How Three Women Got Together To Book Their Own SXSW Gig

 

Since I’m not attending SXSW myself this year, I thought I’d bring you a real life, in the trenches, on the road, slice of life post about three female artists I met through Madalyn Sklar’s GoGirlsElite and #ggchat.  I’ve met two of them In Real Life, and have watched  two of them perform on ConcertWindow – which feels almost like IRL I’ve read their blog posts and listened to their music, and they are all such positive and energetic women, doing all the right things to market themselves in this crowded place we call indie music.

Meet Rorie Kelly, Mary Bue and Alex Winters. [Full disclosure, Mary Bue is a music marketing client of mine, but Rorie and Alex are not. All three women are also being represented by my friend Stacey Sherman of RSP Entertainment Marketing while they are at SXSW.]

These three talented musicians got together (completely unbeknownst to me) and booked themselves an unofficial showcase gig tomorrow, Thursday March 19, 2015, at 8 PM at the Waterloo Ice House in South Park Meadows.

I love this story because:

  • It’s a bunch of women getting together to make their own gig happencommunity, not competition!
  • It’s social media at its best – helping people meet their business goals. Rorie, Mary and Alex met and got to know each other via the GoGirlsMusic network, which is a great virtual networking tool. The public Thursday Twitter chats at the hashtag #ggchat at 3 and 9 PM EST are well-attended by both male and female indie musicians and are always lively and informative. You’ll note below that they have some mutual male musician friends as well who are also frequent participants in the #ggchat Twitter chat, and helped encourage this group gig at SXSW.
  • They all have great stories in addition to great music. I know some good PR will come from this for some deserving indie artists just trying to get heard above all the SXSW noise.

On to the interview.

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YouNow 101: Using Online Performance To Add Fans

SonyaJevetteWithGuitarThis is the second post in a series exploring the various options for musicians to stream live performances online, including StageIt, Ustream, LiveStream, Google+ Hangouts On Air, Skype, YouNow, Broadcast for Friends for Facebook, and Second Life Music. I covered StageIt in a prior blog post, StageIt 101: Creating An Intimate Experience, where I featured Vancouver vocalist and songwriter, Jody Quine. My goal is to not only give you the basic service overview, but also let you hear from an indie musician who actually uses the service regularly. For this post, I interview Texas singer-songwriter Sonya Jevette.

YouNow is a website that acts a bit like a collection of open mic lounges where performers queue up to perform online. There are no pre-set show times like with StageIt, YouNow is more like a public stage, where viewers watch and interact with a stream (no pun intended) of performers as they broadcast fairly short (generally 10 minutes or less) sets from their living rooms or bedrooms. Some performers perform repeatedly over the day, or queue up to re-broadcast their prior recorded shows.

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