There's been a lot of buzz the past few days about crowd-funding startup Rabbl's partnership with The Pinch. First described in the Express article, the basic premise is that Rabbl provides a platform for crowd-funding live shows. Enough people buy tickets, the show happens; not enough, no one gets charged. Matt Cohen weighed in on the problems with the model in a DCist article, and there's a bit of a firestorm going on in some of the DC Facebook musician groups and Twitter.
The topic of musician-venue relationship is perennial and contentious. The most common criticism of Rabbl is that it's a pay-to-play model that is taking advantage of bands, and that lazy venues and promoters just want a free lunch where bands do all the work. Lots of comments cited that it's the talent agents' job to match bands based on quality and skill.
Is Rabbl a pay-to-play model? No, as Ally said on WAMU's blog it's not, it's just (at least in this context) not very community friendly. Used correctly, crowd funding of ticket sales reduces risk to both musician and venue - nearly all local bands don't get guarantees, they get door deals, and knowing that X number of people will come to their show before you spend 6+ hours hauling gear, setting up and breaking down is pretty valuable. Really it's not that different from using Kickstarter to fund your next album.
Rabbl did screw up with their collaboration with The Pinch though - it's a tiny local venue and the bands in question are competing head-to-head for an opening slot. That's pretty anti-community, and it's not like you're winning an opening slot at 9:30 Club.
It seems to me that most of this frustration isn't about Rabbl specifically, but the frustration with the difficult process of booking shows and getting paid for them. Some of it comes down to a philosophical question - is the venue hiring you to provide entertainment to their patrons? Or are they selling a service to the band, a way for the band to put on a show to which they can sell tickets? The truth is of course that it's somewhere in between and different for each venue.
If you are being (or trying to be) paid money to play music, your music is a business. As a small business owner, it's up to you to negotiate the deals that work best for you. At the end of the day both the venue and band benefit from more audience coming to a show. I would suggest that there are two things that could help bands get better deals with their live shows. The first is helping bands learn how to run the business side of their music better, both their promo and negotiation with venues. The second is having more conversations between bands and venues on how they can work together to grow both of their businesses.
What next?
With our goal of building musician community, I'd like to see Flashband do more to help musicians with this issue, and I hope to do more with that soon. In the meantime, there's already some of this going on. Fair Trade Music (with Metro Music Source and Listen Local First) is holding a discussion on band/venue relationships June 23. I don't necessarily think that a minimum standard for musician payment is the right solution - I'd push for better band education as a first step- but discussion and sharing of ideas and information is definitely valuable. They're also collecting survey responses on what deals bands have received at local venues. Sharing the results of this survey with the DC musician community would give all of us a helpful tool in navigating the difficult business of making money off performing live music.
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Startups are hard
Last week, we held an 'ideation session' for Flashband with some other young local startup veterans. I shared Flashband's history, what we've done so far and where we stand today, finishing with our top three challenges. What followed was a torrent of incredibly helpful ideas, advice, questions and more, but also required me to face some tough truths.
The biggest of these truths was that for Flashband to succeed, we need to move and grow a lot faster than we have thus far. In two weeks, Flashband will be two years old. While the first year could easily be classified as 'interesting side hobby,' it's already been ten months since I first announced leaving my full time job to pursue Flashband. We've thrown some fun, successful events and I've learned a lot about everything from accounting to hip hop music, but I'm still a long way from being able to pay the rent (much less my team). And while almost every musician I tell about Flashband thinks it is an awesome idea and needed, I'm just not telling enough musicians.
I believe Flashband can be the starting place for where musicians go to make music, all across the country. Need a band? Go to Flashband to meet them. Bored of your playing? Go to Flashband to get inspired. I want Flashband to be the band incubator, making it easier for people to find other musicians and giving the world better music as a result. I want more people playing more music.
But none of that happens unless we can come up with ways to get more musicians involved, and host effective events that are useful to them. We're up to about 800 musicians on our mailing list and about 300 have played in our 12+ Showcases. But for Flashband to have a real impact on how people make music, we need that to be thousands just in DC - and then replicate it in cities across the country.
