Welcome to Episode 59 of the Bandhive Podcast.

It is time for another and first episode of the band I've Podcast, which is also Episode 59 of the band I've Podcast, which you're probably thinking what? But that's what we're here to talk about today.

My name is James Cross, and I'm here with Matt Hose of Alive in Barcelona. It feels good to be back recording. We had a nice Christmas break for me. It was super relaxing. I hope it was the same for you. How are you today, Matt? I'm doing pretty good. James has everything up there in Vermont. That's great to hear. Things are good here, really? Can't complain. I treated myself to a three D printer a few weeks ago, and I have noticed quite busy. Anyone who follows me on social media has seen the Nintendo switch cases that I've been making for friends and family.

That was like the Christmas gift of the year and s. So I've been having fun with that, and I'm already expanding the system and adding up grades and stuff. So that's my nerd out moment. But that's the last couple of weeks. And, of course, Christmas was here. And my highlight was I got a second wonderful poster of my dog, Babu. And I'm very, very pleased. And the frame for it is coming in today. So that's all the good news on my end. I mean, if I'm like, I could go on and on, I'm just I'm having a very good a couple of weeks.

Uh huh. That's great, man. Yeah. How about you, Matt? How was your Christmas? You know, Christmas is wonderful. I always had the kids with grand parents, so that was a really nice um, and it was just nice to have the whole family around. Holidays were always crazy. You know, both me and my wife come from large families, so it zanno a bunch of fun and a bunch of chaos at the same time. So if you're good at harnessing chaos in which I am. It's a blast. Oh boy, Yeah, I know that feeling to an extent, because in my family, both my parents have two siblings.

However, I only have one cousin on each side, so it's like Go up a level and it's a big family. But my age, I only have one cousin on either side, and they're both like 7 to 10 years older than me. So it's an interesting combination because it's a big family, but also not. I'm one of three, but my wife is one of 70 boy, my dad. He's the oldest of nine and my mother's I'm sorry. My wife's mother is one of five. There's just always like mass amounts of people.

No matter where we do Christmas, it's always just like we get a small group of like on my dad's side. If we get a small group of cousins together, there's about 15 to 20 of us. That's a small group. So yeah, it's, you know, that's like less than half of our my cousins, just from my dad's side. That's incredible. That makes me remember, like the nineties kids movies like Beethoven, really. You have a family reunion and there's like 50 people there I was. I was like, How do you get 50 people?

I can count on two hands all my family. This is what we used to dio when all of the members of our extended family, because not only is my dad the oldest of nine, but also his mom, was the oldest of nine, and her dad was the oldest of 10. So all of these kids, whenever we would have a family re union, we would rent the college in Newton, Kansas, and we would go to Newton, Kansas. They would open up one of their dormitory wings for us, and we would literally fill one of the entire dormitory buildings.

They staffed the cafeteria while we were there. That is impressive. So, like, that's just to put into perspective how large my family has every family reunion I've ever been to. I've met new family members that I never knew I had. That sounds really awesome, very chaotic. But also, that's gonna be a blast. You just have the campus to yourselves and like, go hang out with your family. Yeah, it's and and on top of that, because you're all family. It's like initial camaraderie, So it's pretty pretty awesome.

Yeah, that does sound very cool. I can't say I envy that experience, but I also can imagine having a blast if I did have that experience. The nice thing is that it's your on a college campus. So you compare off, you know, or like at least one of the days, because I think we go for Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and one of the days. We always do like an ultimate Frisbee game, you know? So it's like all the cousins and stuff like that. You know, we dio they do a good job of keeping things fresh.

Ah, lot of people bring like scooters or roller blades or skateboards and cruise around on the beautiful college campus because, you know, there's literally just sidewalks everywhere, so you can have a lot of fun there. That's amazing. Well, Thio, uh, let people off of the Cliff Hanger about what's going on. We're changing our name to Bandhive or the Bandhive podcast in the case of the podcast. So that's how this is the first episode of the Bandhive podcast, yet also Episode 59 of the band. I've podcast today.

We're just going to talk about the changes. Why we're doing this, What you need to know all that kind of stuff. And just to sum things up for you, our listeners, nothing's really changing. We're going to provide the same content that you enjoy listening to at least we hope you enjoy. And if you don't, why are you still listening? But thank you for listening anyway. So you may have noticed in the past couple of days or weeks on social media, our new logo and brand, especially if you're in our Facebook group.

