Have you ever tried to manage more than one person? Have you ever tried to manage yourself? 

It’s quite hard to pull together for different people from 4 different backgrounds and bring them onto the same page and to run smoothly. 

Just like any other business you need to look at the way you manage your team members to make sure everyone’s on the same page and to make sure everyone is a line with the vision of the band and so that gigs runs smoothly recording sessions run smoothly and things like rehearsals are lined up and executed. 

Thankfully there are tools out there in the internet world that can be leveraged by musicians to help better manage their band and move forward. 

Look at any start-up or business that runs currently a look at the tools they use to manage their team. There may be some great ideas in there that you can use yourself to use for your band. Below are a few tools that you can be that can be used for free, so here they are. 

Slack 

Slack is a communication tool for businesses that want to have interdepartmental Communications without back & forth email trails. 

The way that it is used is that it is broken up into channels; there is a general chat usually called #general chat everybody has access to this channel who is in Slack, therefore, everyone in the business can post to this channel. 

There is also an opportunity to customise your channels and create your own. So, looking at musicians or a band how would you set this up? 

You would create a channel for gigs, you would create a channel for guitar tabs, you would create a channel for drums, you would create a channel for bass guitar, you would create the channel for agents. 

All these channels will be used for those specific people and areas in the team. For example, in the guitar channel this would be communications between you and the guitarist of the band. 

You can share feedback on the rehearsals of what may need be needed from the guitar in future or if you are learning a new song and you need to pass on guitar tabs or chords. 

In your gigs channel you may want to talk about the upcoming gigs so this way each band member who is in that channel gets a notification and they are aware of any upcoming gigs, or if you need to know they are available for a certain date. 

It’s a great way to make sure everyone is on the same page and is aware of what you were working on to manage the band. 

There is a paid option for using Slack however the free version would be enough to manage your band members. 

Buffer 

If managing a band is hard enough, trying to manage your social media plan on top of that adds more things to do. 

A lot of bands don’t focus enough on building their brand online, especially through social media channels, and at times their pages (like Facebook) lose activity, and essentially lose followers and fans! 

Don’t let this happen to you! Buffer is an online platform that lets you schedule your social media posts on various channels. There are other options out there but this one lets you use it for free and post on 3 channels. So, you can target the main channels like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to publish your posts. 

All you have to do with Buffer is upload your image or video, then write some words to support the imagery. Once you’ve done that, you can publish straight away or you can line up a future date to post.  

This comes in handy when you’re flat out doing other things with your band like recording or hitting the road on tour. What this means though is that you have to be well prepared with what social posts you want to post. 

You should line up a month of images and videos you want to schedule through Buffer. This way, it runs in the background and you don’t have to think too much about it. 

While you have posts scheduled, you can still post to your pages as per normal without interfering the process. 

A definite must if you want to stay on top of your social media planning and growth! 

Dropbox / OneDrive 

There are many options when sharing files in the cloud, so if there is one you prefer or think should be included, please mention it in the comments below. 

Setting up and storing your files on a cloud based platform is a great way to not only store files but to share files; and that is what the focus is here. 

If you have recorded some demos and want to share them with your fellow band members, or your producer, you can easily upload to Dropbox, and then send them the link.  

You can set permissions to the files you share so that it is only accessible to certain people; and you can even set an expiry date to the link. Meaning, that after 7 days (for example) that link will no longer accessible. 

From a storage perspective, it is a great way to keep track of all of your invoices and work agreements. If you gig frequently, you already know that by the end of the year, the invoices and work agreements pile up. 

There are ways to stay on top of all the files in your Dropbox if your folder structure is se t up in a manageable way. 

A suggestion would be to have a root folder then within that folder have the year that it is so for example 2019. 

Then within the 2019 folder you would have the month. Within the month folders you would have more folders indicating which items are being saved so for example invoices, demos, video clips or images for social media. 

Trello 

So far we have looked at team Communications social media planning and scheduling and file storage and sharing. 

The next part to look at is project management. 

Trello is an online platform that allows you to track and manage your projects that are ongoing. 

It allows you to set up cards and within these cards you can state what action item needs to be taken. Then you can move it to a lane whether it’s being scoped out, in progress, awaiting some sort of approval, or if the project card has been complete. 

These cards lie within a board; you can create multiple boards for different projects you’re working on, you can also have multiple cards. 

For example, a practical way to use Trello would be to set up a board and call it album. This would be great if you were in the process of planning and recording an album. 

Within the board you would create a lane called planning, another lane called in progress, another lane called waiting feedback, another lane called done or complete; within the planning lane create a card that says demo songs. 

Within this card you can enter all the details that have required to demo a song. So this would include recording the demo and then also people offering feedback on the demos. 

Another card to have on the planning stream is album artwork. 

On this card you can list potential artists or photographers who may want to contribute to the assistance of your album artwork. 

You can also have cards for writing songs, editing songs, mixing, producing, mastering; anything to do with the recording of the album you would put it in a card within this Trello board. 

It’s a great way to keep track of what has been completed what is in progress and what is left to do. 

Effective project management is crucial to ensure that things get completed on time and that nothing gets overlooked. Every business uses some sort of project management tool and even has a project manager to manage these projects. 

You may need to determine who the project manager is going to be within your band and update the Trello cards when necessary. 

Conclusion 

There are many other tools out there that would help you manage a band effectively and efficiently. 

Whether it’s team communications, cloud storage, file sharing, social media planning, project management; it is all crucial that you have something set in place so that you can run your band as smoothly as possible. 

There are many options for bands and businesses alike to use his platforms for free. So there is no excuse why you wouldn’t jump on the bandwagon and get your band running at 110% so you can reach that next level and focus on writing songs and also writing quality songs.