1. What is Guguchu?
Guguchu’s mission is to provide online tools for bands that are easy to use, powerful and useful. It offers rich products for gig booking, fan development, communication, promotion, distribution, and more.
2. Who is Guguchu for?
Guguchu’s tools are for bands and their band manager from the day of starting a new band to when you make it big.
3. What does Guguchu do for bands?
Guguchu offers online tools that support the “platform” band. It offers tools for gig booking, fan management, fan communication and monetization through the sale of music and merchandise. Guguchu also tells you who your fans are, where they are and how valuable they are as fans allowing bands and their managers to do highly targeted and effective marketing. Do you want to know where your fans are? We tell you so that you can play your next show in front of a sell-out crowd.
4. How do I become famous?
Grow your fan base. The best indicator of a band’s success is the size of its fan base. The more people listen to your music, the larger the crowds will be at your shows and the more people will buy your music and merchandise. We put a lot of emphasis on this aspect of band life. Play more shows, add your fans to your contact list and communicate regularly with your fans.
5. Why do you emphasize the ease of use of Guguchu’s tools so much?
Internet-based promotional DIY tools are extremely powerful in helping you build and sustain a fan base as long as you know how to use them and only if they don’t distract you from playing shows and recording new work. Band promotion is complex but technology should make it easier, not harder. We keep things easy and intuitive so that even complete novices to online marketing find it incredibly easy to promote music.
6. What sets Guguchu apart from its competitors?
Our competitors have been around for some time. Guguchu offers the most innovative solutions for bands and their managers. Guguchu was founded because we felt that the existing services do not serve the needs of bands sufficiently. Either they do not sufficiently harness the power of the Internet or they are too complicated to use and make the lives of musicians harder instead of easier. Guguchu’s mission is to provide online tools for musicians that are easy to use, powerful and useful.
7. How much does it cost?
Guguchu is free for everyone and we want to keep it that way for some time. We will at some point start charging for the services but the emphasis will be on fairness and on supporting bands no matter in which stage they are on their growth path.
8. I am so busy with work, rehearsing, recording and managing my band. How can I possibly find time for Guguchu?
Our tools are easy to use and intuitive so that you will find it incredibly easy to use them. For example, Guguchu allows you to follow and update all your social networks from your central dashboard.
9. I am using Facebook and Twitter. Why sign up for another service?
Guguchu integrates all your social networks so you can follow and update them from your central dashboard.
10. What role do my fans play?
Your fans are everything! Your fans are your most valuable asset! Always give your fans the attention they deserve. They are your most loyal friends and supporters. If you are there for them, if you communicate with them regularly and reward them for their loyalty, then your fans will not only pay your bills but will promote your music for you. This is why our tools put so much emphasis on managing the relationship with your fans.
11. Can I sell my music on Guguchu?
Yes. Guguchu’s online store Guguchu Direct TM allows fans to purchase individual tracks, EPs or LPs with one click via download straight from your band page. You keep 100% after Paypal cost. Soon we will integrate with other important retail channels so that your fans can find your music and merchandise in their preferred online store.
12. How much does Guguchu keep from my music sales?
Zero! We think that you should be the main beneficiary from your music. This is why you keep 100% of every track you sell through Guguchu Direct TM after Paypal cost.
13. Should I give away music for free?
Yes. We encourage bands to make available unreleased tracks and demos via download for fans who have signed up to your mailing list. Free exclusive preview tracks encourage viral spread, help create a good buzz and are a good means to make people sign up to your mailing list and to reward them for their loyalty.
14. How can I improve my income from music immediately?
The simplest way to immediately improve your income from your music is to sell more music and merchandise at shows. Next time you play a gig, make sure you pack enough CDs, invest in professionally looking colour prints for your album cover and CD labels and actively offer your CDs and merchandise to your fans at the show. Talk to the owner of the gig venue and ask him to exhibit your CDs and merchandise at the bar. Place it at the bar before getting on stage and point it out to your fans when you are on the mic. Make this a habit each time you play.
