Band finding websites

daveyh

I've got a student who's asked but as I've never used them what's out there that's good? The only one I know of personally is joinmyband.

lustycourtier

party sounds

bobblehat

I haven;t found any of them to be particularly useful.

Tell them to look for local facebook groups.I'm sure there's likely to be a North Wales Musicians Wanted group or similar. 

These seem to be more active than the specialist sites and good for local info on Jam nights and the local scene in general.

jd0272

We've a local dedicated muso/band site here in the North East that gets loads of use. Surely there must be one in most areas?

siremoon

When we were looking for someone I got one timewaster from joinmyband but a good response from find-a-musician.com. 

You can browse the ads and send messages there for free but you need to pay the subscription to read messages from anyone else - It was about £5 a month.   I was reluctant to pay at first but afterwards felt it was worth it as we got 4 good people showing interest.  I cancelled it after we found someone.  If you don't want to pay you can answer an ad and include an email address in the message you send to the ad placer and ask them (nicely) to use it to contact you back. 

monquixote

I found several of the sites useful when I was in London, but pretty useless in Suffolk.

EricTheWeary

Joinmyband seems fairly active, Partysounds seems to get about one new ad a month.

close2u

jd0272 said:

We've a local dedicated muso/band site here in the North East that gets loads of use. Surely there must be one in most areas?

Which one you referring to?

Riffs?

 

 

@ OP

Bandmix - though annoyingly you have to subscribe to get contact info from ads

 

@ facebook recommending folk ... what sort of search do you do on facebook (I am not a facebooker but can log in using a friend's account if needed)

mike257

I've had the most contact back from JoinMyBand and from posting on Gumtree.  You have to expect to filter through a lot of inappropriate responses though, because everyone calls themselves "experienced" and "professional", even if they're 18 and only experienced at badly covering Metallica in their mum's garage.  You'll get good people too, just got to wait for them sometimes.

Facebook groups do seem to be growing in popularity for this kind of thing, although if they're anything like the regional gear trading ones you'll find there won't be just one for your area, there'll be half a dozen, because a load of people have seen the last one and gone "I fancy running one of them myself".  Then all the same people join every group and post the same ad six times over, for largely the same audience to read it six times over.  That said, I've had quite a few good deals on gear and some dep work and gig bookings out of Facebook groups so they're an increasingly valuable resource.

bobblehat

close2u said:

jd0272 said:

We've a local dedicated muso/band site here in the North East that gets loads of use. Surely there must be one in most areas?

Which one you referring to?

Riffs?

 

 

@ OP

Bandmix - though annoyingly you have to subscribe to get contact info from ads

 

@ facebook recommending folk ... what sort of search do you do on facebook (I am not a facebooker but can log in using a friend's account if needed)

This might be a good place to start.Worth posting something here as I'm sure someone will point them in the right direction for local groups. https://www.facebook.com/groups/139829146163095/?fref=ts

Grunfeld

I've successfully used musofinder in the past.

And Gumtree has worked too.

Gotta kiss a lot of frogs though:  Musicians are flakes. 

Bod

We've been using joinmyband to try and find someone.  This is an email from our bassist who posted the most recent ad for a guitarist for a hardcore/punk band.

Guitarist hunt update. 300 views of the adverts, and 4 responses. 2 people clearly hadn't read the ad, but sent me links to them playing jangly pop music. Another took the time to respond, although it was only to tell me he wasn't interested. The last said he lived 2 miles out of the city centre, and didn't want to travel that far to practise. If I could find somewhere closer to him, he'd think about it, but he knew there wasn't anywhere. 

Guitarists are twats.

guitarfishbay

joinmyband and gumtree are ok if you approach it seriously.  You have to be prepared to do a fair bit of administration though in my experience.

Personally I've had more luck networking through bands and at open mic nights though, and people networking skills are always important in music so I'd recommend the student doesn't rely purely on online methods of looking for bandmates.  Some people seem to do that these days and then get disheartened when they don't have any luck.