Coming into the spring and summer, I'm planning to ramp up our events a lot. We're aiming for a Showcase at least every two weeks with some classes and social events mixed in, and I'll be working hard to figure out how to reach the musicians that want to play.
The biggest of these truths was that for Flashband to succeed, we need to move and grow a lot faster than we have thus far. In two weeks, Flashband will be two years old. While the first year could easily be classified as 'interesting side hobby,' it's already been ten months since I first announced leaving my full time job to pursue Flashband. We've thrown some fun, successful events and I've learned a lot about everything from accounting to hip hop music, but I'm still a long way from being able to pay the rent (much less my team). And while almost every musician I tell about Flashband thinks it is an awesome idea and needed, I'm just not telling enough musicians.
I believe Flashband can be the starting place for where musicians go to make music, all across the country. Need a band? Go to Flashband to meet them. Bored of your playing? Go to Flashband to get inspired. I want Flashband to be the band incubator, making it easier for people to find other musicians and giving the world better music as a result. I want more people playing more music.
But none of that happens unless we can come up with ways to get more musicians involved, and host effective events that are useful to them. We're up to about 800 musicians on our mailing list and about 300 have played in our 12+ Showcases. But for Flashband to have a real impact on how people make music, we need that to be thousands just in DC - and then replicate it in cities across the country.
Coming into the spring and summer, I'm planning to ramp up our events a lot. We're aiming for a Showcase at least every two weeks with some classes and social events mixed in, and I'll be working hard to figure out how to reach the musicians that want to play.
Flashband Hackathon
To help jumpstart this process, we're organizing a Flashband Hackathon. Throughout the process of starting Flashband, lots of people have offered up their help - and indeed, Flashband has been possible because of this help. That help can be magnified many times over, though, if we bring all those skills, expertise and ideas into one place and point them at our biggest problems.
Part focus group, part work session, part inspiration, we'll have projects of all types. If you can do web coding, we need your help making the Flashband website awesome. If you know graphic design, we need flyers and new tools for recruiting musicians. If you're talkative, we need you to hit the streets and tell people about Flashband. If you're a musician, we need your input on what descriptions are most effective at communicating why Flashband is valuable to you.
We'd love to have you join, and we need your help. We have two possible days for the event - Sunday April 20 or Sunday May 4 - and we'll pick the day based on when the most people can attend. Check it out - you can find all the info on the event page on our website:
Startups are hard
I titled this post this way because it's true, and especially true of Flashband. Flashband is useful because there's no real go-to place for finding musicians - which of course means there's no real go-to place for me to go to tell them about it. Lots of musicians like the Flashband concept, but most didn't think of it until they heard of it, so we're both creating the market and serving it at the same time. Whatever Flashband Year Three brings, I'm determined that it will include the word 'success.' I hope you'll join me.
-Neal
Friday, March 7, 2014
Announcing Flashband Backstage
Today, we announced two big changes to the way Flashband does business: a new, annual subscription for Flashband Backstage Membership, and the introduction of charging for participation in our Flashband Showcases. This is obviously a big change, and it's not one we make lightly, so I wanted to take this chance to explain a bit about the thought process, and our plans for what we'll do with these changes.
First off - charging for Showcases. As anyone who's played in a band knows, it's pretty hard to make a living off live shows. Maybe I should have thought of that when I tried turning Flashband into a business - why didn't any of you remind me? Although with good turnouts we can get a decent amount of money from cover charges at events, between hiring photographer and sound guys and getting squeezed by venues, its hard to make enough to cover the 30-40 hours it takes to administer each event, much less pay for things like printing and server fees.
When you play in a Flashband show, you get a show where you don't need to worry about booking or logistics, you get to meet and collaborate with lots of other cool musicians through the meet-and-greet jam, and you just focus on the music for a fun show in front of 250-350 people. A little bit of money from the participants makes it easier for us to run because we get more committed musicians, and brings in enough extra that we can cover our costs.
