How to Become a Well Know Musician
 

I have been singing with a jam band for almost a year now and we recently decided to try our luck with going public. So far we have played a few minor gigs at local bars and once at a local venue for a battle of the bands. We ranked third in the contest but didn't really receive any new contacts or gig offers. Can anyone tell me if there is a better or faster way to get well known? Are competitions such as "Americas Got Talent" a good option or should I stick to what I have been doing?

Fuck a supermodel

Play a lot shows and hope you get lucky. Jam bands have an extremely niche audience though so, uhh, good luck with that.

Produce the crappiest song you can think of. It worked well for Rebecca Black & Brokencyde.

Fuck Rob Fusari.

First of all, singers for Jam bands rarely become famous musicians (quick, name one that isn't Jerry Garcia or or Trey Anastasio). What you need to do is start making pop music, change your name to something catchy, like Lord Flibbity Flou, and start wearing slacks made of applewood smoked bacon. Posting sexy giant posters of yourself everywhere will help. Also try masturbating in front of cop cars that are stopped at red lights.

Fuck a goat.

Fuck a famous goat.

Either find a creative niche that not a lot of other people are working with or just be incredibly, incredibly awesome and interesting at something that other people do musically. My guess is that networking and becoming familiar with as many people as possible helps more than just about anything too.

Kill yourself or die of an accidental drug overdose.

From the sounds of this you really don't know anything about the music industry or how it works.

i'm ROTFL reading the replies...

get discovered by Usher or Timbaland?

Win a small competition to get your name on the internet. Makes a good start for any musician to be listed as a winner on the internet. Can also give you a bit of funding for your band. If your interested I got a flier for one called the 2Bawards when I was in line for X-factor auditions.

Get your own Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor.

Do a deal with the devil at the crossroads.

Yeah pretty much its all "Image" and gimmicks before skill nowadays. Just keep doing what you do, but try anything that will get your name out. Make yourself seem more famous than you really are (fancy webpages and ads throughout your city and internet). You'll get some band-wagoners that way.

invest in some cutting-edge music software and try to imitate the current No. 1 single

Assassinate President Obama.

All sorts of wonderful ways. A lot of them already mentioned. You could sell out, this seems to work for a lot of bands who want to be rich and famous. They stop playing the music they love and enjoy and work on material that they hate so they could make a lot of money. Compromising is definatley an idea. Showing up drunk as a skunk or high as a kite and making it as obvious as possible onstage could get you some people trying to reach out at you. You may get a lot of negative press, but any press is good press right? Just a couple ideas.

Lol...I thought more of these would be serious suggestions but the ones that are not are certainly funny. I may take veyron's suggestion and sign up for that award show thing. Has anyone heard of it before, like is it legit?

I'd say that you basically need to just find a group of people who are into your music, play for those people, treat them good, and let word of mouth do its work. Before you know it, if you're any good, people will be flocking to your local shows. You can branch out to bigger cities that are close enough for your loyal fanbase to travel to see, and as long as you have those people going to see you, those clubs will likely continue to book you because you're getting a pretty good draw, and other people in the bigger cities will come to see you.

It's really all up to chance, but building a small but loyal following and letting that spread like herpes seems to be your best bet without dropping some really serious coin.

Just bend over.

You need to get your name on the internet, make a myspace account, make a facebook page, make a twitter account, make a youtube video and post your video everywhere you can (except here or you will be blocked :D ), post your youtube video as a video response on as much as possible other video's and don't forget to put a link to your facebook/twitter/myspace in the comment section of your video so they can contact you. Other things that you also need to do is to start networking, start making friends on facebook, twitter, myspace, ... . Go to other Band profiles with the same musical interest and react on their profile and become friends with them, they will then come back to your profile and your fame is on the way :)

To find some gigs you need to find as much e-mail adresses as possible, send mails to all the pubs within 50 km, send mails to local radio stations, send mails to everybody who can help you to become famous. And if they don't react in 3 weeks, send the mail again. You can also send letters to all of them (with a cd with some songs on it), when they have a cd in their hands the chance is much bigger that they will listen to it. And the last thing is to hope that they will send something back :)

Name some musicians that have become famous by spamming like an ass.

If you want to become a well known musician you've really got to work for it, play as many gigs in your area as you can, try and get regular gigs in other towns and cities, sell your demos at gigs, busk on the streets if you have to. You don't even need the internet.

Bieber is discovered on youtube? famous enough?
And it can be really difficult to find gigs when you're a little band so internet can be very helpful to find some gigs and fans. But after some time you won't need the internet anymore.

Like everything else in life who you know and a lot of money will increase your chances tremendously. If your a good looking chick who can sing even half way decent then thats half the battle right there. Some work for it, and others have to play the starving musician role while others got connections and money. I dont think theres any set of rules on how you make it big but talent doesnt always guarantee you'll be famous and thats the sad truth of it.

stab your bandmember 23 times