Band Themer

Blog | Thoughts

Stuff we learnt while in a Band

By Band Themer | Jan 19, 2010

Being in a band means trying a lot of new things and sometimes learning a lot of things the hard way. Here are a few things I would recommend trying/avoiding (most from personal experience) if you are in a band:

1. Debt.

The truth about a band is that to consistently make music it must also be a business. Yes, to get things started it takes money: recording, pressing CD’s, getting merchandise created can cost thousands of dollars. But sinking yourself in debt without a solid plan to get out will just leave you with a closet full of unheard cds and a broken bank. Usually people get along great until money is involved and suddenly everyone has a different opinion and fights happen. You can avoid this by having a solid business plan before going into debt. You need a plan to pay off debt before going into it. Whether that is a solid tour, online sales, or other opportunities, it is best to be smart with money if you want to have a career. Also, avoid getting into personal debt. If unpaid, debt becomes like a chain holding you back.

2. Management.

Having a manager is a key part of getting things done. Whether that person is in the band, a volunteer, or hired on, make sure it is someone you can trust and also someone who knows what they are doing. It’s a boring job but it is critical to being successful. There is nothing worse than leaving for a tour only to find out half the shows were never booked, or there are no contracts with promoters, etc.

3. Location.

Running a band out of the wrong location can be a huge challenge. If you are 5 hours away from the next big town and only 2 kids like your style of music in your town, you’ll only get 2 kids out to your show. But in a bigger area there is a higher likelihood of having a larger group of people who like your music style. Finding this target audience is very important. If you try to market heavy-metal music to baby-boomers (except those crazy moshing types you likely won’t make any sales. This means going to shows, talking to people, finding out who likes music that you are making and finding ways to connect with them.

4. Staying consistent.

Many bands will create new music and create a buzz – only to then fall into the background for a while. It’s hard work but it’s really helpful to always be “on”. Whether it’s daily blogs or new music or whatever, stay consistent.

5. Being good at what you do.

It’s easy to think that as a musician we are the best we can be and we have no need to practice or improve. But being good at what you do is very important. Practice songwriting, practice your instrument, practice your live show etc. Basically, laying the pride down and realizing that we have a lot of room for improvement. This type of mindset will open tons of doors. All in all get creative and get busy. Money isn’t the goal – but rather a necessity If you don’t make money you won’t be sustainable, and you won’t last. Aka – your message won’t go out

Blog | Development

So whats next for Band Themer?

By Band Themer | Dec 03, 2009

Our goal is to bring you the best WordPress themes for bands/musicians that don’t just look great but are really easy to install, tweak and integrate into all social and music networks.

So you guys are most likely wondering what are we currently working on for Band Themer? Well we don’t like to keep secrets and keep you in the dark so this blog post is going to detail everything we are currently working on. Its pretty exciting stuff seeing a theming business grow and get great feedback from our existing customers.

Integrations and New Features

Coming very soon you will be able to integrate TuneCore so you can listen, share and buy audio tracks at a click of a button.

We have also thought about other options for example bands/musicians want to keep track of there fans and how many visitors are coming to there website so we have now integrated Google Analytics so you can keep track of all that information!

Another item that was lacking was a really good tour dates/events management system. We did some hunting around and we are excited to announce that all of our themes will be integrated with a new plugin which is called GigPress to help bands/musicians manage all of upcoming and past performances right from within the WordPress admin.

Themes and Updates

We currently have three new themes in development, which means there will be more to choose from and even a few surprises! We will be posting theme teasers with screen shots of the designs to get feedback from you guys in the coming days.

Updates to the Rugged Theme:

Another most requested feature for one of our themes was widget ready sidebars, So in the next update of the Rugged theme you will be able to drag different sidebar options and move the position very easily.

Another big request was add the ability to add a different image in the header for each page. There is now a Custom Field to change the photo for every page with the default being the main picture if no custom field is made.

Partnerships

Were currently working on some partnerships with other music related ventures and will be integrating these features into our themes, because the deals are not set in stone yet we can’t talk much about this stuff but were really excited!

Future Plans

We are working around the clock to bring the best designs and code to our themes. We plan to keep releasing more themes and new integrations such as different audio players for example PureVolume/SoundCloud and a bunch more!. We want to give our customers the best experience to make it easy to install, customize our themes without having to dig in and learn to code.

What do you think? What themes designs are you looking for your band? What features & functionality do you think we should add?