Finding Leads Through Bandcamp
This one of my favorite methods. Bandcamp has a fantastic "discover" feature that is perfect for sourcing talented artists who are underserved in their recording options.
2. Choose Genre and subgenre
This will narrow your choices down to only the niche you're interested in working with. In this example, I'm looking for metal bands in the "deathcore" subgenre. Something I'm particularly great with mixing and mastering.
3. Choose a category (Best-selling, new arrivals, or artist-recommended)
Depending on which of these you choose, you'll get a different list of artists. I've had the best luck with best-selling and artist-recommended.
Best-Selling
The "best-selling" category usually has the most talented artists, but the release dates can be very recent (putting them into Project Phase 5 in the client journey). The exceptions are whenever the artist releases a single. This typically means they'll be following up with more music in the near-future.
The other problem of the "best-selling" category is that the artist can be out of your league sometimes. Depending on your quality of work and your own personal social proof, some artists may be well above the need for someone on your level. This is where self-awareness comes in. DO reach out to those who are in genuine need of your services, however. DO NOT let fear of rejection hold you back if you think you can help.
New Arrivals
This category is obviously least desirable, as the artist just put out new music and will not be looking for your services. The exception, of course, is when the artist has released a single. In this case you can reach out and see when they'll be releasing more music, which is almost guaranteed to be the case if they've only released 1 or 2 songs recently.
Artist-Recommended
This category typically contains more of the "under the radar" artists and bands who are more open to collaboration. Bigger bands tend to be jaded and set in their ways, but new an upcoming artists are generally more receptive to cold outreach.
The negative of this category is that you'll have a lot more...shit to wade through. There are tons of terrible artists you'll come across sorting it this way. You can also come across "dead" bands - these are bands that broke up years ago, and their music lives on through the power of the internet.
When choosing "artist-recommended", be sure to check both "most" and "latest". The first option will give you a list of more talented bands, but they may be broken up. The 2nd will give you more recent releases, but they may be absolute shit.
4. Choose A Location
This is the best part about Bandcamp: You can narrow bands down by specific city, which is perfect for those of you who are offering services that require the band to be in your geographic area.
5. Quickly Listen To Each Band
You can listen to each artist quickly by pressing the play button inside the album art (screenshot below). I typically skip about one third into the song, then a little past half way.
It only takes me 5-15 seconds to know if it's a band I want to work with. This is also where I determine whether or not I could provide this band with a better recording or mix than they already have.
6. Open Each Album In a New Tab
By command+clicking the link next to "from the album ____________," you can open the "album" in a a new browser tab. The term "album" on this website can mean anything from a single to an LP.
In this stage, you're just opening up the bands you like in a new tab for later refining. This is the "quantity" phase of the "quality approach". Meaning, you're just opening tons of tabs without much consideration other than the sound of their music.
One thing you'll want to consider when doing a worldwide search:
Look at their country before you open the band in a new tab. You'll be able to disqualify certain bands immediately just by where they're from. Certain economies will not be able to support your rates. For example, my mixing rates range from $450-$700 per song (depending on project size and artist quality). Even on the low range, it would be more than $2000 for me to mix a 5 song EP.
Considering that the average monthly income in Russia is around $600 right now, I can rule out bands from that country. There are several other countries where this is the case, so know your average incomes for each country, and try to focus on those with strong economies.
7. Quickly Analyze and Eliminate Unqualified Bands
At this point, you should have at least 10-20 tabs open. From here, you just look at each artist, and find these two things:
1. When was their last release?
2. How many songs did they release?
Eliminate Unqualified Band If:
3-5 songs release less than 4 months ago
6-10 songs release less than 7 months ago
Latest release more than 3 years ago
Keep Qualified Band If:
1-2 songs released any time with the past 3 years
3-5 songs release more than 4 months ago
6-10 songs released more than 7 months ago
8. Add Remaining Bands To Your Spreadsheet
From here, you'll want to add the band to your spreadsheet so you can methodically follow up with them in batches. This will also let you track everything so you don't accidentally reach out to the same band twice.
9. Helpful Tool:
http://campexplorer.io/
This tool allows you to search multiple genres at once within Bandcamp. The only limitation seems to be how many total results are shown (75), with no chance to search through additional pages of results.