You're one of the first people to see our new logo. We are fully embracing the hive. Our new logo is a B. It's I don't know what to say. I just want to say thank you to our designer, Richard Portman. He did a great job with it. I'm really glad we hired him because this is way better than the logo I made two years ago. I'll leave it at that for now, but the main thing that we're doing here is this name change will better encompass what we want to achieve with Bandhive.

The first reason we're making this change is that Bandhive is more community focused, just with its name, because one of the definitions for hive is a place in which people are busily occupied. So we want this to be something where there's lots of involvement from not just us and other people working with band. I've but also the community sharing resource is asking questions, all that kind of stuff. So this image of ah hive versus, like an office or a bureaucracy is something that we think will better suit both us as well as our followers and listeners.

And it also sounds less formal than our old name Band. Hive is like more pep in your step. Happy like this is a cool thing. It's not like, Oh, this is gonna get me down. So those were two of the first reasons Matt and I think it's really going to do some good stuff for us in the long run, as well as for the listeners. I completely agree. You know, the most important thing I think in Bandhive is the idea of a hive mind. If you think about a beehive, you have a bunch of workers individually performing tasks for the hive.

Everybody works individually for the purpose of coming together and making the hive better on. That's kind of what we want to push on to you guys. Is that each one of you, your worker bee? The world's intimidating. You gotta get out there by yourself like nobody's out there checking up on the bees saying, Hey, are you gathering your pollen? Are you getting your nectar? No, they're not. They're not asking that the bees go out and they do it by themselves, and then they come back and they bring what they collected.

They bring that back to the table. Being a part of a hive mind is not just about being the collective, but it's also about making sure that you're staying consistent, holding yourself accountable. So that way, when you return to the hive, you have something to show. It's not just about what we can do is a collective, but it's also about what you can do as an individual for the collective. Yeah, absolutely. This is so much about building a community around what we do, because that's really where the value comes in, like, you know, Matt, you and Aaron and I can all talk about our experiences for hours on end.

But because there are so many different variables in the music industry, there's no way that anyone or even three people can know everything about the music industry. I feel it's safe to say for any industry, but especially in music, like the way you approach being in a rock band is probably going to be very different, too. The way you approach a rap career or something like that. Now obviously there crossovers and fundamental is that everyone should follow, like being a go giver. That's a universal principle. But when it comes down to the you know minute details of something, you're going to see differences from one genre to another.

You're going to see differences from one geographic area to another. You know what standard practice here in the States might be unheard of in Australia or Japan or Europe? Or who knows where? Those are just some examples of why we think it's so important to have an active community that can help share knowledge with one another, continuing down the path of why we think Bandhive is a better name, no pun intended. It doesn't sound as old and outdated. Like I was saying earlier, it has more pep in your step, but it's also easier to spell.

It's also much shorter, so people don't have to remember a long name or how to spell words that are old and outdated. Another thing is that the word better in our old name kind of implied that bands and artists who take business seriously are better than people who just love making music as a hobby. And that's kind of bug me for a while because that's not where we wanted to go with it. But that's kind of what it shifted into at least a faras a naming standpoint to the point that I started making disclaimers on some episodes when we were talking about stuff like that saying, Hey, you know, if you wanna be a hobbyist artist, that's fine.

There's nothing wrong with that. Musical ability and business savvy don't always have to go together, but they're also not mutually exclusive. If you want to have a music career, absolutely, you have to know how to run a business. But if you just wanna have a great time playing music with your friends. That's fine, too. And that doesn't mean that somebody who take their career seriously is a better musician. You know, you could be the best musician in the world and just play at home, and no one ever hears you.

That's fine. Like, if that's what you want, there's no issue that I see with that as long as that's what you want. And who knows? Like maybe someday you'll change your mind. And all of a sudden you'll be known as you know, the best guitarist in the world, the best bass player in the world, the best singer who knows, like the best French horn player in the world, who knows there's so many different instruments that you could be the best in the world at the main thing is we want to shift away from implying that somebody is better if they take their career seriously and that ties back into the community aspect.

You know, if somebody is a hobbyist and wants to get started taking their career seriously, we don't want them to be scared away. We want them to be welcomed into the community and be able to feel like they belong and can improve themselves by being part of that community. Matt, When we were talking earlier, you had a great point about branding with some examples. Do you want to go into that a little bit? Yeah, absolutely. You know, we obviously talked about brand a lot and in my opinion, visual first.

