If someone could explain what exactly the list is, that would be great.

Is it people who joined the Facebook group?
Or is it just people saying they're going to spread the word in their area?

People willing to street-team.

Also maybe launching some kind of graphic design related competition would be a good way to get attention, like designing a poster for one of the albums or something....or a cd cover

I think PDF's of flyers would be the best option, that saves the huge cost of shipping tons of stuff out to people who might end up not street teaming very effectively, or at all.

Then maybe as an incentive to promote like madmen, you could have a contest to see who did the best job (not sure how this would be documented? Pictures? Work with me here...) and then the top 10 or whatever could win a signed personalized copy of Ki, or something of the sort.

Homemade posters...by us....we stick them up

Cheap...and I think it'll have more impact rather than all shiny new posters...I don't know of anyone else that has done something like that....

Just a thought....

Are we talking about stuff to provide street teamers as a perk, or stuff to put out there to draw potential fans? I think the second thing is more important (though I do appreciate your gracious attitude).

- You could take an exclusive track or simply a song from Ki and make it free for download on myspace and itunes.
- Scale the Summit (awesome band!) put a video lesson in Guitar World and online BEFORE the album even came out... great way to put some preview material out and get people interested.
- Locally I think the flyer .pdf's would be helpful. In most cities in the US taco places, guitar shops, and music stores have a bulletin board area where they let you post that kind of thing. (If you live in Boston and this happens I can make you a list of some great spots)
- Two websites that are probably useful for getting the word out are http://www.last.fm and http://www.rateyourmusic.com that's where a lot of devoted music fans spend time online.
- Last.fm is great because it uses listening patterns and user defined tags to recommend you music that is associated with what you've been listening to. For starters, the DT page should be kept up to date on DTP stuff. Second, I was thinking there might be a way to milk it a bit more by creating more tags for DT, but I'm a crappy last.fm user so I don't know about that. Can someone have a look and tell us if that's right? http://www.last.fm/music/Devin+Townsend/ For example, would it be helpful to add some tags like "Ayreon" "Steve Vai" "Ozzfest" etc. to try and broaden the reach a bit?
- Youtube channel is an obvious one, dunno if there is one already, but that should also be kept updated with the latest news.
- I read this online magazine called Playback. It's about movies, music, and AV/Audio equipment. It's kind of an audiophile magazine or something and they have a LOT of integrity about their musical choices. There is actually an interview with Mastodon in this issue. Between DT's great music and unparalleled production quality (a big factor to these guys) I think they would be open to the music. http://www.avguide.com/playbackmag/play ... march-2009

I'm telling you guys, Twitter if used right, can be very beneficial. Of course it is up to Dev but if he signs up for one and has updates on Twitter, along with Facebook, Myspace, the forums, it is all the better. And of course we can follow his twitter and "re-tweet" whatever he says and our twitter followers will also see it, thus spreading it around. There are A LOT of people on Twitter, a lot of people that will like Dev's music.

It's not like he has to update it like most people do ("pooping", "still pooping", "it's green") But update in conjunction with everything else. It may be "stupid" to some people, but so is myspace, and facebook. It's just another way to get the word out.

/rant

OK guys...getting back into this here...been setting up and moving to do Addicted, I start rehearsals tommorow.

So I looked through the pages and it's incredibly touching...but also intimidating, Reverbnations sight was a stimulus overload, and in terms of street teaming, it's confusing.

Here's my thoughts:

I want to do as much as possible, but theres only so much time in a day...What could I provide you guys? Some free music? Some first run ticket stuff? PDFs of flyers? Stickers? On line concerts?

I'm down with anything man, music is life and the internet is the only way to fly...whatever is a current forum to get the music out there, I'm in.

I have so much to do musically that it's hard for me to do a great job at the promo side, Maybe some of you could be supervisors and I could provide you stuff...I don't know, but I'm open for suggestions, and it would be great to just start it all up this week.