That said, Flashband is really about musician community, and an annual membership emphasizes this distinction. For now, with a Backstage Membership you get to play free in Flashband showcases and get reduced price tickets for other things we charge for (like classes and social events), as well as some cool perks like a Flashband T-shirt and deals and credit at partner businesses (the Chuck Levins store credit is almost half the membership cost back in your pocket).
This membership also gives us a vehicle to add useful new ways to build on the website. Stepping back to look at the big, grand vision for Flashband, I want it to become the starting point for musicians to meet and work with other musicians, both through a broad variety of local events (in all cities) but also through an awesome website with useful ways to find other musicians in your area. Like all those other freemium web startups out there, we'll have some features available at no cost and some only for paid members - establishing paid membership now gives us a place to put all those features as we build them.
Whoever said building a startup was easy? Thanks to all the musicians that have made Flashband a great experience so far. Thanks especially to my co-founders, Caleb and Amanda, who were up till 3am this morning getting everything in line for this launch. As always I'm building this for you guys so if you have thoughts/ideas/criticisms/suggestions I'm just an email away.
Neal
First off - charging for Showcases. As anyone who's played in a band knows, it's pretty hard to make a living off live shows. Maybe I should have thought of that when I tried turning Flashband into a business - why didn't any of you remind me? Although with good turnouts we can get a decent amount of money from cover charges at events, between hiring photographer and sound guys and getting squeezed by venues, its hard to make enough to cover the 30-40 hours it takes to administer each event, much less pay for things like printing and server fees.
When you play in a Flashband show, you get a show where you don't need to worry about booking or logistics, you get to meet and collaborate with lots of other cool musicians through the meet-and-greet jam, and you just focus on the music for a fun show in front of 250-350 people. A little bit of money from the participants makes it easier for us to run because we get more committed musicians, and brings in enough extra that we can cover our costs.
That said, Flashband is really about musician community, and an annual membership emphasizes this distinction. For now, with a Backstage Membership you get to play free in Flashband showcases and get reduced price tickets for other things we charge for (like classes and social events), as well as some cool perks like a Flashband T-shirt and deals and credit at partner businesses (the Chuck Levins store credit is almost half the membership cost back in your pocket).
This membership also gives us a vehicle to add useful new ways to build on the website. Stepping back to look at the big, grand vision for Flashband, I want it to become the starting point for musicians to meet and work with other musicians, both through a broad variety of local events (in all cities) but also through an awesome website with useful ways to find other musicians in your area. Like all those other freemium web startups out there, we'll have some features available at no cost and some only for paid members - establishing paid membership now gives us a place to put all those features as we build them.
Whoever said building a startup was easy? Thanks to all the musicians that have made Flashband a great experience so far. Thanks especially to my co-founders, Caleb and Amanda, who were up till 3am this morning getting everything in line for this launch. As always I'm building this for you guys so if you have thoughts/ideas/criticisms/suggestions I'm just an email away.
Neal
Monday, January 27, 2014
Flashband Relaunch - or - time for your yearly blog update.
Heya Flashbanders,
We have grown immensely over the past year, which is evident to many of you who have been involved. Those of you on the fringes might want to live vicariously through the everyone else, but really don't have the outlet. We don't call. We don't write. If it weren't for the email announcements of upcoming events, you probably wouldn't even think to look at the site. I'm here to change that. Starting tonight we are going to be producing content and hopefully soliciting content from people like you.
Did you write about Flashband or your experiences? Let us know. We will include you in the blog. Is there something you'd like to hear about? Shoot us an email and let us know. Has this blog post been on the front page for three months? If you tell us about it and can convince us to write a new one, I'll take you out to dinner. (Yes this is a promise. No, you don't get to choose the restaurant. No it won't be fast food. Yes it only applies to the first person who reminds us that we need to update this thing. Yes I'll make exceptions for cute girls as long as you email me and don't tell Amanda).
Two examples I can think of. One, Anna Robinson, a Flashband Alumnus who sadly recently left the DC area, wrote a blog post about her experience playing one of our amazing Club Heaven events.
