For those of you living under a rock, this week is the SXSW Music Conference (well… Music, Film and Tech to be exact) taking over the streets of Austin, TX.
Together, Chris Hacker and I will be navigating the city’s thousands of showcases, panels and off-the-cuff events on behalf of team Cyber PR®. Unlike Chris and Ariel, this is my first time heading down to the madness that is SXSW, so for the benefit of myself and the thousands of musicians who are also heading down for the first time, we decided to seek out some advice from some of the best and brightest in the music industry.
Each day, we’ll be publishing new content here to the blog, as well as to our Twitter accounts (@jon_ostrow, @chrisnhacker) for your benefit!
We started the SXSW related content off last week with Ariel’s Guide to SXSW 2013, and will continue today with some advice from Reverbnation’s Mariana Nepomuceno:
Mariana is the Community Manager of ReverbNation, where she gets to interact with independent musicians on a daily basis. Though not a musician herself, Mariana loves all things music, especially live concerts and festivals. She hopes to learn the drums one day. Follow her on Twitter @NanaNepo
– Practice, practice, practice. Before and during SXSW. You want to perform as if it’s the last gig of your life. Even if you’re playing to five people, you never know who those people are or who they know. One of them could be the niece of a big-shot label guy looking for a band just like yours. So you want your performance to be the best it has ever been.
– Don’t be afraid to publicize your music. Bring merch, any kind of merch. Even if just a sticker. People in your audience should leave the venue knowing your band’s name — and if they don’t, as least when they go home after watching 1,234 performances that day, they may remember you when they see your sticker (and now you’ve given them the chance to look you up online).
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