Am I allowed to chime in? (I have time from work to peek at the board now.) If the Wildhearts want to get bigger and grow as a band, they definitely have to be more professional by appearence and actions. The modern day bands' main tool is their main website. I can't vouch for the media-cultural differences between the USA and Europe, but social networking sites like myspace and facebook do
NOT make or grow a band. Websites come and go - apparently, the US old school music execs are now latching onto a site called "twitter" - and are a dime a dozen. It is very easy for the mass public to abandon any website at all - like AMericans did to myspace 7(?) years ago or so - and "blip" - they're gone! If the WH want to grow, they need to 1. Update their website in both content and site appearence and function (try naming the toolbar with names Joe Public can figure out what's under which title), 2. don't depend on ANY social networking website
despite what the music biz itself does, 3. focus on the core fanbase for public outreach, including moving the forum to the main site 4. clean out and sort out the old stuff and make new - they have to move
forward,
not be a dino band if they want a continuous career, and 5. don't let Ginger wriote public announcements. Hyping yourself and your act is shit. Lying is shit. Webslingers - which is where real fans
ARE - want
honesty. I get tired of the bastard lying all the time. From a professional standpoint, no matter how good his songs are or aren't, if you turn off or abuse your fans, they'll leave. PROFESSIONAL BEHAVIOR HERE, GUYS! (For the record, I don't know if the other Wildies act this way or what; Ginger is always the main topic for some reason..
). If you want to be a big band, you have to ACT_LIKE_PROFESSIONALS. Being a band is a business. If you want to be paid, it's business. That means you treat all aspects as such. As for the threads about media exposure, again, I can't say on the cultural differences, but the best PR the band could do from what I'm catching is to write and release good new material FOR FREE *through the main Wildhearts website* as a sort of musical business card to bring in new people. It's not about old media here in the States; it's about word-of-mouth, and that's where song file sharing/trading comes in. I know you all prefer CDs, but digital files spread virally online if they're any good.
Just some ideas from the nosey bastard that is myself.