Now there are other aspects to it. But when you close your eyes and I say McDonald's, the golden arches pop into your into your brain. When I say apple, you see Annapolis with a chunk bitten out of it. When I say Spotify, you think a green circle with little bars in it, you identify those brands. And so for us, I think that we really a wanted to take a step away from something that eventually will stagnate and move towards something that is visually stimulating and also, like you mentioned earlier.

James Easy to say Bandhive is easy to say. It's easy to spell. It's easy to remember it talks about our main demographic. We're working towards bands now. Obviously that includes other you know, we include artists. We include rappers. We include, you know, whoever wants toe listen to this and thinks that they could benefit. You know, everyone is welcome, but we try to encompass exactly what we're going for. And then there's also a little bit of a mystery to it, you know? And why the hive? Well, once you get in, you kind of start to learn why the hive You start to learn about the community.

You start to learn about each individual worker doing what they're supposed to do to build a cumulative product or accumulative structure or accumulative brand. And so what we're trying to dio in this switch is make unidentifiable brand, make something that you recognized by looking at it. And so we invite everybody to look at our new logo and tell us what you think. Tell us your honest thoughts. You know, we love criticism. That's that's the whole point of what we do is we want a community, and so feedback is good.

We always encourage you guys to get feedback from your peers, and we would also like feedback from you. So don't hesitate to shoot us messages or, you know, comment in the group. If you're in the group, we love to hear your thoughts. Now with this, we implemented a couple different things. One was we brought in the new logo. Two was we changed the name so that it complemented the logo. And we also have Ah, little mascot now R B or as we like to call him, the basic Be because he's playing a five string bass.

He's now our mascot. Now our goal. And you, you guys are in this lucky position. Like all of our all of our listeners who have been here since the beginning or who have joined prior to this point and who will plan on continuing to listen, You guys will actually get to see the slow progression off us building this brand. You'll actually get to watch us. You'll get to see how we use our mascot. You'll get to see how we tie, you know, the hive into everything. And that's kind of the goal with this whole rebrand is not just for us to be like, Oh, this is easy to remember.

But also for you guys, you can literally watch us do what we are trying to tell you to dio. Yeah, exactly. And obviously branding for a new organization like Bandhive is going to be a little different than it is for a band. But overall, the same things apply. So, for example, you know our designer Richard Portman. His work is amazing, and I'm so glad that somebody recommended him to us. There were other designers that were very good at what they dio. For example, there was a designer who submitted some work, and he does amazing band logos, great work, but wasn't exactly a fit for what we're doing.

So keep in mind that when you are branding your own band, you should try to find somebody who works in the style that you like. You know, don't just find any graphic designer. I'm sure the guy who does band logos could have done a good logo for us, but I don't think it would have been a good as what Richard does because his specialty is branding for corporations and businesses and stuff like that. It's just a different style, so ours is cleaner. One of the options he presented actually looked.

It was a little hive made out of equalizer bars, so it looked kind of like a streaming service logo, and it looked really cool, and if we were a tech company, I probably would have picked that one. It's a different style, and it's a different aesthetic. And so again there will be small differences between what an artist would do and what we're doing. But if you are interested in learning about branding, definitely stay tuned to see what we're doing with Bandhive, because it will be relevant to you and absolutely feel free to ask any questions on that note.

If you do have questions, all our websites and social media will be updated. The main thing is, the website will be banned hive dot rocks, and to go back of it, this is pretty much the only thing you have to pay attention to it and make note of for the future. Our old site won't be around much longer, so band I've Got Rocks is the site that's not dot com. It's banned, I've got rocks and our emails are super easy support at Band. I've got rocks, James at band, I've got rocks, Matt at band, I've got rocks and Aaron at band.

I've got rocks so you can reach any one of the three of us that way or send it to support. And we all three have access to that inbox, and we can check it out. And that way, if you have questions or suggestions for episode topics, all that kind of stuff, then we can all see it and discuss it internally and probably do a podcast episode about it, or a block post or whatever seems fitting. Our INSTAGRAM will also be updated. It will probably be banned hive dot rocks.

Unfortunately, there is a band from Poland who hasn't posted since 2013. Who has that name and a grand total of one follower. Their name is hive. I don't know why they didn't do Hive Band. They did Bandhive, but either way, don't go to at Bandhive and follow them because that's not us. We'll be sure to put the instagram link in the show notes, which you confined at Band I've dot rocks slash 59 That's the number 59 and we'll have our instagram link whatever it ends up being in there.