Any thoughts?

dev

As far as promotion stuff for us to get out... pdfs of fliers would be a good idea. Making promo music and videos available for us to embed or link people to would help, I think. Online concerts would be a great promo too... fliers or something to promote them beforehand, get some viral marketing or something going?

If there's any sort of reward for the street team... uh... I dunno. Compile a list of emails, put a couple people in charge, and disseminate exclusive bonus tracks or something? Advance ticket orders would be cool... Maybe a fan Q&A thing where street teamers send in questions, and you answer the ones you can?
Stickers would also be good... back to the viral marketing thing; just get some kind of graphic, and put a url on it, and have people go all "Obey" on it? Just throw it everywhere. Stores, street corners, music shops, wherever you can get away with it.

To be honest Dev, I'd love to man the helm of the Lakewood/Tacoma/Seattle area. Promoting seems like the easiest part now that there's MySpaces, Facebooks, online advertisements, YouTube, and the regular putting posters up around the cities and the such. I'm trying to get my own music out there, but you're my main influence, so I would promote the HELL outta you if I ever made it lol
Trying to think...I'm sure promoting you where I'm at would be extremely simple.
As for exclusive street team stuff, I mean, meeting you at the venue you're playing at for a few minutes would be cool, maybe exclusive news or demos of recording sessions. First dibs on tickets would be AWESOME as well.
I would honestly suggest mailing the team fliers for the new album though first and foremost. We could go to concerts that are playing in our areas and when people are waiting to go into the venues to watch the concerts, we can give them the fliers and maybe a bumper sticker or a two-track CD of your work, something from Ki and something old, like Bad Devil or Canada, or Planet Rain or Ziltoidia Attaxxx!!
Many more ideas but I'm sure you've had enough of my reply lol

The real difficulty with street teams is be these:

Most places don't really want posters put up on their shops and what not. Kind of restricting in some ways, but not an unpassable problem. The second thing is, there will be difficulty generating interest without A) samples of some description, and B) without saying Dev used to front SYL. As much as I know we would love Dev to be a little more well known for his solo stuff, Strapping Young Lad is much more well known without people researching the other stuff. So the question I pose is this:

How can we reach people and spread the name of Dev effectively without mentioning Strapping and what not? A logical answer, in my head, would be spamming the crap out of local radio stations to play Dev's stuff, getting DJ's in clubs to play his songs (through requests and stuff), and then just lobbing posters and stuff all over the clubs, handing out flyers there, all that kind of stuff.

I suppose another idea will be, for those of us wiht bands, to openly cover the songs and then letting everyone know who it is. I know, it seems a little whorish, but it will spread awareness (And I have seen it work very effectively.)

Beyond this... Well, my head has turned to rightly dressed people on stilts with big ol' boomboxes blaring out Dev and just giving flyers to anyone who looks scared/confused/interested/aroused. So yeah... Thoughts on my thoughts, anyone? xD

I don't think you have to mention SYL at all.
Just treat as you would if a new band were coming out and you wanted people to know about them.

I mean, that's essentially what this is anyway.

You figure the fans of Devin that would actually care about a new album most likely already know that its coming out.
So really its spreading the word about the music in general, rather than JUST the new album.

How about burning sample tracks (with voiceovers or whatever) and leaving the cds at the counter in shops?


