what you believe in. It's a slow process, but at the end of the day, just build traction, don't you? And that's the way it goes. Yeah, absolutely. To touch on something you said a few minutes ago where you mentioned that artists might be afraid that they're seen as sellouts by promoting themselves, I'm sure that's a fear that many artists have when it comes to paid social media advertisements.

Is that something you work with your clients on or do you try to lean more into the organic side of things? So to be honest, I try to focus more on the organic side of things and by no means an expert on paid advertising. It's an area that I've personally had a lot of ups and downs with. So I try not to give too much advice on this because I'm just not an expert myself. It seems that the algorithms are constantly changing. So if that's an avenue that artists want to pursue, then it's really important to keep on top of all those changes and adapt accordingly and know that facebook ads can be super powerful with all of the optimizations available.

You can get crazy, accurate and specific with your audience delivery. Same goes for Youtube and google as well. But it's also an area that requires a big investment, both financially and time, time to learn how to optimize the ads. Also to create the content for the ads and do the A. B testing and all that kind of stuff. And a big mistake that assad is doing here is you know, they'll throw like $100 100 pounds into a facebook ad for the release and then literally just call it a day that's not going to work.

Especially if the ads contain a link outside of facebook. You've got to have ways of retargeting those audiences and some way of collecting the data, whether that's on a mailing list or something like that because ultimately that's what's gonna get you the best arrow I for the ads and even worse is when they make a sponsored post. I know brian Hood calls that the donate to facebook button. That's pretty much exactly what it is, isn't it? You know, that reminds me of a while ago I saw an artist complaining on facebook about facebook ads and he had done a campaign targeting his local area, advertising himself as a local musician and there were multiple people saying, oh well show us the ad and he showed the ad and it was just one of the worst things I've ever seen.

It's like why would anyone click this? The picture is not good. The description is just saying check out this local musician. It doesn't say what genre. It doesn't say anything about that. And everyone who saw that was saying, we'll try this, try that. Oh no, I'm done with facebook ads. They're terrible. This doesn't work. It's like, no, you're at is terrible. You mentioned bands put in $100 and then give up, it doesn't work like that, This is something that you have to put in probably at least 1000 to $1500 before you're even going to see if it's worth it or not for that one campaign, and you can't write off facebook ads as a whole, you can write off that one campaign, but then you've got to try again with a different campaign. Exactly.

You know, in this grand scheme of things, spending £100 100 dollars a month on facebook ads is nothing, literally nothing. So, you know, if artists have got the budget to really kind of dive into it, we know that facebook ads work, they were literally tons of businesses, tons of people out there that are making serious, serious return on investment in facebook ads, so just because Someone put like $50 into it and it didn't work, doesn't mean that Facebook ads are broken. You know, just means that they couldn't do it right. Exactly. Exactly.

And I'll be the first to say there's many things wrong with Facebook, but they make money on ads so you better believe they want to make it as successful as possible. They don't want to make it difficult to run ads even though it is difficult. It's a very complex process. They want you to see good results because then you're more likely to spend more money with them. There's no logical point for facebook to say we're going to make ads terrible. People don't make a restaurant with terrible food intentionally.

They want customers to say this is amazing. We'll come back. Exactly. Yeah. It makes no sense. Like why would facebook running out and suppress the audience. I'll make it really difficult for you to identify and target the people that are going to buy your product. They're not going to do that. They want it to be easy for you. They're on your side when it comes to add, because you're literally playing them. Yeah. Well, as we segue on from paid advertising, I want to talk a little bit about what artists can do to create a lasting impression with people who've never seen them before at live shows.

So shows are obviously a great way to connect with fans. It is a lot easier and quicker to grow your audience online because obviously, you know, you're not restricted by location and you can very easily get your message to people on mass in a way that you can't do through life shows. But live shows are undoubtedly an incredible opportunity to offer those fans an unforgettable experience. And I think that's what it's all about. Those people that come and see you live, you have to create an unforgettable experience for them, it's just a case of thinking outside the box, every band on the planet is going out and performing the music.

So what can you do? And what can you offer to make your show unforgettable and have people literally blowing up your DMS asking you when your next show is? It goes without saying that you've got to be tight and extremely good at what you do, but, you know, there's ways to augment that. So, a lot of the artists that I work with will use backing tracks to kind of augment their live show. Often I'm working with artists that have a band of perhaps 45 members and absolutely you want to keep as much as you can live, because that's what people are going to see.

