Is the irish music scene dead?

Bren Jacob

The biggest problem in breaking through in Ireland is radio.
I dont want anyone to take me up wrong on this people like Dan Hegarty in particular but others also do great work trying to get Irish bands name out there but unless your getting regular airplay on mainstream radio between 7am & 7pm its extremely difficult to make it work.

The exception to the rule at the moment would be Fight Like Apes in my humble opinion.
They get lots of press in Ireland (by domestic bands standards) without having got lots of mainstream airplay.
My hats of to their management team and the band for creating such a buzz in media circles.

seachto7

problem with radio here is it's commercial (spin south west for example, but not only them) so they only really play chart music all day long. there is a Sunday morning show on it that you'll get played on no problem, or even get a session and interview, but unfortunately most gig goers are sleeping off the beer on a Sunday morning...

iamhunted

is there an irish music 'scene'? Is there a music scene anywhere considering the way the music industry has changed.

I think whats happening in Ireland is that bands are taking a while to realise there wont be any men with chequebooks around the corner ever again. nowadays bands have better equipment and access to the public than ever before, but since every band has that, theres a lot more competition.

Bands have to take things into their own hands - as those like FLAs and Ham Sandwich, Spook of the 13th Lock, Hurray for Humans etc have done - and forge their own way into the irish music scene. I dont think enough bands are copping on to this tbh for there to actually be a decent Irish music scene.

iamhunted

Bren Jacob wrote: »

unless your getting regular airplay on mainstream radio between 7am & 7pm its extremely difficult to make it work.

you'd need to be gigging regularly and releasing good tunes as well, plus be already on the late night shows. then surely its a matter of targetting the daytime shows and harrasing the crap out of them?

iamhunted

af_thefragile wrote: »

Myspace is both the best and the worst thing that happened to music in the early 21st century.

theres been plenty of mp3 music sites before myspace - places like mp3.com where many a band got started in the late 90s. MySpace is just another one.

Lazy bands will always be lazy; the harder working bands use the likes of myspace etc as just another internet promotional tool - which basically is all it is.

Same time, Ive been in bands with people who couldnt see why a band would need anything but a myspace page in relation to a web prescense. Dont understand that line of thinking.

Notorious

HouseHippo wrote: »

Also many people have been saying there aren't any good irish bands out there today what about: Jape,Redneck manifesto,Angel Pier,Dirty Epics, Black Eagle Charm,Anagog,Red Kid,Distractors,Ham Sandwich,Pamela and the Trouble Is,Jimmy Cake,Cap Pas Cap,Kinetics,Aortal etc etc.

Don't tell me I'm the only one here who think most of these bands are terrible (though I haven't heard of Anagog or Pamela and the Trouble).

Only in the last year or so (since my mates band started doing the Dublin circuit) have I been hearing unsigned bands in the Sugar Club, Whelans, Pravda etc. So many of them have been excellent (unfortunately I can't remember many names so I can't give credit). It seems that there is a lot of fresh sounds out there to be found, but for whatever reason they don't cut the grade. Maybe its just that they don't have the time or funds to get the ball rolling?

Bren Jacob

Well Iv only limited experience of how the game tends to work and certainly in the first project I was involved in we didnt know our arse from our elbow and pretty much ****ed up everything we touched.

For what its worth though my answer to your statement that "then surely its a matter of targetting the daytime shows and harrasing the crap out of them?" would be generally speaking.................no
For starters it would be the radio plugger with whatever pr company your using that would harass the crap out of them but even then it tends to be more complicated than that.

Just my experience and Im sure others would have had different experiences.

iamhunted wrote: »

you'd need to be gigging regularly and releasing good tunes as well, plus be already on the late night shows. then surely its a matter of targetting the daytime shows and harrasing the crap out of them?

iamhunted

ive had a different experience than that. the last band I was in got some pretty decent airplay from national and local stations and media coverage in national and local papers doing that. Bands dont have the money for PR or radio pluggers and with the way the internet is changing music distro and PR, they don need them in order to get airplay. Its needs good old fashioned hard work, elbow grease and some good tunes. thats what too many bands are missing - too much expectation of needing a manager or some third party to do all the actual work. such a person never materialises and bands dont develop as a result.

seachto7

can one make a living from the Irish music scene? Could anyone ever imagine making enough off original music as they do in their day job for example...(assuming music isn't your day job, and not talking about covers stuff)

HouseHippo

A few of my friends make as very good living off the gig scene particularly

PaulBrewer

HouseHippo wrote: »

A few of my friends make as very good living off the gig scene particularly

What's a 'good living' ?

What bands?

Off the dole - on above industrial wage or extra few bob for pints ?

There are virtually no original Irish bands making a 'good' living solely from Ireland.

Even successful local bands find it hard to make ends meet.

Do the Math - if you want to take home 30k a year (576 Euro a week !) say 50K including tax prsi etc and there's 5 including the manager to be paid -
that's 250k profit i.e. after vans,fuel, roadies, PAs, office, telephone, food, guitar strings, flights, ferries, hotels etc.etc.etc which could very easily be another 50/60k

So a band is looking at earning heading for a grand a day ......

No Sirree Bob .... certainly not in general.

PaulBrewer

iamhunted wrote: »

too much expectation of needing a manager or some third party to do all the actual work. such a person never materialises and bands dont develop as a result.

Iamhunted

That's always the way it goes.
I don't know how many times I've seen it.
We can't afford the extra few hundred a day to record the single because the Promo man costs 8 grand.

In some ways the Music Biz is very 'real' - you invariably get what you deserve ....

iamhunted

i think bands need to grasp the idea of really using the internet to promote themselves, wheather thats using myspace and email to contact DJs/promoters etc, using shoutcast to broadcast their own online gigs for free, orusing websites to build up mailing lists and connect directly to the buying punters. If bands had some decent online distro set up (which is handy enough through places like tunecore) then they could be driving their own fanbase to such places online and at least make some form of income, no matter how small it may be. utilitising the web more shoudl be the first step bands should consider to get their name out there before thinking of managers or promoters.

PaulBrewer

iamhunted wrote: »

i think bands need to grasp the idea of really using the internet to promote themselves, wheather thats using myspace and email to contact DJs/promoters etc, using shoutcast to broadcast their own online gigs for free, orusing websites to build up mailing lists and connect directly to the buying punters. If bands had some decent online distro set up (which is handy enough through places like tunecore) then they could be driving their own fanbase to such places online and at least make some form of income, no matter how small it may be. utilitising the web more shoudl be the first step bands should consider to get their name out there before thinking of managers or promoters.

Yup right again ....

Any chance you could email your last 2 posts to every band in Ireland , please? Ta ...

iamhunted

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Yup right again ....

Any chance you could email your last 2 posts to every band in Ireland , please? Ta ...

I dont mean to be ignorant to any bands - ive been in enough of them myself - but the phrase 'hard work' isnt one a lot of bands like to hear about. Many would prefer 'let me take care of that and heres a rather large cheque'.

Im going to try the shoutcast/webradio live gig idea in the next few months to see how that pans out.

iamhunted

http://www.wearelistening.org/blog/how-to-get-200-new-fans-a-week/ - this is an interesting link about a band using the internet to promote themselves. the main reason why i think its interesting is because I stumbled across them by complete accident earlier on today, seen there was a bit of a buzz about them and then low and behold, wearelistening has an article on how they are doing it.