Music
Flat broke but need to get your music out there? Here are a few clever – and not so clever – tips.
As anyone who's ever listened to Chinese Democracy will tell you, fat budgets do not great music guarantee. Which is good news for the ever-growing hordes of cash-strapped musicians out there. With a little imagination and daring, a spark of genius and (in the odd well-blogged case) a smidgen of idiocy, these days it's possible to pull off all aspects of being a professional musician without spending a penny. Here's how to record, film, distribute, promote and tour your music for nothing.
Record
Bedroom producers around the world have long known that the lack of a studio is no barrier to making recorded music. As rapper Prince Harvey proved earlier this year, now you don't even need a computer. When his laptop died, the New Yorker secretly made his entire album in an Apple Store in Manhattan. It took him four months, and involved hiding his work every night in the computer's trash, where it was safe from the nightly memory wipe. The resulting record's title? Why PHATASS (aka Prince Harvey At The Apple Store Soho), of course.
Film
Manchester band The Get Out Clause hit upon a novel way of shooting a music video without so much as borrowing a mate's camera. In 2010 they claimed the video for their single Paper had been made by performing in front of 80 CCTV cameras across the city and using the Freedom of Information laws to request the footage. Sadly, the footage, supposedly from trams, taxis and the inner-city streets, turned out to be faked. The free video was actually a (very successful) punt for some free PR. Worth testing out though, surely?
Distribute
Maximise your reach, and get them young: two essential maxims of marketing, there. Unfortunately the recent story of a Chicago teenager planting his mixtape in McDonald's Happy Meals was a fake. But there are other ways to smuggle your music into young and impressionable hands. Last year, LA EDM producer Paz Dylan sneaked 5,000 copies of his record From The Bottom Of My Heart To The Top Of Your Lungs into record stores disguised as the Justin Bieber album, Believe. The dude's a bit of a dab hand at this. More recently he snuck fake pictures of himself eating tacos with Rihanna into the Grammys museum.
Promote
Little-known LA rap-poppers Imperial Stars hit the world stage in 2010 when they decided to promote their single Traffic Jam 101 by – can you guess? – parking their tour bus across major freeway Route 101, near Sunset Boulevard. Then doing a gig on its roof. The performance went on rather longer than intended because, after the band were surrounded by police and fire engines, the tour bus driver decided to leg it with the keys. The stunt caused an hour-long tailback and resulted in Imperial Stars being fined $39,000. But all publicity is good publicity, right?
Tour
It's been estimated that even your bog-standard tour van costs a band around £13,000 or $20,000 a year in petrol. The carbon footprint isn't pretty, either. Last year virtuoso guitarist Richard Durrant cut both completely by touring the UK on his bike. He cycled 1,500 miles between 36 gigs with the entire stage show – including his guitar and lights – in panniers and a trailer. It didn't just have practical implications. Biking through the British landscape turned out to be far more inspirational than sitting in a van, and he ended up writing a whole album, Cycling Music, as he pedalled. It even features percussion built from bike bits.
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