And we'll also have the new link for our Facebook group, which you confined by visiting Bandhive dot rocks slash group and that will redirect you to the Facebook. U R l So yeah, that's really the only thing you have to pay attention to and make a change. Otherwise, everything else is going to stay the same will still be releasing episodes every Tuesday at 6 a.m. Eastern time. We're still gonna have the active community. We're gonna be talking with everyone who has questions, all that kind of stuff.

We'll be looking for more guests. You know, in this first year, we had amazing guests. Matt, who do you think was your favorite guest of this first year just to put you on the spot? I think it was really awesome having Howie, you know, he had a lot of very rial content, just a very as a person. He's very transparent about what he does and about what he loves. And, you know, it's always good to have somebody who's basically struggled and overcome in the music industry and adapted and figured out how Thio really pursue a career that he loves.

So I think he was absolutely wonderful tohave Honestly, I don't think there is anyone that is more beneficial than the others because all the people that we've had. It's all been very drastically different topics, drastically different subjects and really trying to focus on on different facets of the music industry. So I think I enjoyed the conversation with Howie More, um, than than any any other. Just because he that guy is easy to talk. Thio Very easy to talk Thio. He could talk for years about what he loves.

And whenever you get in a conversation with somebody like that, it's just it's riveting, you know? So I enjoyed that. But there's no wrong answer. They're all wonderful. And we appreciate each and every person who has come onto our show and really, who's, uh, you know, poured their knowledge into our community? Yeah, absolutely. I think how he was probably one of the most enjoyable conversations as well. But everyone who has been on the show, you know, Erin Zimmer from least of all that was a really fun because he had the small indie label single pressing side of things going on.

Christian James of James and the giant sleep Christian was amazing. They talked about video and the mindset behind having a music career. You know, they were saying that if they had the choice between food or recording music, they would go with recording music. And I think that's the mindset that leads to a successful musician. And I mean, that's like I could see how he's doing that to some of the stuff he was talking about in the 20 years like he made those choices, the tough choices between doing what he loved or, you know, having responsibilities at home.

And I see that same thing with Christian with what they're doing. And I think that really, that's a great mindset for artists. And then we had Ryan Cohen of Robot Dog Studio talking about live streaming and that kind of stuff. That was great. Brandon Cunningham of Quiet A F did, ah Black Lives Matter episode back in June, shortly after George Floyd was killed. And that was riveting because he talked so much about injustice and inequality in the music world, both from the industry standpoint, but also from the standpoint of fans, people saying, Why are you making pop punk?

You're black like, shouldn't you be wrapping? So I think if you haven't listened to that episode, that's a really important episode to listen to. I think that's Episode 30 which is at Band. I've got rocks slash 30 and it just goes so in depth into the issues that we have in our own music community. And then before that, we had Infinite Signal and Josh Nachbar. Those were the first to interviews. Those were such a blast. Well, I think you were on the one of the Josh and Infinite Signal was with Aaron, but all of the people we've had on the show have been incredibly integral, but also thought provoking.

Thio spur further conversations and ideas for other episode topics, or just to reflect in ourselves and see what we can do better for ourselves, for the community, for anything, really. It's been amazing to have so many guests, and I absolutely look forward to having more guests on the band. I've podcast in the years to come. We are over one year with the podcast now, so that's a blast. And I just got to say, Matt, thank you for being here on the podcast. So often. Same goes to Aaron, which on that note, Erin should be back soon.

So if anybody out there has been missing his lovely voice on the podcast. Fear not. He'll be back. I believe the first episodes we record in 2021. We'll have a reappearance from Aaron. But if not, it will be soon. So to wrap things up, rebranding is a total pain. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but it is also so worth it. And to close things out, we have a question for you. And then Matt, I think we're gonna have you tell a story about your situation. Rebranding. So the question for everyone is this.

Have you ever had to rebrand one of your bands or solo projects or anything like that? Let us know what happened and how you handle it by heading on over to our Facebook hive at Bandhive dot rocks slash group or by searching for banned hive on Facebook. You can join our group there and join the discussion about rebranding and Matt. I know for you guys alive in Barcelona, that is a new name. So do you wanna tell us a little bit about that before we wrap things up?