Second is a long post on the guitar forum of reddit from Flashbander Will Ward, who put together a great blog post about learning to play mandolin as a guitar player. If you've done something like this that we aren't aware of, send it along. We'll be sure to publish it!
We hope to be writing about a lot of different things. Flashband is moving is a lot of new and interesting directions, from adding classes and listening parties, to partnerships with local music businesses and organizations. We hope to keep you up to date on all of those things. This past year we've incorporated and are an official company in the state of Virginia. We've also dropped our definite article and the word Project from our name, choosing to go just with Flashband. I hope to have Neal write about all of the interesting (or not so interesting) legal and business discussions we had going into this. Meanwhile, Amanda and I have been grinding away on the technical side of things, working with new and interesting web technologies to give you guys a hopefully-better-than-average site experience. I'm sure some of you Flashbanders are also tech people, so at some point I'll be writing about our tech stack and how a 3 person team can run a little social network. I'm also assuming Amanda will write a blog post that consists solely of pictures of kittens. I might convince her to also talk about search engine optimization and how a bunch of pictures of kittens and a title like "Ten reasosn why Kittens and Puppies are the Best Thing ever for Musicians. You won't believe what happens next!" can help us reach a larger audience of musicians for you to play with.
Mostly, we want to hear from you. What do you want us to talk about? We want to provide you with content that is useful and interesting to you as a musician. Feel free to comment, and if we use your idea, I'll get you a prize. It won't be dinner as mentioned above, but it will be cool. Also, if you see myself, Neal, or Amanda around, instead of saying hi, you should say, "HEY, Write a blog post about ______ so I can win a prize!"
Love and Happy 2014 from Caleb of Flashband, with more writings to come.
We have grown immensely over the past year, which is evident to many of you who have been involved. Those of you on the fringes might want to live vicariously through the everyone else, but really don't have the outlet. We don't call. We don't write. If it weren't for the email announcements of upcoming events, you probably wouldn't even think to look at the site. I'm here to change that. Starting tonight we are going to be producing content and hopefully soliciting content from people like you.
Did you write about Flashband or your experiences? Let us know. We will include you in the blog. Is there something you'd like to hear about? Shoot us an email and let us know. Has this blog post been on the front page for three months? If you tell us about it and can convince us to write a new one, I'll take you out to dinner. (Yes this is a promise. No, you don't get to choose the restaurant. No it won't be fast food. Yes it only applies to the first person who reminds us that we need to update this thing. Yes I'll make exceptions for cute girls as long as you email me and don't tell Amanda).
Two examples I can think of. One, Anna Robinson, a Flashband Alumnus who sadly recently left the DC area, wrote a blog post about her experience playing one of our amazing Club Heaven events.
Second is a long post on the guitar forum of reddit from Flashbander Will Ward, who put together a great blog post about learning to play mandolin as a guitar player. If you've done something like this that we aren't aware of, send it along. We'll be sure to publish it!
We hope to be writing about a lot of different things. Flashband is moving is a lot of new and interesting directions, from adding classes and listening parties, to partnerships with local music businesses and organizations. We hope to keep you up to date on all of those things. This past year we've incorporated and are an official company in the state of Virginia. We've also dropped our definite article and the word Project from our name, choosing to go just with Flashband. I hope to have Neal write about all of the interesting (or not so interesting) legal and business discussions we had going into this. Meanwhile, Amanda and I have been grinding away on the technical side of things, working with new and interesting web technologies to give you guys a hopefully-better-than-average site experience. I'm sure some of you Flashbanders are also tech people, so at some point I'll be writing about our tech stack and how a 3 person team can run a little social network. I'm also assuming Amanda will write a blog post that consists solely of pictures of kittens. I might convince her to also talk about search engine optimization and how a bunch of pictures of kittens and a title like "Ten reasosn why Kittens and Puppies are the Best Thing ever for Musicians. You won't believe what happens next!" can help us reach a larger audience of musicians for you to play with.