1) Tentotheminus9 - Rob Harrand - Leeds - UK
2) HeKaR - Karri Räisänen - Lappeenranta - Finland
3) Lettuce - Violet Casselden - London & Surrey - UK
4) Grimview - Jordan Carlson - Prince George - British Columbia, Canada
5) Lolliklauer - (sorry, no real name here) - Essen - Germany
6) Tyroshai - Steph Abbott - York - UK
7) soundsofentropy - Andrew Carlson - Austin, Texas, USA
8] FFLinchpin - Ryan Winterborne - Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA
9) Abydost - Morten Pedersen - Stavanger, Norway
10) Amber - Amber Grant - Berkshire - UK
11) Purple Phoenix - Michael Hays - Providence - RI / Katonah - NY
12) Lawrence - Lawrence Evans - Manchester - UK
13) Leechmaster - Mark Kane - Cork - Ireland
14) Zyprexa - Orla Daly - Cork - Ireland
15) Devymetalnut - Jezz Haddon - Cornwall - UK
16) Miek - Mike Martin - Syracuse, New York, USA
17) FUBAR - James Burden - Southampton, UK
18) WizardJoe - Joe Richards - Sheffield + London, UK
19) Dewy - Matt Yankovich - Bay Area (Pleasanton, specifically), CA, USA
20) gitrplaya4u - Zack Antonioli - Newport News, Virginia, USA
21) Robvondoom - Rob Leavey - Dublin City, Ireland
22) PoopTart - Spike Hoban - Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
23) Islandsinthesky - Samuel Taylor - Chicago, Illinois, USA
24) jleclaire - Jared LeClaire - Atlanta, Georgia, USA
25) AccEvolution - Shawn Evans - Savannah, Georgia - USA
26) Phase - Matthew Space-Lizard Lee - Reading, Berkshire - UK
27) Wosko - Tyler Rose - Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
28) Guuff - Jeff Coleman - Los Angeles(including San Fernando Valley), CA, USA
29) IX10N - Dave Burns - Melbourne - Australia
30) Falling Upward9 - Wade Wiseman - Pittspurgh - PA
31) djskrimp - Stoney Bair - Suwon, South Korea
32) Anatxema - Jose Mª Martinez - Barcelona - Spain
33) murren12k - Martin R. - Essen - Germany
34) Matt Nevens - Matt Nevens - Great Ayton, North Yorkshire - UK
35) niklang - Nick Langridge - Fareham, UK
36) Keeker - Wendy Greenlees - Perthshire, Scotland - UK
37) tattzi - Tatu Laine - Turku, Finland
38) cadmium - Michael Cook - St. Louis, Missouri - USA
39) sowdust - Sylvie Yeranotsian - Marseille, FRANCE
40) ChrisFerg - Chris Ferguson - London, UK
41) entvå3 - Adam Ekström - Motala, Sweden
42) pattmeterson - Patthew S. Meterson - Minneapolis, MN, USA
43) thrashartist - Matt Mericer - Hudson, New Hampshire, USA
44) Fnargl - (Will post name if needed) - Belfast, Northern Ireland UK

Oh wow, just noticed my last name was totally ruined when I typed it on that list.

If the next person to add to it could fix it to Mercier, that would be great haha.

Most places will protest if you put shit up without asking... but, that's on their windows. A lot of clubs will let you stick shit on their doors or front walls without complaint, and music stores are usually perfectly happy to promote shit for you if you ask. The local HMV promotes any and every concert that goes on, actually. Even the shithole local shows that pop up from some of the... er... "less skilled" local bands.

Also; Assuming you live somewhere with any sort of strip malls or whatever... you know how their little sidewalk coverings have support beams? Those are perfectly legal to tape shit to, put stickers on, and whatever else. They aren't private property. Completely and utterly city property in all cases, and - having spent the better part of the past two years promoting almost every local metal show to happen - city property is almost always 100% legal to promote anything you want to promote on. I've postered telephone polls by schools, churches, malls and highways countless times.

There are always ways to promote things, and sometimes putting stuff where no one expects it to be is a very good option. (For example, put up a poster for Summer Slaughter Canada at a local baseball field... a bunch of people I talked to at the show told me they found out from that poster. )

An online concert of a few songs would be fantastic...just a few sneak teases...

Maybe only make it avaliable for a certain amount of time....in a cruel way so some people will miss it...but that will fuel the hunger

Had another idea;

For Street Team members... since a lot of us on here are musicians... maybe set up some Street Team-exclusive video lessons of some of the new songs?