Absolutely. Yeah. Now, at this point, we've been alive in Barcelona for C 3 3. 5 fish years. I want to say I'm trying to think of, like, three and a quarter years and, you know, before that we were the persevering promise. Very hard to say, very hard to spell e mean, I couldn't tell you how many times I would literally hand a promo card to somebody and they would go the preserving promise. I actually one time gave somebody a promo card, and he looked at it and goes preserving promise.

And I said, Nope. Try again. He goes, Oh, the preserving promise. I said Nope. And I just took the card back from him. E just took it away. I said, no, you can't read. So shame on you. Now, that was at warp tour, and that was after, like, 40 days of being in 100 degree weather. So I was a little irritated. But, you know, it was hard to read. It was hard to understand. It was something that mattered. Tow us as band members because it was a mantra for ourselves.

It was that we weren't gonna give up. We weren't gonna quit. And you know what? It wasn't marketable at all. This is when we were we were young. We didn't know at all what we were doing. You know, we went out. We did plenty of tours. We had lots of fun. We made money. We did the things that you were supposed to do in the music industry. But it kind of felt like trying to make a snowball with powder. You know, It just it fell apart after talking with a bunch of people in the industry and after, you know, bringing in his many mentors as we could.

And honestly, after hitting Rock Baden, we were emotionally drained. We were tired. We didn't wanna make music anymore. We've been trying so hard for so long, and we couldn't find repeatable formulas. You know, it was like some days were a total smash out of the park, and some days were, you know, pulling teeth without novocaine. And so we ended up getting all these mentors together having a bunch of people, you know, talk essentially, and, uh, Jesse actually ended up saying, you know, I really liked the name alive in Barcelona.

Now, there wasn't anything in particular that stuck out about it, you know? And as we talked about it. It kind of felt like again another mantra for us. And I think this one fell into place so much better because it was like, you know, we are still persevering, you know, We're not forsaking that. We're not eliminating that. But we've been everywhere in this country repeatedly. So what's the next step? The next step is Europe. You know, the next step is getting to work, you know, the next step in our career.

And so for us again, it was kind of had the same feel when when that name was put on the table, because it was like, Hey, you know, like, yeah, you know, again, this is like personal growth, personal achievement. And that was kind of the whole thing with the persevering promise was that, you know, this is about continuing on and making a promise to ourselves that basically we weren't gonna give up on our dreams even if we weren't, you know? You know, even if we weren't making it, we were gonna figure out how to.

And so that name kind of evolved, you know, And it was Jessie's great idea. So then we took that to our mentors and they were all like, Yeah, this is a way better name. This is way more marketable. It's easy to remember, you know, like every single time I said the persevering promise. People said, What now? When I say Oh, alive in Barcelona, they say that's a sweet name. A really good way for you to tell if you have something good post it and see if people hate on it.

The haters will tell you 10 times out of 10 if they don't like your stuff. And the more haters you have, the better. It's gonna be one of the first things that we heard after the rebrand. And after we dropped our first song, was somebody saying, Oh, my gosh, What a rip off of buried in Verona. None of us had even heard of that band before. Yeah, yeah, you're like, Oh, I guess, Yeah, they both say in, you know, dead and alive. I I guess, and then a place like sure, but you know, how many bands can you say?

Like, Oh, look of mice and men? You're just copying as I lay dying because your band name is named after a book like Gag me with a field mouse. Do your own thing. Ignore the haters, but But you want them like the bottom line is there was a study done years ago about how many times somebody will share negative content versus how many times will share positive content in a lot of ways. Like asking Alexandria ended up getting a huge amount of publicity from naysayers, you could go back and watch.

They may have deleted it by now. But like sleeping with sirens, the very first video they ever put out is like a live video. And Kellen sounds awful like absolutely horrible. Can't hit any high notes or anything like that. He sounds like a chicken screeching. It's bad. But you know what? People shared that and shared that and shared that. And then people said, Well, I want to make my own opinion And then they went and saw him live, and they said, Wow, this is actually a lot better than that one single video like maybe well, maybe we'll actually formulate our own opinion.

So don't worry about the haters. That's exactly what you need in life is haters on? The more people hit on you, the better you're doing so keep that in mind. But for us, when we made our switch to a live in Barcelona, it really, really ignited a fire inside of us again, you know? And it, uh, that one was for you, James. Thank you. I appreciate it. We fell in love with playing music again, that feeling of, like, Brokenness that we had of just like I don't want to say hating music, But I just kind of equate it to, like, you know, does a professional chef want to come home and cook for his family like, No, they don't.