Mostly, we want to hear from you. What do you want us to talk about? We want to provide you with content that is useful and interesting to you as a musician. Feel free to comment, and if we use your idea, I'll get you a prize. It won't be dinner as mentioned above, but it will be cool. Also, if you see myself, Neal, or Amanda around, instead of saying hi, you should say, "HEY, Write a blog post about ______ so I can win a prize!"
Love and Happy 2014 from Caleb of Flashband, with more writings to come.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Upwards, onwards
Over a year ago, I sent an email to all the musicians I knew in DC, and some I didn't, about a "Music party idea." I described it as a house concert with about ten bands, each playing 3-4 songs, mostly comprised of one-off bands that "form just for this event, practice together a couple times, and maybe come up with a goofy name for themselves." I wanted to meet more musicians and I wanted a house show where the bands could have as much fun as the audience because they didn't have to play the whole time. That process led to what you now know as the Flashband Project.
Flashband events have been a lot of fun and the community of musicians they've built - even with only four DC events so far - has been incredible. They've also been a lot of work. I had big ambitions to do full events (40 musicians) quarterly, with smaller 5-band events in between. But even with the addition of Caleb Astey and Amanda Kirby helping with the website and events, I've still only managed to pull off four Flashband events in the past year. With a full-time job, music playing, and a handful of other activities it was stressful trying to follow up with musicians, find venues and organize logistics for the meet-and-greet. About December, I started thinking - I either need pick up the pace and commit to growing Flashband, or stop doing it.
Flashband events have been a lot of fun and the community of musicians they've built - even with only four DC events so far - has been incredible. They've also been a lot of work. I had big ambitions to do full events (40 musicians) quarterly, with smaller 5-band events in between. But even with the addition of Caleb Astey and Amanda Kirby helping with the website and events, I've still only managed to pull off four Flashband events in the past year. With a full-time job, music playing, and a handful of other activities it was stressful trying to follow up with musicians, find venues and organize logistics for the meet-and-greet. About December, I started thinking - I either need pick up the pace and commit to growing Flashband, or stop doing it.
Flashband gets official
So I'm picking up the pace. A month ago, I quit my job - making room mentally and time-wise to explore how to grow Flashband. Part time work at ICF, where I worked a few years ago, gives me a bit of a parachute - but my goal is to make it into a sustainable organization that can support me and whatever staff needed to scale it. Obviously it's always a bit scary to start something new like this, but very exciting at the same time. I've been thinking and scheming about this for over a year now - and I'm really happy to be giving it the shot it deserves.
What does this mean for Flashband?
We're going to be growing - upping the frequency of events in DC, learning how to run them better and easier, making the website into something that really helps the process, and moving Flashband to new places. We may be in a different place in six months, but for right now that means:
- Getting organized - Incorporating as an official organization, tracking finances, and improving the website.
- More frequent events - Starting with DC, we'll be working to grow the network of musicians and do events more often. Our best way to do that will still be friends telling their friends, so if you love Flashband spread the word and put us in touch with connectors you know.
- New cities - We're doing our first test drive of a Flashband event in a new city, in my hometown of Wilmington NC on June 8. Over the next 6 months we'll slowly start a few more cities, probably near to DC, while we figure out how to run the events better. In the medium-term, we hope to spread much wider than that.
What does this mean for me?
Growing Flashband is going to take a lot of work. I'm doing this because I love it, and because musicians keep telling me how much it means to them. But while I'm bootstrapping along, I kindly, humbly, ask for your help - any kind you can give me. If you're willing to throw in a few dollars to help pay our server fees, bus tickets to visit a new city, and help my savings last a little bit longer, I'd be most appreciative - you can find a link on our new donate page.
More valuable than that, though, is your expertise. From marketing and legal tips, to help running events, to contacts for "useful to know" people in new cities, a little can go a long way and there's lots of areas where you know more than I do. Email me any time with ideas - you can always reach me at humphrey.neal@gmail.com.
Keep in touch
We'll be updating this blog weekly, with everything from cool tools for musicians to progress on the project. I'll also be sending out a monthly email summary - if you haven't already, join the Flashband mailing list to get these and make sure you're the first to find out about show announcements.
