I just posted this on two other fora (for artists and clubs respectively), and I think that the wider mix of Mudcat's membership can provide a useful perspective on the subject:

Most artists and most clubs nowadays maintain websites of varying sophistication showing giglists and events schedules respectively, or promotional material & photos or galleries of pictures from past events, perhaps linking to blogs and club newsletters etc. Also, most clubs and artists maintain e-mailing lists of varying accuracy, gleaned in a variety of ways, and use them to promote their gigs and events with varying frequency.

And yet, several times a year I still come up against the "we don't do downloads, send us paper copies/photos etc". Or "tell me your free dates, I cannot look at your gig list" (myself, I always check a club's published bookings before approaching them).

Having a foot in both camps, i.e. both as an artist and in the organisation of Herga Folk Club, and maintaining the websites for both sets of needs, and also having looked at several hundreds of club and artist websites by now, I have a slight suspicion that club websites lag in sophistication behind artists' ones as a rule. Also that artists generally, even those that have been on the circuit for 40+ years, tend to be more sophisticated in their use of technology (the internet in this case) and generally willing to embrace new avenues in their efforts to reach their audience.

Do you feel the same (or otherwise), and why should that be so? Is there a case for clubs "upping their game" at all in this area?

In an age where most people have at least one email address (I have three, for different purposes), access to a computer and the internet, should we not think harder about more imaginative use of these tools?

And to those who would argue that the average computer literacy of our ageing audiences is much lower than that of the general public, I would say:
"But if we claim to want to reach younger potential audiences and if we purport to be co-stewards of the genre to pass it on the those that follow, then surely we need to embrace the world that these target audiences live in, anyway".

What are your views on this subject? And what innovative uses of the technology do you favour yourselves or wish that others would use?