Promoting in Aberdeen:

[Ross]

I posted this in another thread but the thread was wildly off tangent and thus am starting anew one. Neil / Dave / whoever please move to an appropriate forum if this is deemed unappropriate:

Promoting in Aberdeen:

1.Generally word of mouth is the best method. Especially after a band have played. "Did you see so and so last night...etc?"

2.Postering is very time consuming and few places will let you put up posters and if you have numerous then you can forget about it.

3.There being no places for legal / rented flypostering unlike every other city in Scotland.

4.People are more inclined to go and see something they know than something they don`t and as thus the "local" scene in Aberdeen is very strong.

5.Promoting 1 gig or 2 gigs with double backed flyers etc is hard work. Promoting 10 gigs at once is a bloody nightmare unless you have a band that sells themselves.

6.Aberdeen is the slowest sell out on almost every tour except: Oasis / Stone Roses / Ian Brown etc and what you would generally conceive to have a laddish beer drinking following.

7.People are very quick to judge and to knock something back.

8.People always moan about something when it has gone / passed / finished / split up etc.

9.People are lazy when it comes to trying to find out about gigs and you really need to ram it down their throats each time to get a result.

I take a deep breath as now i`ll be berated beyond existance.

Ross

[Guest MDP]

funnily enough i agree with you completley, you say that postering and flyering takes time... maybe that is what is needed. more time.

[Skacel]

yes hire people to do this job, advertising is an important part of running a business

[soundian]

funnily enough i agree with you completley' date=' you say that postering and flyering takes time... maybe that is what is needed. more time.[/quote']

read the rest of the sentence.

[Guest MDP]

there are plenty of places. most other venues let you poster, local music shops, ki:lau retro rebels...

[soundian]

there are plenty of places. most other venues let you poster' date=' local music shops, ki:lau retro rebels...[/quote']

Fine if you have one or two, not so good if you have 20 or 30.

[Guest MDP]

good point. rented flypostering would be a gr8 idea.

[Ross]

there are plenty of places. most other venues let you poster' date=' local music shops, ki:lau retro rebels...[/quote']

I refer you to point 2... "numerous posters"

[Guest MDP]

i refer you to my post before your post. aah, fuckit, if you have multiple posters yoor fucked, aberdeen's just shite innit.

[soundian]

3.There being no places for legal / rented flypostering unlike every other city in Scotland.

9.People are lazy when it comes to trying to find out about gigs and you really need to ram it down their throats each time to get a result.

point 3, disgraceful. I'm sure the council could come up with some sort of scheme which would pay for itself. Oh, wait a minute, what am I saying.

I think the 65 days of static thread shows point 9 to be an unassailable truth.

[Ross]

good point. rented flypostering would be a gr8 idea.

Glow / Lava / Kef offered to purchase / construct and maintain an area on the pedestrianised part of Belmont St for the council to erect a legal postering area. This was to be accessible to all clubs / venues.

If the council actually supported live music and culture at this grass roots level then their larger venues wouldn`t need quite as much assistance as they have done over the last few years.

THE prime spot for legal poster boxes is the wall beside Mostyns shoe shop on Bridge Place. You could make a packet renting that out to clubs etc.

Needless to say Liquid would stump up the most cash and then that would be the end of it all but heh.

Why doesn`t everyone get together and lobby an MP / councillor etc with a proposal.

Anyone else see how well the postering works in Dundee. Even in the West End of Glasgow you have legalised fly posting and to be honest you don`t really notice it after a while. Unless you are likely to be interested in what is being promoted.

Just a thought...... now..... does anyone on here have direct access to someone in politics........ahem TVT thoughts?

[Graeme]

What we need and haven't got:

Flyers/Bill posters, definitely. I really don't understand how the council want to create a buzz yet ban one of the very best ways of creating this.

Listing magazine. Comprhesive, like The List or one of the numerous freebies which seem to exist in Glasgow/Edinburgh. If the GC Guide is heading that way so much the better.

