Monday 7 April 2008

21 Ways to find band members

At MusoFinder our basic goal is to help you find the right band members for your band. We’ve gone to great lengths to make the site as useful as possible but here are some of the other ways you can go about it (don’t say we never give you anything!)

  1. Use MusoFinder (well doh!)
  2. Put an ad in local music shops (a lot more work but worth it)
  3. Advertise in magazines. Depends what sort of sound you’re going for (SOS, NME). Local mags and papers can also work, but it can get expensive!
  4. Go to gigs and speak to the bands. It might seem like your poaching musos from another band but there are plenty ofmusos who like being involved in more than one music project.
  5. Use classified services like GumTree etc
  6. Get to know your local music scene. Once you are familiar with what’s going down in your local music scene lots of avenues will open up to you.
  7. Get it touch with local promoters. Local promoters (people who put on gigs at your local venue) tend to know everyone, so they are a great resource when looking to form a band.
  8. Send out a press release to your local newspaper or magazine. If you can find a unique (i.e. your last drummer broke his hand in a freak attack by a flamingo) then they may well cover your story.
  9. Have an open audition. Book a room in a local rehearsal studio then get the word out like crazy that you’re having auditions.
  10. Turn up to jams nights in your area.
  11. Hang around rehearsal studios and talk to any bands you like the sound of. Most musos are really friendly (well most of the time anyway!)
  12. Get in touch with local recording studios. These guys tend to use session musicians all the time, so they may well point you in the right direction.
  13. Local college or uni. New people all the time.
  14. Advertising on your own website and/or MySpace site.
  15. It goes without saying that MySpace and Facebook are a good option. There are classified advertising boards on MySpace. You can also just post loads of message on other people’s comment walls.
  16. Send an email around to all your muso friends. Between everyone and all their contacts, you’d be surprised at how many people are in your circle of influence.
  17. Make business cards or record your own music and use the CD-R as a business card to give out to people you meet.
  18. Organise your own jam night and tell people about it using the above methods.
  19. Book a night with a local 'Open mic night' and play some of your solo stuff, you may find people coming up to you afterwards putting themselves forward to work with you on your music.
  20. Try busking! It's free (in most places), you can make money and you can meet all kinds of people. Put a sign up saying you are looking to form a band, you never know who you might meet.
  21. If you can’t find the muso you're looking for it’s worth thinking twice about waiting before just getting on and doing it yourself!

Any more suggestions? Use the comments below.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

whosdoing.com/music is another source that has a better interface. They're light on members right now but when the web gets a hold of it'll probably take off.

Anonymous said...

Great stuff. Thanks for posting this