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You should link your band's site in your profile.

I read your comment and thought "hey, might as well see if they are any good", but then you didn't give a link or even mention the band's name... so I couldn't.

Yeah, what's the band?

Musicians might not like to be seen talking "business". It's just impolite.

I, as a musician, think you're making too much of this.

If he's worried about someone finding this when reading about the band he could obfuscate (rot13, etc) the name.

Which is why I said just put it in the profile. He doesn't have to beat us over the head with his band's name, but surely there is no taboo against casually dropping it when it's the subject of the conversation.

I'm here as a hacker rather than a musician so I didn't put the band URL in my profile. Anyway, this is the band: http://www.rivodrei.de. We're German so most of you won't understand the lyrics. (There's some English information here: http://www.rivodrei.de/en/) That's also one of the reasons it's on a much smaller scale than you would expect.

These are a few things we did:

-I built this website as a community website early on. There's some additional material when you sign up (e.g. demo recordings etc.). You can find out which other fans went to the same concerts and communicate with them. There's a shop, guestbook, Google Maps integration, galleries, and a forum. Couldn't find any off-the-shelve package that did all of this together so I had to code it myself.

-All our videos are zero budget. People like them anyway (they don't care about quality so much). We're currently shooting more videos for our new album.

-We gave away a few tracks in the past and I'd like to do it for our next album which is due in the fall. But like I said, I have a feeling I will fail to convince my drummer/bassist.

-Remix contest: http://www.rivodrei.de/remix/ (And yes, we could give away all individual tracks of all songs but the demand doesn't seem to be as high as for the no-drums version where everything else is pre-mixed.)

-Live webcasting from the studio during our recordings for the new album (via former Mogulus.com).

-Some fun stuff such as this one: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/01/the-... (This is in English, btw.)

-We try to collect email addresses as much as we can, especially at concerts. Newsletters are sent about once a month and people can opt out any time.

-About the use of Flash: There's a little box at the top right with pictures of live concerts. I have a feeling that people thought they were ads because of the animation.

-We have a MySpace page but for many months now, we've been attracting mostly spam. I am considering deleting our profile there. We haven't used Twitter yet because it hasn't taken off that much in Germany yet but when it does, we will use it more. We have a Facebook page and that seems to gain some traction now. YouTube is doing ok. No Flickr account. (We have our own gallery and I'm too lazy to post all pictures twice.) I like to focus on our own website because all these services come and go.

-I answer all (serious) emails. This is very important. And it's funny how excited some people are to get an email from the singer and not from some management. ;)

It takes a lot of time to shoot on all these channels and create new material (music/videos) at the same time. I'm not doing this full-time so unfortunately, there's not much time left for something else.

We're German so most of you won't understand the lyrics. That's also one of the reasons it's on a much smaller scale than you would expect.

It's really amazing how there is zero market for German music in the US. Germany is something like the 3rd biggest market for music after the US and Japan. If you go to a big store like Amoeba in LA/SF they will have a huge section for France, Italy, etc. They will even stock folk CD's from places like Bulgaria, but the German selection is incredibly small (almost nothing contemporary). Amazon, etc., is better, but not by much. In the past I have had to order from Amazon.de.

I once tried to set up a German language station on Pandora, but it proved impossible.

I imagine that if you wanted to break into the US market as a German group you would need to sing in English with American accents and not advertise that you're from Germany (unfortunately). Scorpions, etc.

I'm curious. Are you GEMA members? Do you have to pay them to give away your tracks?

Good question. As far as I know, you always have to pay the GEMA when you put tracks registered with the GEMA on your website, free or not.

Good stuff. Loved the nonsense english song especially. Being able to understand the words sure helps, even if half of the lyrics are nonsense.

One thing that strikes me is that your recording sound is very "live." You don't include any instruments other than your three and use minimal effects. Is this an intentional choice to stay true to the live show? Adding a few extras that don't fit into the live show might be really effective--especially dubbing in some vocal harmonies.

That said, I think you're doing great. Just bought the one song you have on itunes.

The "nonsense song" was recorded by ourselves during a rehearsal so it's pretty much just the three of us. On our first album, there are many more additional instruments, background vocals, and overdubs. That was when we were with SonyBMG. Our producers wanted to get that commercial radio sound (which didn't help much in retrospect, it was still too rough for German radio - go figure).

Our fans often say it's too much and they'd rather like the raw sound of our live concerts. I think the next album will be a lot more like that. (Still more than just three tracks, though.)

That makes sense. It's probably a case of focusing on what you're best at, rather than trying to fit into someone else's mold.

Instead of releasing the tracks without drums, you should release the mixdowns of each instrument individually. You could even charge a few bucks for it.

Let fans play their own instruments, re-mix, and upload. Have a contest for the best interpretation.

Doing it for all the tracks might help offset your drummer's aversion to the idea.

E.g. we get lots of requests from dummers for our songs without the drum tracks so they could play along.

What do you play? Could you just convince him that yall should release a series of tracks each dropping one instrument? Maybe only the drummers will buy.

my suggestion - put together a new band - to be your project band - so that you can do what you want - plus, it gets you out of the rut of playing the same stuff again and again :)