You’d think setting up a band and launching songs would be pretty straight forward!
You’d be mistaken! What a process to get our first song released. On the other hand it has been a very interesting journey to get us to this point.
Ok let’s start at the beginning… John started writing songs and then thought that some of them had potential to be recorded and sent to the radio stations. Ever the optimist is John! LOL!
Well at least naming the band is easy!
When you start looking into it all it’s not as straight forward as you think. Let’s start with the band name; you need something original and something that reflects you. So John came up with some names, went on Google to see if any other bands existed with those names (anywhere around the world that is!). Can you Adam and Eve it! They did! We can’t tell you how many names we tried until… yes, finally… no band had taken the name The Maverick Band (maybe we should be worried????)
Anyhow then we looked into launching songs.
Well that’s another minefield! You can’t just send your song to the BBC for instance. No, you have to do it via BBC Introducing. And once you are on that web page they ask you for all manner of things that of course you don’t have! Like a website, social media counts, a summary about yourselves and your music and graphics!
So, we need a website
OK first find if Maverick.com or .uk is available! No! So you think outside the box and add a word that relates to what you do so we tried Maverick songs.com and .uk. Yippee! They are both available… for a fee of course! So you pay the fee and now you have a domain name… but no website. Now you need to find a web designer and not just any old web designer. No. Someone who really gets what you are about and what you want.
And most importantly… you don’t want it to look like all the other band websites out there! It’s got to stand out!!
So, you kiss a few frogs!
Not literally! You spend considerable time searching, looking at their websites and the work they’ve done for other clients. You also look at the kind of people they are and then and only then you make your approach and set up a meeting to see if there is chemistry! Success! We appointed Sokada Ltd! A small but nimble team. Why? Well, they have a talented senior team with a great deal of experience but they also have a really good team of young specialists in all things digital!
John’s written all the words for the The Maverick Band website (he likes writing as you know!) and the team at Sokada have designed and built it.
Why not let us know what you think of our website! We’d love to hear your feedback.
So how do we deliver a song
Ok so that’s the website sorted. Now you need to join certain groups like the PPL and the PRS. Once you’re a member of the PPL you can ask for your ISRC code. This is your unique code and numbering system. It’s used all over the world and it identifies your individual songs wherever they get played and it ensures you get your royalty entitlements. You know… performance rights for a radio station playing your song. Yes, you get paid – not a lot but imagine if you are ABBA or Ed Sheeran. If you imagine how many times their songs get played in the UK and now think of their songs played all over the world…yes, they get paid a small (large) fortune!
There are a few more things but It’s 11.30pm and I’m bushed so off to bed!