10 Easy Ways To Support Your Favorite Bands

A fan of Giant Panda Guerrilla Dub Squad recently asked “Wouldn’t you, the band, make more profit if I order a CD instead of getting it from iTunes, where a large portion of it goes to Apple?”

First of all, hats off to @marino2210 for asking such a thoughtful and considerate question.  It’s a simple and powerful reminder that most people want to do good and support the things they love.  Thank you.

To answer the question…

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Yeah, Only 13 Year Old Girls Like That Band

I am a muscian who recently read this article on The Guardian about musicians who scoff at their young female fans.  Even before reading it, though, I’ve heard many people elude to it: musicians having young female fans takes away some sort of credibility.  I even accepted this to be true as a teen girl myself, while listening to a song on repeat for hours, obsessing over every word and its possible meaning, and becoming entwined with the music and personal life of the artist.  It seemed that any musician on a poster in my room instantly and undoubtedly became laughable.  

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4 Places Every Music Lover Needs To Visit In Their Lifetime

 No matter the genre, there are plenty of places lovers of music can go to revel in the vibe of their favorite music. Music continues to be one of the art forms that brings people together, and at its best, it lifts the spirits and moves the soul. It’s only fitting that music fans should visit some of the places that pay tribute to the musical experience.

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Finding Your Natural Audience

Songwriters, do you know who your natural audience is?

Your songs exist at a point within or outside the commercial mainstream. If they fall in the mainstream, they are similar to other songs, and are most likely to be embraced by a pop audience. If they hang out on the fringes, they are discernible from other songs, and are most likely to be noticed by a niche audience. The pop audience is larger and more accepting, the niche audience smaller and more discriminating. Each has its pros and cons.

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2000 Things to Generate 20,000 Fans – Create a Monthly Fan Meetup

Author David Meerman Scott made a honest and realistic quote, “if you want 20,000 fans you must do 2000 different things that each generate 10 fans.” This was my favorite quote from 2010 and I am going to take this on as a challenge for 2011 for an ambitious project to give you 2000 different things you can do to generate 20,000 fans.

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What Do Music Fans Want To Own, and Why?

I’ve spent my teenage and adult life obsessing over my music collection. Meticulously arranging hand labelled tapes and CD’s was FUN, but when the same job arrived for mp3’s, it became a massive chore. But I still felt compelled to own something, and so I continued for many years, wasting hours arranging an mp3 collection I’d not paid for. I passionately argued that I’d always want to own what I listened to, until the Spotify mobile app made that notion extinct.

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