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Want to help bring your new favourite bands to your town? Get started here.

Remember that the two users who do the most to promote any gig online will receive a complimentary ticket. Start here by registering your Facebook, MySpace and Twitter details which you can use to start spreading the word.

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ARE YOU AN ARTIST?

As you know only too well, the music industry is changing rapidly. The old certainties are falling away and everything is up for questioning. This is a great time to take control of your career and when it comes to playing live, Owngig is here to help. We know that while you don't want to lose control, your priority is about making the music. We're here to help with making your fans live experience as great as possible.

Where to play

Want to know where you have the most fans? More importantly want to avoid playing to the proverbial two men and a dog? Owngig's artist tools track fan demand to ensure tour planning is carefully tailored to exactly the right places where you have the most music lovers. You'll also know exactly how much to charge for tickets. ...and as the music industry is changing, we think it's important for musicians themselves to change with it. So we've developed some Do's and Don'ts important for everyone in the music industry...

Do's

Be Passionate

You're not selling stationery. This is music - a cultural good, and one that attracts some of the most enthusiastic fans of any art form currently in existence. Share their passion.

Be Honest

Be honest about what you don't (and explain why) and above all, engage. This is not the time to be aloof. By expressing your passion for music you're helping to establish that you care, that you're not just in it for the money. These are all vital to establishing the long term viability (and credibility) of you as an act.

Be Open

The music business doesn't have a great reputation for being truthful or straight up with people. As the late Great Hunter S. Thompson said,

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

People's expectations are such they respond very favourably when you step outside of the normal codes of behaviour and are straightforward and honest.

Use Social Media

This relates into the first two points. If you're just starting out, there is no better way of establishing yourself with the public then using social media. It's cheap, it's accessible and it creates a direct dialogue with fans. Five easy steps...

Set up a Twitter account
Set up a Facebook page
Check out your last.fm page - upload photos - and make it look as good as possible. Find out what the fans favourites are as well
Make videos of you playing live and put them on YouTube
Devote time to all of the above - make sure you spend time every day engaging with fans. Don't just expect them to maintain themselves.

Use Owngig

OK, so I guess we would say that but we offer an easy way for you to establish fan demand, get paid, and also work out where to play, all without the traditional hassle of a promoter. We offer buttons for you to stick on site, and your social pages in order to start to promote yourself directly to your audience.

Don'ts

Don't Be Corporate

We're not talking about corporate in the suit and tie sense of the word, more, as we said above, don't fit the aloof model of the too cool for school rock star. In the age of the internet it doesn't work any more. Your behaviour is on display 24 hours a day and bands are brands. When up and coming stars Wavves recently had a drugs and alcohol meltdown on stage in Spain and started insulting the audience, it was on YouTube within hours with hundreds of comments from angry fans. Then, the next day it was on the front of Pitchfork. Instead, consider the following quote from Tad Kubler, guitarist of The Hold Steady said: "If some kid is going to take 10 minutes out of his day to figure out what he wants to say in an e-mail, and then write it and send it, for me to not take the 5 minutes to say, dude, thanks so much - for me to ignore that? I can't."

Don't Overhype

With openness comes a danger - particularly when allied to passion. Everything you say online is archivable and indexable forever, so be careful to manage fans expectations. Don't be afraid to say you don't know, or even just no. Don't be a politician.

Don't Ignore Fans

This reinforces the points we've made in the rest of the article. If you have a social media presence, you need to maintain it. If you're feeling swamped (and what a nice dilemma to have), then one thing you may want to consider is posting into your website, MySpace presence or Facebook page is an FAQ where you can answer the common questions. But once you've started a dialogue you have to continue (and reap the benefits). Get a good mobile phone for posting on the road!

Don't Overshare

With all of the tools available, it maybe tempting to reveal every aspect of your life in order to establish a rapport with fans. Don't. Firstly it could lead you to reveal things you'd regret. But more importantly, it's not good to live your life so much in public - not everyone will love everything you do and you need to have enough in reserve to deal with the haters. Keep some things back from the fans. While we live in an age of instant information and total transparency, think how little you knew about the bands you were into growing up. Be selective.

Don't Be Closed-minded

These are rapidly changing times for the music business and things are not going to be as they were before. This presents as many opportunities as threats. Keep an eye on what's happening in the industry and technology for any opportunities you can use.

How Owngig.com can help you

Owngig.com allows fans to come together and bid for the acts they want to see. Once the level of demand is high enough to pay for the artist then we get in touch with them and arrange the gig. As an artist, we give you a channel to collect demand from fans from day one so that you can play more concerts to promote yourself. What's more unlike traditional promoters we collect geographical information so that if there's a sudden demand in Seattle or a rise in interest in Indiana, you'll be able plan accordingly.

Owngig isn't the only site out there that can help you with taking control of your career. Here are a few sites out there that we've seen that can help you market yourself successfully.

CDBaby

Want to sell music online without a record label? CDBaby will get your music on iTunes for a small fee, while giving you a much larger cut compared to a traditional record label.

TuneCore

Similar to CDBaby, TuneCore offers artists the ability to publish your music to multiple platforms - including iTunes, Emusic, Lala and Amazonmp3 from a single site for a small fee.

TheBizmo

The Bizmo makes easily embeddable widgets for band pages that allow musicians to easily sell merchandise and music through a professional looking interface - without fans having to leave your website. As this is a widget it can also easily be embedded on popular social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace.

TopSpin

TopSpin helps musicians use technology to connect directly with fans using its using information, analytics and web technology. For a case study of its work, check out how they promoted the David Byrne and Brian Eno album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.

Last.fm

Finally don't forget about last.fm. Make sure you have a bio up there, and make sure you list any tours you play up there as well. It's free and probably the most popular music social network out there and should be a part of any musician's marketing plan.