John Doe is the founder of the seminal Los Angeles punk group X, a solo artist and actor. John answers questions from our community members in the WWJDD? blog. Photo by Autumn de Wilde.

A Question from Misty the Manager

Dear John Doe,
I manage the band Western Civ who are in the process of releasing their new album, "Shower The People You Love With Gold" which was produced and engineered by Mitch Easter who has worked with REM, Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. to name a few. We are really excited about sharing this album and are set to release on March 17th. This is
the largest release I have ever run personally, so my question to you is this:

What should our top priorities be in releasing this album and getting it heard? We've gotten a lot of advice like: constantly tour, hire a publicist, hire a radio promoter, set up an advertising campaign, use social media marketing, be on internet radio, pitch music bloggers, release the record on bit torrent etc. The list goes on and on. We are releasing this record on our own so we have the resources to do "everything". Where should we focus our efforts?

I've gotten a lot of varying input thus far and would love to hear your advice!

Many Thanks in Advance!

Misty Dawn
Manager, Western Civ
www.westerncivrock.com
www.twitter.com/westernciv    ***come follow us here!***
www.myspace.com/westernciv

WWJDD?

Hey Misty,
  From what I hear & what I've seen now-a-days, you certainly should concentrate on getting directly to the people. This means plenty of touring. It's the cheapest form of promotion & gets to the heart of the music. Yes! pitch music bloggers, do everything you can on the social/community networks & market through them. This sort of takes the place of an advertising campaign which can be fuckin' expensive. Having said that, a well connected publicist who loves & champions yr record, cannot be undervalued.  They have relationships w/ writers that can get good placement/attention.  One can argue that music mags are on the way out but I still believe they have great power & validate the word of mouth.  Personally I haven't met or seen the result of a radio programmer that's worth pushing them out of the way of a careening 5 ton truck, why bother? You definitely need a marketing plan, no matter how modest.  If yr the record company, just ask yrself how much does it cost & what can I get back from the effort.  Obviously what doesn't cost much more than time invested is yr best bet.  Especially if the reward will be long range.
Hope this helps and as always, thanks for writing.

yrs,
Jd

If you have questions for John Doe about music, the music business or life feel free to email them to wwjdd@knowthemusicbiz.com.

For more information on John Doe check out theejohndoe.com or YepRoc.com .