Shareware Music Machine regulars may well be familiar with the band Shillglen. They recently scored the achievement of topping the 100,000 listens barrier on MP3.com! This writer has to confess a degree of fascination with such a worthy figure.

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We got in touch with Shillglen's Chad Lansford and fired a few questions his way. Obviously we wanted to know how Shillglen did it. While Chad doesn't think there's any secret to the bands online success, it's clear he has a very good understanding of online promotion and marketing.

And, no, we didn't ask him what the band's name means! ;>

Q. What's been your method of promotion on MP3.com? Do you regularly post to messageboards and so forth?
I've tried a bunch of different things ... posting a bunch on the messageboards, emailing station owners, trying to get our existing fan base to go there and download our songs - a bunch of stuff. While I do still do those things, I'm not doing them nearly as much as I used to. One thing I always do however, is write back to every single person who emails us about our music to thank them.

Q. I notice you're on a few MP3.com radio stations. Is that helpful to the band?
The stations are a great thing to be on. They don't give you that many plays, but it does let you know that there are people out there who liked your song(s) enough to include it on their personal station that they want to show to other people. That's invaluable! I think that just a couple of die-hard fans can produce more results than even the artist sometimes! Let's say I meet you on the street and tell you how great my band is, and that you should check us out - and then one of your friends comes along and tell you about another band they've just discovered ... which band are you going to listen to? The one your friend suggests of course.

I think that those people who have put us on their stations will help the band sustain any success that we may encounter.

Q. What are your non-MP3.com online tricks? Do you have a newsletter or post to newsgroups?
I'm not a big fan of trying to promote yourself in newsgroups. I'm a member of several, and you can tell right away who's there to contribute, and who's there to just brag about their band. Those kinds of messages are completely ignored, and are deleted immediately. If you are part of a newsgroup however, you don't have to hide the fact that you're in a band. Just make sure that you're contributing something worthwile to the group - and put information about your band in your signature file - people will check you out if they respect your posts.

We do also have a mailing list that we mail to regulary. We try to do just monthly updates letting people know recent news, if we have any new songs available for download, or if we've made any updates to the website.

Q. I notice that you have your own band website. How important is it to have your own site and what advantages does it offer?
I think it's extremely important! Image is very important for a band (no matter how much we fight it!). And that image needs to include a professionalism that makes you stand out from other bands. A website does wonders for that perception! Plus, it's also a great tool for just about everything your band will do. It can help promote your band (and merchandise), it can help in getting you gigs, you can even sell your merchandise from it. We've sold a good number of our CDs from our website alone. We're not breaking any records, but considering that the average artist sells just a couple CD's from their website every year, we're definitely happy with our numbers.

A website also helps in getting (and keeping) fans. If somebody really likes your music, they usually want to find out more about who's making it - and if you've got a lot of information about the band on your website, it's like a goldmine for your fans. They can feel like they're a part of something.

Sorry to ramble, but I can't emphasize the importance enough. If I hear of a band from a friend or somewhere else, the first place I go to listen to them is the Internet. If I can't find them anywhere, I usually end up just forgetting about them.

Q. You've had media coverage, even from Hitsquad, but how central has that kind of coverage been to the band's online success?
It's hard to say how much of our online success can be attributed to press, there's no real way to find out. However, I'm positive that it's had some affect. In fact, after we were featured in our town's local music magazine (SLAMM Magazine, San Diego), we saw all of our numbers go up: MP3 downloads, website hits, even some Internet CD sales.

I think the important thing to remember with media coverage, is that you usually need quite a bit of it for it to do any good. That's not a hard and fast rule, but it's been that way for us. Luckily, we had been mentioned in that magazine before, as well as a couple others in town - so by that time, I think people recognized our name, and starting wondering who we were - so they finally checked us out.

Q. I must confess I took a look at your Payback for Playback Statistics and saw that, in July to the 17th, you had 45,914 listens but only two DAM CD sales. What's your take on heaps of listens but very few sales.
What can I say, of course it's dissapointing, but we're not really in this for the quick pay off. Of course the "Payback for Playback" earnings are really nice, don't get me wrong, but right now we're just happy that so many new people are hearing about us for the first time. I think that we'll start to see the real benefits of the attention that we're getting on MP3.com down the road a bit. Personally, I know it takes a lot for me to buy a new album. I need to hear more than one song from the artist a bunch of times before I'm convinced that the rest of the CD will be worth it - why should I expect people that listen to us to be different?

To date, we've had over 150,000 downloads, and about 20 DAM CD's sold. However, we didn't even start selling our DAM CD until the beginning of June. I think the DAM CD's are a great idea, first of all because it doesn't cost you a dime to make them available. Really, I think it's just another way to increase what the artist gets from MP3.com. Sure, we may not have sold all that many, but hey it's 20 more CDs than we would've sold. Those 20 people will show it to their friends, and the number of people who've heard about us will just gets bigger and bigger.

Feel free to speak about just anything.
I don't think that there's really a secret to our success. Promotion is something that we do everyday of our lives, and I think that it's just starting to pay off. I think that we may have even been featured by MP3.com in some of their industry insider newsletters because our music raised a few eyebrows. Is that the reason for our success? I'm sure it has a part, but I don't think it's the whole reason. I think that it's a result of all the hard work we've put in, and the quality of the songs.

You'll find the Shillglen official website at www.shillglen.com and their MP3.com page at www.mp3.com/shillglen.

 

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