But adding some extra sauce by your backing tracks can really take a live show to the next level. It can take it from 6 to 10 instantly. If you've got a song that's got a massive lush string arrangement of a breast section are synths, whatever you've created in the studio, that's part of the song, that's where backing tracks can really shine. So I think that's a great option for bands that are not doing that. I think having a strong stage presence absolutely key. Think about some of the greatest artists around, you know, in my world, the rock country world bands like foo fighters, luke combs dot tree.

All of these top tier artists have got an incredible presence and way of interacting with the audience that a lot of less experienced bands can learn a lot from. You can't just stand on stage and be a potato. You've got to be interesting and interact with people beyond all of that stuff. There's lots of other ways that bands can offer value to people that show up. You know maybe do meet and Greece, They could offer private acoustic performances to say like the 1st 50 ticket sales could have some exclusive merch available to buy, could even give everyone that attends a discount voucher for the merch star.

I'm just spitballing a few ideas here. But there's a ton of things that artists can do to make it extra special. It's just a case of thinking outside of the box and making it an unforgettable experience. That's what the aim should be. Yeah, I think that's great on that note. Years ago I worked some shows for Justin Bieber when he was in L. A. And this was the staples center where they have for the sports teams there, the Lakers and whoever else plays there, they have emerged store and what they did for the three days Bieber was there is converted into a Justin Bieber merch store.

So it wasn't just emerged table, it was you go in and this is a store of Justin Bieber products, the entire thing, that's the kind of thing you can do and obviously you're not going to turn an entire L. A. Laker storm to insert D. I. Y. Band name here store but make it an experience. Don't just have a merch table that looks like every other bands merch table. Get creative with it. If you have the space, do something cool. Like here's our walk in closet of merch that would be such a cool and unique idea.

People can actually walk in and browse the racks and be like oh I want this shirt like, okay, cool. Even if it's something basic, like having a good display with lighting, I'm a big fan of lighting for merch tables because you have no idea how many times I've gone to a show and looked and been like, this all looks terrible, why would I buy it? And then I realized it's just because it's dark. If there was like, it would look amazing. Exactly. I remember going to a show once, it was kind of like a mid level band.

They weren't like huge but not bottom of the level and I remember buying a t shirt that I thought it was like a navy blue t shirt and I got it outside and it was brown. Oh I would not have bought that. I like it was okay but I wouldn't have bought a brown t shirt. Like I'd buy a black t shirt and a dark blue t shirt. So yeah, I think the light is a great idea. I just want to throw this out there. Bands don't make brown t shirts.

How often has anybody seen anyone wearing a brown t shirt? Like that's just not a good choice of color. I should pack this up with at venue says over half of all t shirts sold are black and over half of all items sold at shows. Our t shirts. So the math works out to something like 29% of all items sold at shows are black t shirts. Yeah, exactly. That's huge. Have at least one black t shirt if you want a different color, you want red or white or blue or whatever.

That's fine. Do that too. But have one black t shirt at the minimum because people will not buy stuff if you don't have a black t shirt, people will literally walk away Anyway, that's my rant on merch for the day. We have one more quick topic to get through before we talk about your band, the Fiasco and what you've got coming up, which is how artists can make an impression and grow their audience in the real world. But not it shows. So this is, you know, just on the street or at the local record store or anywhere really that artists can make a connection with potential fans.

Yeah, this is a really interesting one, be honest. It's not something I've really thought about, but I guess when you're in a band, wherever you are, whoever you are interacting with could potentially be a fan of your music, I guess it's just having some self awareness about that, isn't it? It kind of a weird if you would just like bumped into a random stranger is like, hey, check out my music. That's literally the equivalent of what most people do. Unlike facebook Messenger, isn't it? Hey, check out my new release.

Like no, why, who are you? So yeah, I mean I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this. Yeah, Well it's funny that you bring up the example of instagram because I never thought about it that way back in the day when I was on warped tour, that was totally normal. Like people are standing in line outside and this is at a show and the bands come up to them. And then a couple of years ago I was in Belgium Germany where my family is from just walking through downtown and this guy who looks like a metal head is a oh, hey man, you look like you listen to good music come over here and he's telling me about his band, turns out they were from one of the Baltic states, I can't remember which one the band is called aluminum, I believe.

And they were literally just in town hawking their music. They're like, hey, we're selling our cds for $5 so we can get gas to go to the next town. And I was like, what? You're doing this downtown with complete strangers. It's not at a show. That's actually pretty cool. So I'm glad you brought up that example because for me, I was used to it from warped tour. I'm like, okay, people do this. I just haven't seen it in that context, But people who don't get it might be a little taken aback when a stranger approaches them and says, hey, do you want to check out my van?

