Music Funding 101
The Way The Band Looks
There are usually two schools of thought when it comes to a band's appearance with regards to potential sponsors. One is that a band should be ready to change anything and everything about its appearance, so as to give the sponsor what it wants. After all, it's all about the music (so the appearance should not matter), right?
The other thought is that a band should not change anything at all; it should just find a sponsor that likes how the band looks now. After all, the band wouldn't want to come across as being fake, right? That wouldn't make the fans think very highly of the sponsor, now would it?
Well, from my experience with bands that look into hiring us for radio promotion, I would say that the second viewpoint will probably prevail in most cases. With that said, I would advise sponsors to search for bands that already have the look that is needed, and bands should keep looking until they find potential sponsors that want what the band already has. If a band only has one possible sponsor to talk to, then this might be more difficult, but TalentFunding.com hopefully will give both sides plenty to search for and choose from; settling for a situation that does not suit you should not happen.
Then, the money situation comes into play. If a "not-so-great-fit" sponsor really wants a band to change its look, and offers a lot of money for the band's campaign, things become more difficult. It's in these situations that I recommend the band consider creating an "alternate" version of itself, just for the purpose of filling the sponsor's needs. By doing so, band members can feel that they are almost "helping out" someone else's band, and thus not really changing their own band. Of course, in these situations the band and sponsor will have to contractually specify if the original version of the band can perform or not, because it will contain members of the "new" band that is exposing the sponsor.
Some bands, notably "cover bands" (bands which just play other well-known bands material) will more easily be able to mold their appearance to suit a sponsor. And "tribute bands" (bands which model themselves exactly after another well-known band) are very well suited to changing, provided they don't mind leaving their true love: the band that they are giving tribute to. The good news for sponsors is that cover bands are very, very plentiful, so they should be easy to find. Cover bands make good money playing familiar songs that fans know from other popular bands, and this means clubs are willing to pay cover bands more than they pay "original music" bands.
Tribute bands are far fewer, so more searching will be needed to be done by the sponsor. And tribute bands may be so involved in the persona and look of the band that they are giving tribute to, that it may be too big of a conflict of interest for them to change their appearance to appease a sponsor. So, like everything else, it's give-and-take; you do a big search and hope that you have enough to work with.
A note for sponsors: If you really think that a band needs to change to have "your look," you might consider a test, whereby the band keeps their normal look for a period of time, so you can judge results. Maybe a separate test market could be chosen which would not cause any harm if it did not go as planned.
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