Backround: Kyle is the lead guitarist in the professional heavy metal band Drop Dead, Gorgeous and is an original band member. The band has been together for over four years now and have headlined or been included on many world wide tours such as The Vans Warped Tour. Drop Dead, Gorgeous has put out three full length albums have been included in Billboard Music's Top 200 Album Chart.
Here are a few websites to better understand Kyle and the Band:
Band Website
Band Wikipedia Page
Band Myspace Page
Band Facebook Page
Here is the interview that I had done with Kyle Browning of Drop Dead, Gorgeous regarding band management, marketing, and the new work that has risen out of today's music industry:
Me: So exactly how long have you been in the music industry where you have recorded an album and played live shows?
Kyle: I have been playing live shows since I was a freshman in high school and we recorded a few demo's here and there but nothing my music career really took off durimg my Junior year of high school when I formed the band (Drop Dead, Gorgeous) and we put out our first EP which later got us signed by Rise Records.
Me: So you have been around the real music industry for about five years now? What changes have you seen in the past five years in regards to the way you get your music out to the fans?
Kyle: Yeah, about 4 or 5 years I would say. Um... I guess a lot has changed a lot over the years. Before we were signed, we used Myspace as a big marketing tool to get people to notice our music. Myspace was a lot more popular back when we were in high school and everyone had a Myspace account. Seems like Facebook has sort of killed Myspace... But yeah, Myspace was our main way to post our music, add friends, share news, display tours dates, give album updates, and just get our name out there. Once we started to get a big number of plays and "hits" each day off of our page, we got put on the "Myspace Music Top 10" page and then we sort of just took off after that. That's really how Rise Records found us and then later signed us to a contract.
Me: So the internet was the main tool for marketing? Was there any other websites that you guys used to help launch your career? If so, which websites were you guys using?
Kyle: Yep, the internet pretty much launched our career. We would obviously tell people at school about our band and then tell them to come out to our shows but we only got so many followers through that. I would say that Myspace was definitely the biggest website that we used because there were millions of people who looked on Myspace at the time. We used other websites like Pure Volume, Yahoo! Music and sometimes YouTube. Pure Volume was a popular website for us. We got a lot of plays and hits there as well.
Me: You mentioned Facebook earlier. Do you guys have a Facebook page and do you guys use it a lot? Does it have the same influence as Myspace because their is also millions of people who have a Facebook account?
Kyle: We do have a Facebook page and we post links to some music but Facebook hasn't nearly had the impact that Myspace had. Facebook doesn't have a media player where you can upload songs so it's hard to have a real music page if you can't post music on it!
Me: So now that Myspace has died down, how do you still reach your fans and the public? Also, has the decline of Myspace impacted your record sales?
Kyle: We still use Myspace quite a bit but we now have a small marketing team through our record label that helps us market ourselves. We now have a band website, a twitter account, and social networking sites like facebook, myspace, purevolume, etc. websites. A lot of our fans are people who have followed us for awhile but we still get a substantial amount of new fans. Our record sales have been about the same throughout the years. It's hard to really gauge how many people listen to you because a lot people illegally download our music.
Me: Has all the illegal downloading substantially hurt your career? Also, you mentioned Twitter. Twitter is becoming widely popular now so do you think that has been a big help?
Kyle: I actually don't even mind the people pirating our music for free off of the internet. To be honest, we don't make much money off of record sales. Sure they are nice but we make a living off of playing shows and selling merchandise. I believe that our shows and merchandise sales wouldn't be nearly as strong if people bought our music. A lot of times I say to myself "Hey, I like this band but I'm not about to spend ten dollars on their album. I'll just download it." I guess I am sort of a hypocrite but I have fallen in love with a lot of artists because I downloaded their album for free and then later loved it. By the way, I buy their album later on so technically I am not a music steal. Just a music barrower for a little bit! Twitter is cool because we can post something and then other can repost our "tweet." Its the first social network site that has ever allowed people to repost someone else's news. Once someone repost's our tweet than all of their Twitter followers get to see our "tweet." so it spreads the word on our band which is really cool.
Me: How has iTunes helped you guys sell records?
Kyle: iTunes just makes it easier for people to get our album and listen to it right away. They can hear a few sample songs on our website and then immediately download our album without having to go to a record store and search for our record. Many large record stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart only carry a few of our CD's in their selected stores so iTunes is the only consistent store that sells our album.
Me: How do you keep up with all these websites when you are on the road for so long? Also, do you have time to record any music while on the road and how does the band stay connected when you are on tour?
Kyle: Luckily we all have laptops and we can usually get WiFi in a lot of places we stop at. A lot of us have cell phones as well that have access to the internet. I write a lot of songs when we are on the road and play guitar. I use the music program Garage Band to record some simple beats and stuff but I later have to re-record because Garage Band's quality is just okay. We'll it is easy to stay in contact with my band mates because we are pretty much sleeping right next to each other for months at a time (chuckle) but other than that we all have cell phones. If we need to be somewhere as a group and someone is gone than we just call them or text them. We are all pretty responsible dudes, though.
Me: After having talked about a lot of new technologies and networking websites, how do you think these have changed or affected the your band has went about business?
Kyle: Well, like I have said, we have made a career out of these technologies. We honestly wouldn't have gotten where we have gotten without these tools. Our music genre has a small and particular fan base and it would have been really hard to reach out to this crowd of people without the internet. We haven't had a music video on MTV, we rarely get national radio play and our albums aren't headlining any major music store so without the use of the internet we wouldn't have been able to survive.
Me: Thanks Kyle for your time. You gave me a lot of great insight. I appreciate it.
Kyle: Any time buddy.
Here is Drop Dead, Gorgeous' latest music video from their last album:
No comments:
Post a Comment