To be fair, I've got so much more respect for that guy in the band that was literally going around the streets saying, hey, you want to buy my cd. Like that takes balls where it's just like messaging 100 random people on facebook messenger. Like there's literally no thought gone into that, promote it on scamming record label. I would probably be more likely to purchase that guy's album than someone that just randomly sent me an instagram message. So maybe that does work. Yeah, I didn't end up buying it.

I feel bad. I didn't have cash on me, I'm a credit card person, but I literally, on the way back, I ran into his bandmates and they're like, oh, hey, do you want to like, oh, no thanks. I've checked it out. I talked to ERic a few minutes ago, but you know ERic, I'm like, yeah, he was like a block away. Of course I've met him. But yeah, I think that's cool and thinking something out like that, that is not scam. Me. Don't be pushy about it.

Don't be the guy who gets on the train and says, Oh, I need money to get to so, and so for this and that, I just need $5. Don't be like that. Everybody sees through that. But being genuine and saying, Hey, do you want to check out my music? We're trying to get to the next town, we're raising money for gas so we can go to the studio, something like that, being honest and open about it. I think that's great. Yeah, there's always gonna be people that say no, like we said before, not everyone is going to be a fan of your music, but I think for artists, whether it's in real life for online, it's just a case of being a good person, isn't it, and just being genuine, taking an interest, it's kind of like dating, you know, you don't go up to someone that you meet in a bar and immediately asked him to marry it.

You go up and introduce yourself. You talk, you maybe go on a few dates and then you progress from there and that's in a weird way, what kind of attracting fans for your music is like, you don't literally go up to a random person and say, hey, you want to be a fan of my band. Yeah, that's weird. You talk to them, you kind of see if you what you've got in common, you take an interest, a way of looking at it, I always think is like being an artist in the 21st century is like making friends on mass.

That's basically what you're trying to do and that's what you have to do. I can think of bands who 10 years ago where nobody and they just talked their fans on back then it was twitter all day and now they're huge and they don't talk to their fans on twitter anymore because they have so many fans, but if they hadn't done that 10 years ago, they wouldn't have grown their fan base nearly as quickly because people wouldn't have cared. Exactly. And I think that's so important as well, particularly for artists, the number of artists that I see like on instagram or facebook or any social media that don't reply to the comments, That literally makes no sense.

Like if you're in a band of four people and you're getting fewer than say 100-200 comments on your post, there is literally no reason why you can't respond to every single one. If you get 100 comments on the post, the four of you in a band 25 people that you have to reply to each. If you can't take the time to do that, you need to change that about yourself. Yeah, and that is a great problem to have. Like if you have 100 people commenting, that's amazing, find out what you did in that post and do it again, do it differently, but do it again because people like that, going back to what we were talking about at the start of the episode Adam about consistency and putting yourself out there on social media.

That's one other thing that I don't see artists doing enough is putting out enough content so they can see what people like and what people don't like. Exactly. The great thing about that is things like instagram stories is a great way to test content because if it doesn't work, it disappears in 24 hours. It doesn't matter. It's not like a facebook post, if you've got like a wall of facebook post that literally no one is like and no uncommon in like yeah, that can look a bit terrible, but instagram star is, is literally the place to test your content and then once you get an idea of, right, okay, this works really well, This doesn't well, then you can create content for the stuff that worked well and then put that on your youtube, put that on your facebook, put that on your main instagram page.

We talked about organic reach going really low, but there's always new features that these social media platforms are introducing like tick tock organic reaches crazy right now. And so is instagram reels because instagram reels is a new feature and they are massively massively pushing it. I was having a conversation with one of my artists the other day and we were talking about Tiktok And this guy was asking how often it should post. And I was literally telling him like post as much as you can, like if you can post-4 times a day, that's what you should be doing.

Let's say you was getting like 200 views per tiktok If he was posting every day or then in a month, that's like 6000 views. If 1% of those turn into followers, then you're looking at like 60 new followers per month. But now, if you do far posts a day after a month, you have 24,000 views. 1% of that means 240 new followers a month. And that's assuming that it follows a linear pattern. You know, these things are rarely linear. It's going to be exponential. Yeah, just like the friend I was talking about how he had 10-K and four or 56 months and Now he's at 18K a month later, that is going to disappear.