15. Can you tell me a simple way to grow my fan base?
Next time you play make sure that you take a clipboard, a mailing list and plenty of pens with you and make people sign up to your mailing list. After you played, get each band member to run around with a clipboard, talk to your fans and make them sign up. When you get home, make sure that you add the contact information of your new fans to your contact manager on Guguchu. We also find that a brief thank you message to your fans goes a long way and makes your fans feel appreciated.
16. How can I play more gigs?
Guguchu offers a database of over 15,000 venues. Set up a professional Media Kit on Guguchu, send it to a venue operator and track the response. See which tracks they played, if they looked at any photos and whether they like what they see. We notify you when a venue operator is looking at your Media Kit. Pick up the phone and secure the next show.
17. How can I keep my fans engaged?
Regularly feed interesting news to your fans and engage your fans to communicate with you. As with any good conversation, the communication between you and your fans should never be one-sided. Good communication ensures that fans know about your online presence and that online fans know about your live shows. The relationship between you and your fans requires continuous attention and the emphasis is therefore on using limited amounts of time wisely. Guguchu fully integrates with Facebook, MySpace and Twitter and offers an HTML newsletter customizer so that you can manage all communication from one central place.
18. My bro is an awesome musician but he still can’t afford a living from music
Send him the link to Guguchu.com and make him sign up. Guguchu’s easy to use rich online tools will help your brother play more gigs, grow his fan base, sell more tracks and earn more money from his music.
19. I am not a musician. Can I still join and participate in Guguchu?
Not at this stage. Guguchu offers tools for bands but we are working on solutions which will allow you to discover bands that use Guguchu’s online tools.
20. How do you see the music landscape change in the future?
While the music industry is undergoing significant change, we still believe that only a few bands will make it to the zenith of the music industry based on a combination of their extraordinary talent, hard work and a good portion of luck. However, there is a large community of immensely talented bands who will be able to effort a comfortable lifestyle with the help of the right promotional tools. Guguchu’s tools help thousands of bands to grow their fan base and increase their music and merchandise sales so that they can afford a comfortable lifestyle while living their dream of being a full time musician.
21. Will Internet promotion ever replace the record labels?
No. Record labels are highly professional organizations with decades of experience in production, distribution and artist marketing. Record labels have great relationships with producers, music distributors, the media, manage royalty collection on your behalf and have an army of staff to help you organize tours and concerts. The Internet has emerged as a powerful medium that is used by both record labels and independent bands to promote music. Bands and band managers use Guguchu’s tools as a powerful way to promote music.
22. How can you start a music business when the whole world talks about the end of the music industry?
We think that the music industry is anything but dead. It is true that the industry is undergoing change, but we see change for the better. We are heading towards a music industry that is fairer, more democratic and which benefits primarily the artists. The emergence of the Internet and of businesses such as Guguchu has brought about huge opportunities for thousands of artists and enables them to live their dream and make a living from music.
23. What is the Guguchu way?
The principal of growing a fan base by playing more shows, adding fans each time you play and maintaining your fan base. We also refer to it as the growth spiral and we show it in the illustration on the landing page on Guguchu.com. Once you have set up a basic band profile and uploaded some of your tracks, Guguchu’s tools help you book more shows, add new fans each time you play and maintain the relationship with your existing and new fans until you play the next show, and so on.
24. Why was Guguchu founded?
Guguchu was founded because we felt that the existing services do not serve the needs of bands sufficiently. Either they do not sufficiently harness the power of the Internet or they are too complicated to use and make the lives of musicians harder instead of easier.
25. What is a Guguchu?
The Guguchu, or Toro-roro, is a small pyramid-shaped hollow earthen instrument. It is played upon by boys and girls in Southern India at the chhali bechna or angan dances. In using the instrument, the player pronounces with a loud voice the word “toro-roro” or “kokho-cho” and there is a shrill reverberation. It was described by Henry Balfour and B. M. Blackwood in “Ritual and Secular Uses of Vibrating Membranes as Voice-Disguisers”.
26. When was Guguchu founded?
Guguchu was founded in 2009 and is based in Brooklyn, New York.
27. Who are the people behind Guguchu?
We are young, idealistic and we are passionate about music. Approximately half of us are musicians and play in bands.
28. What’s next?
Sign up to Guguchu now and start using the powerful tools for bands and band managers.
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