Everyone wants music videos for their band and videos are critical if you want to expand your fan base. The problem is usually that you need time, money, and a solid idea to get a video going. So what do you do?

Get your fans involved, just like the band Violent Kin did. They asked their fans to create videos, but added an incentive by turning the whole thing into a fun contest with some rules that will help expand their fan base.

Here are the details: The band has $1000 cash for 1st place and prize packs from local business for 2nd & 3rd. Fans vote through the Violent Kin Facebook page and the video with the most “likes” will be the grand prize winner. Very simple right?

But the band has added the rules that all the entrants must live close to the band’s hometown of Saskatoon, and must be 18 years or under. This way they’ve not only encouraged the local Violent Kin fanbase to grow, but they’ve targeted specifically an age group where they want more fans. I talked to Maygen from Violent Kin to discuss the details:

What inspired the crowd sourced contest video idea?

Our stop-motion video for “Keep Your Balance” was made completely by the band. We sent it to MuchMusic on the off chance they might play it and it was picked up by The Wedge. Being first-time music video makers and making it to the MuchMusic airwaves was a huge everything-is-possible moment. So, to share that idea with young people is huge for us.

How did you acquire sponsorship?

Adding prize packs for second and third places made our contest that much bigger and also was an opportunity to partner a bit with the community. We thought of lifestyle stores loved by young people (p.s. they had to be gender-neutral). We know the people who own or are closely involved with those businesses and we just asked them. We’re fortunate that everyone we asked agreed to be involved.

What are the benefits of crowd sourcing your video?

I’m most interested in how our song will be interpreted by different people. When you only do one video you don’t get to experience that. Another benefit, of course, is the exposure for our band. Our band started off based in New York and we’ve spent a lot of our time touring, so this could be our first real introduction to young people at home.

What do you think of crowd sourcing?

This is our first experience with crowd-sourcing so we’re looking forward to seeing what springs from it. The best possible situation is that someone makes a video we are so in love with that we get it and submit it to Much (wouldn’t that be cool for a teenager to have their video on TV?)

So with some great ideas Violent Kin are able to target a younger fan base, expand their YouTube content, and provide fans with a way to interact and be a part of Violent Kin’s music. The beautiful part is that you could do this too. It takes a fan base of a certain size, and some finess with businesses, but all of the steps are definitely doable.

We’ll keep an eye on this contest and post the video on our page when the contest closes.

Music Consciousness
Voyno