My band has just recently come off a New Zealand tour supporting Disturbed, P.O.D. and Alter Bridge, you can read more about it on the Redline blog.

It reinforced the idea that you need to build up a good team around your band as every successful band has a great team supporting them, you can’t do everything yourself.

The band itself is like the public figure heads of the team but you also have their crew which go unseen to help make things happen.

The more your band grows, the bigger your team will get.

The Concert Team
Instrument Techs – to ensure the music equipment is maintained and operates as it should throughout the shows.
Sound Engineer – to mix the band for the enjoyment of the public.
Stage Manager – to make sure the scheduled show itinerary is adhered to by all involved.
Security – to maintain crowd control and safety of artists.
Concert Promoter – responsible for the publicity and promotion of the event.
Staging and Production Crew – responsible for setting up the staging, lighting, sound system and rigging required for the show.

The Studio Team
Producer – responsible for squeezing the best performances out of an artist for a recording.
Studio Engineers – assist with the recording efforts within the recording studio.
Mixer – creatively brings together the various recorded parts to create the song or record.
Mastering Engineer – finalises the song so it comes across well in most listening environments like a cd or radio.

The Music Business Team
Record Label – responsible for funding and distribution of recorded works.
Public Relations(PR) – liaising with various media to create awareness and publicity for an artist ie. media releases, reviews, news articles, bio’s, etc.
Pluggers – network with radio and tv to pick up, play list and promote an artist.
Street Teams – help with ground level promotion ie. stickers, flyers, word of mouth, etc.
Band Manager – responsible for managing day to day business activities on behalf of the artist.

Most of this is off line based but I listed it to give you an idea that there are many people involved in the successful day to day operations of an artist.

Leverage Other People’s Experience
You need to build a team and leverage off the experience other people can contribute to aid in your musical quest for world domination.

This is no different than when a business is seeking to expand and grow.

Unfortunately, the catch 22 is that it costs money to take advantage of someone else’s experience and utilise them as no-one likes to do anything for nothing.

Hence why music is such a tricky industry to work in.

Making The Band Profitable
You need to build up your band so that it becomes a financially viable entity for others to want to work with you, then you can get the skilled, experienced help and then that’s when things have the potential to really take off.

How on earth do you do that? My thought is just like any other business, you need to create demand which comes from the awareness of people knowing that you exist.

D.I.Y. Marketing and Promotion
As an artist, you need to go out, fully back and promote yourself. I believe the internet today can provide a lot of tools that can help you communicate and stay in touch with fans.

There are a lot of ways you can start to get yourself known online so do as much as you can for yourself and don’t rely on others.

Network with other artists, pool together to do shows, share fan bases as it all helps each other out.]

Start building your team today
Find people early on who want to help you succeed and start building your music team from friends and family. Sometimes feeling like you’re a part of something is much more fulfilling to them than money.