There is going to be a time where Tiktok is like instagram is now where the organic reaches absolutely through the floor and to get anything decent, you're gonna have to pay for ads. But you know, by then they'll probably something new. It's just a case of keeping up with it, isn't it? Tick tock is the thing right now, instagram reels is absolutely fire. It can just get eyes on your very, very easily. Absolutely. Well, I would say, let's pivot now to talk about your band, the Fiasco.

You just re released from my understanding of cover of the reason by Hoobastank and you're released some original music a couple months ago as well. Can you talk a little bit about the band and what's coming up in the rest of 2021 for you? Yeah, absolutely. So um the Fiasco, we've been going now for somewhere between 10 and 15 years, which makes me feel really, really old. Me and tim singer, we kind of like the founding members back in high school. Originally we were just posting covers to Youtube and one of the most popular covers that we did was Hoobastank the reason which was crazy.

Like we were at the time we were trying to chase the trends like remember we did a cover of Katy perry last friday night because we thought again, to be fair it did, it got like 100,000 views within the first week. That's amazing. Especially for back then. Exactly, yeah. But then it literally got nothing else after that. I think it kind of capped out like maybe 1 21 30 but then we just kind of got bored of doing that like this is not what we enjoy. Like I remember recording and filming that Katy perry video and we were both miserable were like God this is just a char.

So we thought you know, scrap this, we're just gonna do the music that we really love. And we did a cover of Hoobastank, the reason great song that ended up being our most watched video. I think I got like half a million views, something like that, but also weirdly got ripped by some of the channel that like ripped it off our channel, put it on their own and it's got like another 130 K views on that. So we thought, you know what? It sounded terrible back then because I'd literally like just bought my first version of Q base, we didn't really know what we're doing.

So we thought let's do that again, but let's do it properly, decent version of it and release it properly. So yeah, that's where that idea came from. I think we're a lot less than found that was infused on Youtube now to be honest. But It was fun to do and I think there was some of the like original subscribers, they were still hanging around that kind of reached out and said they really enjoyed it. That's what we've just done recently. We had a couple of other releases this year and we've got another one coming up in August 20 August.

We've done another music video for that. We work with a pr company that are fantastic. So yeah, we're really excited. I think this year for us, it's just about getting some releases out. We haven't kind of gone to town with bookings yet. I think we just want to put some releases that we've got one show lined up in Norfolk in october that we're really excited about. But I think this year for was just writing music, releasing music and then next year will probably focus on the shows.

Sounds like a really solid plan. So, where should people go if they want to, first of all, find out about the Fiasco and same for your production work and label worthy. Sure. So, the band, the Fiasco is at the Fiasco music. That's facebook instagram Tiktok for my production work. That's Adam dash Fiasco dot com Are Adam Fiasco productions on instagram facebook and label worthy is the facebook group literally just search label worthy facebook groups and it's there, I'll let you in. All right, All those links will be in the show notes as well at band.

I've got rocks slash 91 that's the numbers nine and one. So if you, we're listening in the car or something and can't get those pulled up on your phone right now, you can just go to band. I've got rocks slash 91 click on all of Adam's links. And since the song will be out by then as well, with the episode airing on the 24th, will be sure to drop a link in the show notes for the new track as well, Adam. Thanks so much for joining us. It's been an absolute pleasure.

I think the folks listening will have learned a lot from your conversation today, so I really appreciate you coming on the show. No problem. Thanks very much for having me James. It's been a lot of fun. Oh my pleasure. Thanks so much and have a great day. Mm mhm. That does it for another episode of the Bandhive podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in and listening. And of course, big thanks to Adam Fiasco of the Fiasco and Adam Fiasco production for joining us on the show today to talk about a little bit of music theory and a little bit about mindset, but also lots about business and how you can grow your audience.

So, you become label worthy. I definitely recommend checking out Adam's site as well as the label worthy group on facebook and the Fiascos, various social media profiles and of course the new song that they released just a few days ago. So go ahead and head on over to Bandhive dot rocks slash 91 to find all those links and stay in touch with Adam. I really hope that all of this discussion with Adam today has shown you how you can be consistent with your band to start building your audience.

If you have questions, you're always welcome to reach out to us in the Bandhive facebook group, which you can find by going to Bandhive dot rocks slash group or just searching for Bandhive on facebook. Beyond that, if you have more questions and you want one on one, help doing this, head on over to band, I've got rocks slash coaching where you can apply for coaching with my co host matt hose of Alive in Barcelona or myself to talk about your strategies for success again, that is banned Hive dot rocks slash coaching.

We'll be back with another new episode next Tuesday at six a.m. Eastern and your favorite podcasting app. Until then, have an awesome week. Stay safe. And of course, as always, keep rockin.