Publishing your show will notify your existing followers and hopefully you should see some ticket sales or RSVPs from that. However, as with every live performance, active promotion leads to further attendance. Here are a few things to consider in order to get the word out:
Partnerships and campaigns
If you are working with a venue or promoter, ensure that they do their part in getting the word out. Provide them with material to use - whether imagery or video - and try to build a consistent message with recurring motifs so that it’s easier for fans and newcomers to recognize your show.
You can use the Campaign Tracking tool in your Tools page to track sales generated by a link. By adding a campaign code to the end of your show link, and providing this link to your partner, every visit and sale from that link will be visible in your Campaign Tracker and the sales report.
For example, you could use the following suffixes:
- artist.bandcamp.com/merch/livestream?campaign=venuecollab
- artist.bandcamp.com/merch/livestream?campaign=promotername
Visits via these links will appear within the Campaign Tracker on the Tools page, whereas sales will appear in the sales report, which can be exported from the Sales section of the Tools page. The campaign will appear under the "referrer" column.
Merch
If you have limited edition merch that you plan to sell during the show, mention it whenever you promote it! Making it clear that this merch will only be available for the duration of the show should easily convince fans to attend.
Regular contact
Build up anticipation by regularly contacting your fans. Bandcamp allows you to send messages to your followers, and you can use this to engage in interesting ways. For instance, you could take requests, answer questions about your setup, or ask fans for stories they have about listening to your music. You could also encourage your existing fans to share the show details with their friends to help get the word out.
Speaking of messaging, Bandcamp allows you to target followers by location, so if you want to run multiple shows in different time zones, you can specifically target fans in those regions with details on the appropriate show.
Lastly, don’t forget to check the Bandcamp Artist Guide section on promoting your music for general tips. In particular, the section on contacting our Bandcamp Daily editorial team could be useful as we’re always looking for upcoming live streams to talk about.