We were so tired of music. We were so tired of trying to find ways to make things work, that we were burnt out. We said to ourselves were like, Look, guys, we're gonna give this one last hurrah. We're going to try. And if it doesn't happen, well, then we're gonna We're gonna bow out. Yeah, that was, like, four years ago. And then we released back to life, which everybody loved. We developed Mawr contacts from that song from our rebrand. I mean, and I kid you not the power of a rebrand.

We made Mawr ground in the first six months being alive in Barcelona than we did in six years as the person during promise. You know, now, after our rebrand, we have, you know, like 2. 5 million streams. Now we have contacts all over the country. We have radio play. We've had top 100 songs. The industry has opened up, We've had better tours. Everything about it has basically elevated us to, you know, playing it a different, different level. And so, if you're worried about a rebrand, you should be because it's tough and take your time.

It costs a lot of money. We had to get all new logos. We had to get a new font that correlated with our logos. We had to get album art, then all of our album art that came with our first album we needed to make live art cab are are scrims. Things like that and all needed to correspond with each other. Then on top of that, when we did our releases, we needed to make sure that all of our digital art matched at all of our banners.

It pointed towards something when we did our releases. We need to make sure that we had a, you know, promo video to promote a video, and then we would release the video. We need to make sure we have constant social media content, and each and every one of these things could never abandon the brand that's hard to dio. And so, luckily for us, we failed a whole bunch. We failed a lot, and you can either fail or you can learn. Now, if you learn, then you don't really fail.

The only people who fail are the people who quit. That's not even the way to say it, but it's the truth. The only reason that certain bands are huge is because they're still there. They're still working. You know, ballyhoo is still playing music no matter what. They're not doing these crazy headlining festivals. They're not the main act at Riot Fest. You don't goto Lollapalooza and say, like, Oh, we're going to see ballyhoo. That's the you know, that's that's the headliner on the main stage. But you know what they are doing?

They're following their passion and they made things work. Your rebrand should basically try. You know, you have to work through a whole bunch of stuff to figure out exactly what works for you. And then when you get there, you have to stop and smell the roses. You're gonna make sure your branding is consistent. When you get a good brand and you know it, it bleeds over into every other aspect of your business. So we had a new logo, so that means that we also needed new merch.

We had a new name. We need a new merch. We need a new websites we needed. I mean everything. Everything that you've already paid for, we had to repay for it. We had to do it all over again. And you know what? Six months later, we saw results and that was incredible. That was revitalizing, rejuvenating. It was enlightening. It made us once again feel like music was what we were supposed to dio and slowly but surely. Or you know, over the course of last couple of years, things have Onley continued to go up and up and up and up, and hopefully we can continue on that same trend.

But it's still a lot of work, and it's still consistent to that rebrand. It's still consistent to our logo, our brand, our music, our imagery. Everything is all tied into one. And so, yeah, rebranding is a total pain. It's a hard decision that you have to make. I once listened to a talk from a man who calls himself a serial entrepreneur, and he said something that will always stick with me, and that is that he never starts a business about something he's passionate about. He only starts businesses about things that he likes.

And the reason is is because at a certain point in that business, you have to make hard decision, something that you are passionate about your baby, your something that you've built, something that you've spent up, you know, stayed awake all hours of the night, writing songs or coming up with a name that's really hard to let go. Your pride wants to hold on to that so bad, because the idea of setting down your baby is terrible. Nobody wants to do that. But you know what? If you are just looking at this and saying, Look, I like this, I like this a lot and I need to take a step back and understand that sometimes you have to make hard decisions concerning your baby and make sure that you a bring in mentors to make sure that you know you can have it.

This this is why we really say that community is the best because you might be jaded. You might have clouded vision, and that's just all there is to it. You're in love with your music. You're in love with your band or hopefully you are. I mean, that's the goal. The goal is to be in love with what you dio. The goal is to create art that you love that appeals to your fans. I know too many artists who like Onley, make music for their fans or who Onley make music for themselves.

And I will tell you right now that the people that do that are not a successful is the people who do both set aside the passion for a second and talk to yourself and say, What's gonna be the best decision for my band? Maybe your band name is lugubrious Jack, you know, and you wanna do all these different things. You wanna be a jack of all trades or whatever? Maybe that's your gimmick. The point is that's not gonna be marketable. And if somebody comes to you and tells you that no matter how hell bent you are on keeping that name or pursuing that branding trust, the mentors don't get overly passionate about the wrong things in your music.

