Sociology's Answers to Your Promotional Problems

David J. Riesbeck - 8/29/2001

Anyone who has been in a band in Athens knows the frustration of trying to attract a following. A few lucky bands are successful in a relatively short time, but some seem to go for years without building even a moderately large fan base. While most bands eventually find a nice crowd, it's a struggle for almost all of us. Why do some local bands seem to find popularity knocking at the door, while others can't even get it delivered in thirty minutes or less for $10.99?

Everybody's got a theory. Some say it's due to the fact that the Athenian public at large just isn't interested; others say that only certain types of music have a good crowd; and still others say it's because most local bands just plain suck. While all of these things are a factor - nobody wants to go see a shitty band, and most people don't want to pay money to see a band that might suck - the underlying problem, it seems, is that Athens just isn't the kind of place where hundreds of people run around for the sole purpose of seeing a new, good live band. How is a popular band built in Athens, then? Perhaps sociology has an answer for us.

Rodney Stark¹ is a prominent sociologist who has, among other things, spent a great deal of time researching small religious movements. Of particular relevance is his work on conversion. It is usually assumed that people convert for spiritual reasons; they find the teachings of the religion to be true, and thus convert. However, Stark's studies, and further studies that have aimed to test his findings, have shown that conversion is often an act of conformity.

Most converts to small religious groups can be socially linked with the movement's leader. Rather than learning about the teachings from literature or mass-marketed evangelism, they learn of it from someone they know. In small movements, that person is likely to be the leader or someone directly linked with the leader. In the case of one of Stark's early studies, the movement's first converts were people who lived in the same apartment building as its founder. The next converts were friends of those people. Later, their friends became members. Rather than joining the religion simply because they found what they felt was truth, they were joining in a kind of social conformity.

It may sound strange to say that people don't convert to a religion for a religious purpose. It isn't the case the people don't become convinced of the truth of the teachings. In fact, they do. What is surprising is that friends and family of recent converts who were originally in disagreement over the conversion also became members. Interestingly, the friends and family that did were those that spent a considerable amount of time with the converts; those who didn't did not convert. It's also enlightening to know that very few people converted who were not socially linked to the group, despite attempts at mass-market evangelism. Another noteworthy finding of Stark's study is that people with strong religious beliefs almost never converted².

So how does this apply to music? Music is a much less serious thing to most people than religion. If social forces play such a huge role in religious conversion, might they play just as large a role in building a fan base? Do people go to see local bands because they really dig the music, or because their friends are going?

Well, how many of you go to see bands by yourselves on a regular basis? How many times have you stood in a bar alone, no friends of acquaintances around, and watched an entire set of music? If you have done this more than once or twice, you're in the minority³.

Now, think about a popular band that you see regularly. Who do you see at the shows? When I was regularly hitting Cactus Pears shows back during their Second Incarnation, I always saw the same people at the shows. On top of that, they all seemed to know Dan or someone else in the band, or they came with someone who knew Dan or someone in the band. While this probably has a lot to do with Dan Dreifort's unexplainable, supernatural charismatic powers⁴, it's also true in the case of almost every popular band in Athens. Even Red Wanting Blue, the big daddies of alternative pop, have succeeded in this way - they just happen to have been friends with people who had a lot of friends, who in turn had a lot of friends, and so on; fraternities and sororities tend to be that way, I think. A band's crowd is essentially its extended social network, to use the sociological term.

Now, remember the last time you saw a band that had a small crowd. Both of the bands that I've played with that have done much bar playing - Planet 12 and Mantra - have suffered from fairly small crowds, especially initially. With Mantra, the situation was almost absurd; there we were, a "jam band" that should, by the logic of most AMN readers, find a crowd immediately, and we can't get more than 20 people in a bar at the same time. Amazingly enough, the people that did come to the shows were the people that knew us, and we began to see bigger crowds since Michelle Wass - Mantra's vocalist and by far the most socially active member of the band - started playing with us. Since none of the other folks in the band brought too many people in for shows - two members were recent immigrants to Athens, another two were limitedly social, and one was too young to bring very many legal adults to the shows - it's only began to pick up when someone who knew a lot more people joined the band.

So, assuming that this is how most local bands draw sizeable crowds, what does it mean for you? Well, it gives you a good place to start building that crowd you've been looking for. Tell your friends, convince them to tell their friends, and keep on going until all your friends and acquaintances know that you play music. It may not seem like a terribly effective method, but it's bound to be more successful than passing out flyers on the green - a thing which all of the bands I've ever been involved in have done without much success - or advertising on the AMN. Your best bet for local popularity would be to find a budding socialite and make them a member of your band. Every band that Dan Dreifort has joined in the past few years has instantly increased its crowd just as much, if not more so, than its musical creativity. Planet 12 experienced spikes in crowd size when Tony Perrie, a guy with plenty of bar-going friends, joined the band. It happened again when Jeremy Foltz, a sexy man with the groovy amp that he lets drugged-up guitarists borrow⁵, came in on bass.

There are certainly other factors involved. Obviously, if your friends don't like it, they won't come back; nothing will make a talentless band popular. Still, the key to getting big crowds as a local band is deep social networking, plain and simple -- although it might not hurt to play good, entertaining music, either.

Notes:

1. For information on Rodney Stark and his studies, check out his Sociology textbook, Sociology, published by Wadsworth, ISBN 0-534-56934-X or visit the book's associated website, http://www.socstark.com.

2. This may not be convincing to every reader. Alas, in the interest of brevity I haven't chosen to defend it exhaustively. If you're skeptical, good; skepticism is much healthier than believing everything anyone says. Still, if you're interested, I invite you to check out the studies; they're very interesting, and the findings are very well supported.

3. You're also probably a musician. Musicians tend to watch live bands a little differently than non-musicians, who usually make up a majority of the crowd. Since musicians are more likely to watch a band analytically, they're also more likely to be able to watch them by themselves without getting bored. Still, even many musicians can't handle one of this author's extended guitar solos. ;-)

4. If you're also skeptical about this, take note of the extraordinary number of women that have slept with, tried to sleep with, or wanted to sleep with him. Also take note of how much hatred circles him. For a taste, visit dandreifortsucks.org.

5. Thanks again, Jeremy. ;-)

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