Better media coverage, Press and Radio. I can't believe, with the amount of good stuff going on, that an interesting what's on/magazine type programme could be made by someone (Northsound even) and broadcast on rotation on the internet.

Nothing there which hasn't been said before.

[Dizzy Storm]

through being in contact with local councillors/City Centre Partnership because of the Shift event, it appeared there had been 3 attempts by Tom Moore from said City Centre Partnership to get some kind of legal advertising points/boards/glass fronted boxes or whatever the idea was, around the city, and suburbs for this sort of thing. for some reason, they were rejected...cant remember why exactly, i think money probably...and now, The City Centre Partnership doesnt even exist...bit of a shame, that idea will probably never get off the ground any more.

anyway, we find that flyering at/after gigs, talking to people about the bands playing, is the most effective way of getting folk to your shows. hard work, but it does pay off. thank god i only got a couple a month!!

shaz

[HeinzHines]

I do believe in Dundee you give the council your posters and they go and put them up everywhere legal for you, for free....please correct me if im ropy on this....

Now this would be an amazing idea that would never happen in Aberdeen....

I think its about time that the council did something, music in Aberdeen is healthier than anytime i can remember in the last 5-10 years....lets try and keep it that way.

[Cloud]

Can I throw something out to the wolves here?

Is the lack of attention paid to the grass roots music scene by the council a sign of the fact that the venues are all locally owned? Look at the pressure Luminar and others put upon ACC with the proposed ban on happy hours - big corporate companies with a lot of influence had the power to effectively scrap the idea.

A united front by everyone involved in some way with the music scene could achieve the same results, but that would mean that everyone would have to work together to get it. If someone had the determination and will to see it through, I think we would see positive results - but such a person would have to be so well respected that they could enjoy the confidence of all the parties involved - and critically, be well known and trusted enough to gain the Council's confidence too.

Why doesn`t everyone get together and lobby an MP / councillor etc with a proposal.

I'm up for that.

[Graeme]

I do believe in Dundee you give the council your posters and they go and put them up everywhere legal for you' date=' for free....please correct me if im ropy on this.....[/quote']

Wow, but would you trust them to do it?

I think its about time that the council did something' date=' music in Aberdeen is healthier than anytime i can remember in the last 5-10 years....lets try and keep it that way.[/quote']

They are doing something.

[Guest MDP]

lemontree has gone down the shitter, i know it has the odd good gig, but nowhere near as good as it used to be. i heard the promoter lives in perth or something... that really is shite!

[psydoll]

lemontree has gone down the shitter' date=' i know it has the odd good gig, but nowhere near as good as it used to be. i heard the promoter lives in perth or something... that really is shite![/quote']

That he lives in Perth?

I bet he's always missing headline acts that he's booked for the LT because he has to get the last bus home!

[GraemeC]

So how about a few people who care form a lobby to contact ACC on a regular basis on these and any other relevent matters affecting the local music scene....?

[ben_1903]

I agree with some of that - but as for postering and flyering - yes it takes time....you can't walk around town and poster in two seconds flat. You need to put in the effort to get a result. Postering = good.

[Flash@TMB]

The problem here is not one of ineffective promotion. At most only one or two people reply to a thread saying "Oh shit I didn't realise that was on", not the hundreds that would indicate a promotional failure.

The real problem is over provision: a glut of gigs, too much spare capacity, and too many places competing over a very small market. Time and market forces will eventually solve this problem whether we like it or not.

That last sentence has double meaning. There's the obvious negative implication that most people will have picked up on. But IMHO this market is clearly expanding with time, as more and more young people become deeply interested in music. Something that appears set to continue in the longer term. It's just unfortunate that, in terms of supply and demand, we are still ahead the curve.

So I'm not saying don't bother with the fly posting etc... just don't expect it to work!