You're passionate about creating beautiful, beautiful content. Be passionate about making art that punches people in the heart. Now that we've rebranded, I don't have to worry about that. I don't have to worry about like, Oh, is that, you know, like with the persevering promise, It was like the first struggle was getting them to say the name. If your struggle is getting them to pronounce your band name, you don't have a good band name. Think about rebranding. Think about getting some professional designers to make you a logo and a font.

Make that logo so identifiable that you can plaster it on everything you can make. T shirts and shorts and underwear and bracelets and stickers and posters with that branding on it. When you think of Apple, Apple has changed their logo, I think, three times in their history. Okay, this is a company that's been around 50 years, and they have changed their logo three times. The first one was a colorful apple. They've all been an apple. The first one was a apple with, I think, every color of the rainbow on it.

And then I think the second one was the gray apple. And then the third one, they kept the same gray apple. They put a little solution, the middle of it, and put a Grady in on it. It's been the same thing the entire time, and the only thing that they've done is modernized. That same identifiable logo McDonald's. They've had to logos. The first one waas a hamburger man. The second one was the Golden Arches. Everybody knows that where the golden arches are, there's a McDonald's they've branded so well that people know the golden arches.

That's what this is all about. Don't think about the brand is, you know, don't be so attached to your band name, or here's a simple way to put it. Don't be so attached to trivial things that you forget why you're in a band. You are a musician to make music. You are not a business logo designer. You are not a serial entrepreneur. You're a musician, so make sure that you get the trivial stuff out of the way so that you can focus on the meat. You gotta be able to focus on that content.

If you can't focus on the content, then you're gonna be fighting an uphill battle from step one. Absolutely. And I think it's so incredibly important. You know what you were saying about the persevering promise versus alive in Barcelona? I remember when we first met I had so much trouble remembering your band's name. And then as soon as I heard of a live in Barcelona is like, Oh, I live in Barcelona. Cool. So what you're describing is absolutely true, like we were friends and I couldn't even remember your band's name.

So how is some random stranger at warp tour going to remember it? Like I said, I literally handed something that had it written on it. They couldn't read it. If you can look at the band name and not actually know what the band name is, you don't have a successful name, and we had to learn that the hard way. It took us six years to learn that we were caught up in pride we were caught up in passion, and instead all that did was burn us out and make us feel like we didn't belong.

Then we re branded, and then it was like, Oh, cool. Now we're having, like, major U. S Tours. Now we're having, like, radio campaigns. Now we're having, you know, things exploded. It was it was night and day. Absolutely so death metal bands who have a logo that looks like a pile of twigs. Please take note. If no one can read your logo, they have no idea who you are like. There have been bands that I know the name and I look at their logo on like I can't figure out where it says their name and their like.

There's no way that says their name. It's that bad sometimes. So visual identity matters. Get that out of the way. And if you have a good brand, you know, we've mentioned them on the show before Ramstein. They have had essentially the same logo for almost 30 years. I think it's like 26 years. At this point, they haven't changed because they have amazing brand, so figure out a good brain now, use that and stick with it. That does it for Episode 59 of the Bandhive podcast. Thanks so much for listening to this episode and hearing about the changes we are making.

We're really excited for what will be able to do from now on with this new, more recognizable branding and building a community around that. If you want to join our Facebook group, you can find it at Bandhive dot rocks slash group that will automatically redirect you. Or you can search for banned hive on Facebook to join in the APP. One thing just to circle back. We are going to be changing our website, so it's now going to be banned. Hive dot rocks and our emails will be support at Band.

I've Got Rocks, James at Band I've got rocks, Matt at band, I've got rocks and Aaron at band. I've got rocks, thanks again for sticking with us this first year, and like I said, we really hope that this branding change will let us build an even stronger community. So thank you to everyone who is part of the Facebook group who follows us on Instagram, who sends us questions topic requests, all that kind of stuff. Thank you so much to everyone. We hope you're having a great start to 2021.

Here's to chose coming back with the vaccine working. Let's let's keep our fingers crossed for all that so that the music industry can return in full force sooner rather than later, we'll be back with another episode next Tuesday at 6 a.m. Thank you so much again. We really hope you have a great week. Stay well, stay healthy, all that kind of stuff. And, of course, as always, keep rocking.