Noise Market promotion - requesting help

Yesterday evening, the Noise Market* band had an audience with our record label. We were worried why things weren't happening the way we wanted them to be. Believe me, things were really bad.

• They haven't paid us the licensing fee, the stark evidence of which is that I am(for the second night in a row) sleeping on an empty stomach. I have some instant food at home, but I'm scared of using it up too soon. I'm rationing you see. If you are asking me how I manage to do what I do and buy what I buy, it's thanks to a credit card whose balance is now in the vicinity of Rs. 17, 000/-.
  
• They haven't paid the studio. This would result in delays in mixing and mastering. This will eventually result in a delay in the release. The longer we take to release, the worser it is for everyone.
  
• They haven't gotten us gigs. Most of you guys must think that bands survive by recording and album and sitting pretty on the money that is coming from sales. It's not true, we have to rehearse our asses out and play in concerts. That's where the real money comes from. So, if you don't get gigs, you are not going to make money.
  
• We don't know about our future. Well nothing was clear. We were kinda weirded out. Natural, some might say if you put yourselves in our shoes.

During the meeting, for the first time in our entire history of meetings with them, we realized the woke up to our senses; we realized that we ourselves have to get more gigs. We will have to check out all the available gig opportunities all over the country (and abroad) and make at least some count. We will have to do promotion, marketing and publicity ourselves.

These are easy things to say. But without networking they are going to be extremely difficult. Thankfully, I have a rather wide-spread audience in the blogosphere. I urge all of you to help me and my band Noise Market here! Get us gigs! I'm talking about Gigs in places like Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Cochin etc. Promote us! Spread the word!

Currently, as you might presume, we aren't in a position to pay for this. But we'd be thankful and eternally grateful for your services.

For your convenience, I'll give you all the links that you can approach us by.

• Noise Market Myspace page - http://myspace.com/bazaarshor
  
• Noise Market Facebook Group - http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=23027038213
  
• Noise Market Orkut Group - http://www.orkut.co.in/Community.aspx?cmm=47466453
  
• Noise Market Blog - http://bazaarshor.blogspot.com
  
• Noise Market Website - [Coming soon!]
  
• Noise Market Facebook Artist page - [Coming soon!]

Please add as many friends as you can to all these social networking sites. Every word spread is going to make us more powerful and help me feed better. In a way, you guys are helping prevent poverty and hunger. Promote Noise Market!

Noise Market FAQ

• Noise Market, what? - Noise Market is a hindi rock band based in Mumbai. We are incredibly cool as we won the western leg of a national level competition within three months of our birth. Rumors are that we didn't cry immediate post-partum. Instead, we strummed the umbilical cords and made music in the delivery room. And we were toilet trained at birth.
  
• Noise Market promotion, why? - Well, the only real reason is that yours truly, the modesty called Kris Bass, is the bass (coincidence?) guitarist of the band. To sell Noise Market to others, please try the following catch lines.
  • We're cool.
  • We play original Hindi Rock.
  • We're amazingly hot. (Not just me, the entire band!)
  • We have attitude.
  • We have spunk.
  • We kick ass.
  • We kick everyone else's ass (especially all the cheesy music directors in the industry).
  • We rule the stage.
  • I play bass in the band.
  
  
• Why, Noise Market, the name? - For the sake of privacy to the rest of the members of the band and to myself, I have chosen to use 'Noise Market'' as the pseudonym. The actual name is a translation of the same word to Hindi - or simply 'S-H-O-R B-A-Z-A-A-R'. This is supposed to be a cool thing to explain - Shor is the noise, Bazaar is the market!

The problem of publicity

There are a few times that I wish my blog weren't public. Today is one. The irony of the situation is that I can't even blog about why it is so. I wish there was a secret language for bloggers or something like that with which I could tell you guys about what I want to tell.

Anyway, Noise Market headed to the studio in the evening. We were supposed to hear and get a copy of the final mixes of our album today. We did get to hear it, but we didn't get the CD! And guess why? Because our record label hasn't paid the bills for the studio yet!

The fact that I can't bitch about it too much is why I need to use some sort of ciphers. In fact, I have been wanting to complain about this for some time now. These guys haven't paid us as well despite having promised a lot. And that too, 3 months have elapsed since. There is a lesson be learned; the entertainment industry is like this. And we can't do anything about it.

So what did I end up with? Some recordings of the songs on my mp3 player (using the mic that it has) which will not serve as material for critique! Tomorrow, the first thing that we are going to do is to ring up the label and explain about our plight. I hope that will set the stage for some radical changes.

I must admit that this post is so downcast and sobby that it really dampens the day in which we listen to rough mixes of 9 of the 10 tracks of our first album. We felt really good, and proud... because our dreams were, after all, coming true.

(PS: for anyone who's good at html, there is a lot of 'truth' in the code.)