It’s difficult for a garage band to break out of its comfort zone (think: home city) and really succeed with a broader (think: multi county) audience during an up economy. Bands are plentiful, though true talent isn’t always quite so. Almost every bored high school guy drums away class time on his notebook, dreaming of the new drum set or, better yet, the sleek keyboard in the music gear catalog. He gets a couple other likeminded friends together, they dream big, do a few gigs at the local summer fairgrounds, only to see time & reality finally sweep by and leave the dreams behind in the evaporating dust.

But when the economy is feeling glum, and spare change and part time jobs are hard to come by (and your dad’s once generous “band equipment allowance” is no longer there since he fears getting laid off), then getting the band started, much less promoting it outside of your home base, becomes an almost formidable challenge.

Enter the USB flash drive. Ok, so if you’ve read anything on our site, you know that we’re just a teeny, eensy little bit biased toward the products we push (er, sell), but read on (if you’re the musically inclined) and you’ll walk away a mite bit intellectually richer than if you don’t.

As I was saying, enter the USB flash drive, the relatively inexpensive but quite effective means to market your band beyond your home turf in ways you never dreamed possible. And, to top things off, prices on these creativity packed potentials only keep dropping. Of course, USB stick drives won’t be able to sweeten your tunes if your band members haven’t got the first notion what beat or melody or harmony are all about. But wait until you hear what exactly flash drives can do for you:

First, simple enough, is the flash drive itself. We’ve got several pages jammed full of different popular shapes & sizes with many color options (check out our Economical, “Organic” & Capless flash drives). If you don’t see something you’d like, let us know and we’ll get to work on it.

Then, you’ve got the visible branding on the outside of the drive. Whether you’re looking for color logo imprinting or laser engraving, we’ve got you covered.

Plugging the drive into a computer is where our custom solutions really spark things up. Imagine an electric guitar popping up on the computer monitor. Some faint tunes from your recent album play in the distance for a few seconds. A user then has options. They can (1) upload their own personal files to the flash drive and treat it like a normal flash drive; (2) click on several buttons to visit your website, view a recent video interview with band members, view a music video, or listen to a recent album; (3) fill out a contact form to send you feedback such as an invite to play at their restaurant next week; and (4) view your promotional pack with downloadable band member photos, bios, you name it.

The possibilities really are endless. And you can “lock” your content onto the drive so an average user can’t delete it. The USB drive is still valuable to the end user (be it that restaurant owner, a local newpaper reporter, a local radio station audio buyer, go ahead – be creative) since it can still hold a couple Gigabytes of their personal data, while your band’s face and branding are repeatedly etched across their screen whenever they use the complimentary stick drive you sent their way.

We know we make this all sound oversimplistic, and we’ll readily agree. A true article on Marketing for a Rock Band would need to cover many, many other aspects. But for a brief blog post, we hope you’ve gleaned at least a couple new thoughts to toy around with in order to help you get that band or music group the promotion boost you need. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Related posts:

1. The Lonely Boys Indie Band
2. Harris County Tigers Marching Band Fundraising
3. Marketing Tips for Custom T-Shirt Sellers
4. Plan Your Restaurant Chain Marketing Makeover with USB Drives
5. Rock and Roll Flash Drives