Thanks to all the Flashband musicians for great times so far, to Caleb and Amanda for their help getting Flashband established on and offline, and to all of you for your support.
Thanks to all the Flashband musicians for great times so far, to Caleb and Amanda for their help getting Flashband established on and offline, and to all of you for your support.
-Neal
Sunday, January 13, 2013
DC Music Listing Sites
We here at the Flash Band Project love
all things music – especially going to see shows. I'm a bit of a
procrastinator about making plans for them, though, and don't keep
close track what shows are coming up, so my method for choosing what
shows to go to is usually pretty disorganized.
Resolving to see more live music in the
new year, I've been looking into better ways to find shows happening
around town. The way I see it, there's two broad ways most people
might look for live music – time based (I want to see a show on
Saturday!) or band based (it would be great to know if Basia
Bulat plays in town). Let's take a look at what works best for
each path.
Time Based
For me, this is the most common. I'm making plans for the weekend, and I want to know what my options are. If you've been around DC for a while, you start to get familiar with the main options. Most straightforward is to go to the venue websites. They usually give you the richest information about each of the bands – photos, links to the band websites, videos and sound files. Going to each site individually is a pain, though.
For me, this is the most common. I'm making plans for the weekend, and I want to know what my options are. If you've been around DC for a while, you start to get familiar with the main options. Most straightforward is to go to the venue websites. They usually give you the richest information about each of the bands – photos, links to the band websites, videos and sound files. Going to each site individually is a pain, though.
Next up are sites
that list shows from multiple venues. The best known local options
are probably City
Paper and the Washington
Post. Of the two, City Paper is a lot cleaner and nicer, and
appears a little more comprehensive. Then there's loads of national
and international aggregators with very level of show lists. The
problem is, you can start with one of them and find a decent list of
shows, but plenty are inevitably missing. You visit another one to
try to fill in the gaps, but mostly you have to sift through the same
show list. What we need is a comprehensive list.
From all my
searching, for live music listings in the DC area, Show
List DC is definitely the most comprehensive. The format is super
basic – simple text listings by date – but, on closer inspection
despite having a fancier interface doesn't actually offer more
information.
Recommendation:
Show List DC
Band Based
When you want to
know when a specific band – or, more likely, a lot of specific
bands you like – are playing, a different approach is needed. Big
bands sell out early, and its easy to miss shows if you don't read
each listing.
In comes Song
Kick. There are a bunch of show listing aggregators out there, but from those I've looked at they're one of the best. They aggregate listings from 100's of sources, mostly
things like the online ticket vendors. This gives them a pretty
comprehensive list of shows – not quite as good as Show
List DC since they lack the local connection (they're based in
the UK), but rivaling City
Paper, if not better. The best feature, though, is that their
main feature is tracking artists. You can set up alerts for any bands
you like so that you get an email whenever they book shows near you.
Integration with your Spotify, Facebook, and iTunes lets you
pre-populate that list of tracked bands as well. If you like a
cleaner interface for time based searching, they can be a better
starting point than Show List as well. Good stuff.
Recommendation:
Song Kick
Hope
these sources are useful to you – feel free to comment below if
you've used either of these and like/dislike them or have
recommendations for any better sources for finding live music.
-Neal
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Flash Band Dance Party
The Dance Party this past weekend was more of a success than we ever could have hoped. With over 300 people in attendance at Heaven and Hell bar, we were close to capacity. (and as you know, for Adams Morgan bars, capacity means "if another person were to enter this bar, everyone would suffocate due to lack of available oxygen".)
We had great coverage from City Paper - if you haven't checked out the article yet you can find it here. There was a great diversity in the bands that played and the styles they decided to do in keeping with the dance theme. The videos are slowly being uploaded (large HD format means tedious upload times), and you can find them all on our YouTube channel.
~Caleb
We had great coverage from City Paper - if you haven't checked out the article yet you can find it here. There was a great diversity in the bands that played and the styles they decided to do in keeping with the dance theme. The videos are slowly being uploaded (large HD format means tedious upload times), and you can find them all on our YouTube channel.
~Caleb
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