Live CD's

I had an idea for one way of promoting your music and upcoming shows. It is a bit of out there idea but, I think it is one that might work well.
So you've had the chance to play a bunch of shows and your are starting to build a bit of a bigger draw of people to your shows. You poster, and out fliers and give stickers away like mad. You have been working almost every angle you can think of.

Why not record a few live shows? Get a handful of your best songs live and make an EP. Put 3 or 4 of your songs on to disk and make a stack of them. You don't have to get super fancy with them. Go with a simple one colour print and a paper sleeve. Set a side a bunch of later. Now on the back of the paper sleeve you can add a print out label that you can do from home. Put your band name, web site and upcoming shows on there.

Think of this simple and low cost CD as a business card. You can easily get 50 or 100 printed up for about the same cost as having business cards made. And the beauty of this idea is make a few different ones over time each with different songs on each CD. Sort of like trading cards of bootlegs.

once you have 2 or 3 different live CD's you can put them together as a live pack and sell them at your shows. Put it in with your merch for about $5 or $6, the cost is going to be around a Buck a disk. So if you have say 3 together in a pack and sell for $6 you are doubling your investment and covering your cost on the copies you hand out.

People love getting stuff for free and what a better way to promote your music then a free sampler.