[soundian]

The problem here is not one of ineffective promotion. At most only one or two people reply to a thread saying "Oh shit I didn't realise that was on"' date=' not the hundreds that would indicate a promotional failure.

The real problem is over provision: a glut of gigs, too much spare capacity, and too many places competing over a very small market. Time and market forces will eventually solve this problem whether we like it or not.

That last sentence has double meaning. There's the obvious negative implication that most people will have picked up on. But IMHO this market is clearly expanding with time, as more and more young people become deeply interested in music. Something that appears set to continue in the longer term. It's just unfortunate that, in terms of supply and demand, we are still ahead the curve.

So I'm not saying don't bother with the fly posting etc... just don't expect it to work![/quote']

How many people think "Oh shit I didn't realise that was on" but don't bother typing it?

It's difficult to judge how much an impact flyposting would have, since all posters at the moment are mostly confined to the venues that put on the shows, i.e. the market which already exists.

[ben_1903]

Fly postibg does work though...

People are in one up, or kilau, or r n b, or whatever venue/club/kebab shop and see a flayer/poster for a gig and say "ooh i'll go to that"

[Flash@TMB]

The population of Greater Glasgow is approx. 1.1 million...

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow)

The population of Greater Edinburgh is approx 500 thousand...

To reach the centre of Glasgow from the centre of Edinburgh takes what 30min by train. Less than the time it takes to get from Peterculter to Aberdeen. So most people in Edinburgh can reach the centre of Glasgow in an hour...

The population of the Aberdeen area is 200 thousand. That's < 1/5th the population of Greater Glasgow, and about 1/8th the population of Glasgow/Edinburgh combined...

Yes - Glasgow and Edinburgh do have more venues and more gigs than Aberdeen does. But take the total capacity of each club, and multiply it by the number of gigs, then sum the totals, and I'd suspect that Aberdeen would appear over provisioned. Then take into account that we don't generally get bands with the same level of draw up here...

Persuading a band wil a decent draw to play in Glasgow is going to relatively easy. And if you put said band on in a 300 capacity venue, with a population of between 600,000 and 1,600,000 to draw on (depending on how you carve it), then it's not going to be terribly hard get 200-300 people through the door...

But try taking a less well known band up to Aberdeen and put them on in a venue with twice the capacity and 1/5th of the populus to draw on...

Then consider for a moment that King Tuts (for example) has roughly the same capacity as The Tunnels / Cafe Drummond(s)...

Now for the biggee: when it comes to populations centres, the dynamics of scale are not linear. Glasgow and Aberdeen cannot be compared on a proportional basis. If Aberdeen had a venue capacity of 3,000 and a population of 200,000, that is not the same as Glasgow having a venue capacity of 15,000 and a population of 1,000,000. It is easier to draw 15,000 from 1,000,000 than 3,000 from 200,000. This effect is what causes bigger cities to 'boom' and appear more lively. People behave like gas particles, the more of them you compress into a space, the more excitable they become. Population centres have a tendancy to attract young people and repel older people, providing them with 'younger' populations. So not only does Glasgow have more people to draw on, more of them are likely to be drawn!

I rest my case.

[Flash@TMB]

How many people think "Oh shit I didn't realise that was on" but don't bother typing it?

It's difficult to judge how much an impact flyposting would have' date=' since all posters at the moment are mostly confined to the venues that put on the shows, i.e. the market which already exists.[/quote']

From reading these threads, and noting the impact on a first hand basis, we can hazzard a fairly accurate guess that 2 people posting does NOT equate to 300-400 lost punters LOL.

This website exists in the microcosm of the Aberdeen music scene. Different rules apply out in the macrocosm of Aberdeen itself. Most people outside of this website have never heard, are oblivious to, and are not at interested in the majority of touring bands that play here. To change that you need to cultural shift as opposed to a few promotional tweaks.

EDIT: OK obviously I didn't rest my case. DOH! LOL.