Niche Marketing: Define Yourself

Jazz pianist.
Irish pub band.
Gypsy dance music.
Cajun. Zydeco.
Bagpipes--like the Catamount Pipe Band in the photo.
Cowboy ballad singer.
Love-song duets.
Classic rock covers.

Is marketing your music in a niche liberating and lucrative, or does it restrict your gig and development options? I tend to think that clearly defining your sound and consistently marketing to venues and audiences that connect with that sound is a more successful strategy than trying to be all musical things to all people, no matter how talented and diverse your musical skills may be.

My band partner and I both have long experience in rock bands, though mine were more garage party bands and he ran a serious bar band circuit in Connecticut some years ago. I came through a school district with a huge music program and have lifelong classical orchestral and concert piano training, as well as jazz band. I continue to love jazz and blues, and write copious quantities of jazz and country blues ballads.

We occasionally slink in a bluesy piece to close out the night, or if we see that there are people up slow dancing we might segue a few of those into the set spontaneously. But otherwise, we stick with being an Irish music band. 

We've even taken this one step further in defining who we are to distinguish ourselves from the slate of other Irish bar bands out there. We refer to our sound as The Music of Irish America, with an emphasis on the immigration experience. We also market specific historic music programs, playing authentic 19th century music at Civil War encampments and re-enactment events, and music of the early 20th century immigration era at history fairs and Irish cultural organizations. We have another specialty program of music based on Irish poetry and literature, which we perform at bookstores and writer's conferences.

Granted, these programs won't get us booked at the House of Blues, but there are thousands of bands who fit the House of Blues' performance niches--and most of them can't play where we do. Remember September rocks the legendary Toad's Place in New Haven, Connecticut, a venue which probably would not ever call us up, but, awesome as they are, they probably wouldn't work in the coffeehouse circuit that we play. An upscale resort or martini bar won't likely hire us unless there's an Irish-themed event, but they might well hire our friend Gena McGuire which is fine for us, and she probably doesn't get a lot of calls to play Half-St.-Pat's parties, either.  We all give up some options but gain others.

No matter your musical genre, it is important to both INCLUDE yourself in a clearly-defined category of music that potentially listeners and venues will understand and relate to -- rock, Celtic, klezmer, whatever--as well as to then DIFFERENTIATE yourself within that category to demonstrate which points you excel at, which is why folks should listen to you. If you are a Southern rock band, you don't want to waste your time marketing to folks who listen to nothing but opera, but you also want to tell Southern rock fans --and perhaps fringe cross-over folks like fans of classic rock, rockabilly and heavy country--why they should sit up and take notice of you.

Tell them who you are--and play your heart out.