Where Do You Start Marketing Your Act and Your Music?

 Throughout the years I have known many many bands that seem to think that their music will do all the talking. That somehow their fantastic songs are all they need to win the hearts of the listener and convert that person into a lifelong fan. 

This in a sense is true conviction that any artist should have about their music, and that's no bad thing because inside that is also how we all feel we discover music, on a personal level, but the reality is we wouldn't hear anything if it wasn't for marketing, which is the first basic concept to understand in developing any career these days in the music industry 2.0.

The independent DIY artists really needs to embrace marketing, and Cyber Pr head honcho Ariel Hyatt has put together a cool set of posts explaining in 3 stages how to increase your fanbase and income. 

Ariel starts off saying that bands and artists seem to be more concerned with increasing the numbers and getting new fans, which is no bad thing thing, but also puts the emphasis on focusing on the fans that they already have.

  These fans don’t need to be found, because they are already your fans. Studies have proven that it is much harder to make a new client and get them to purchase something than it is to get a client that already knows you and trusts you to purchase from you over and over. 

It's all very well building numbers, but engagement is the key, and keeping your act in your fans mind. Building a solid marketing strategy is key to getting new fans and keeping old fans interested. 

You can read her full post here

Links

http://arielpublicity.com/2012/04/16/basic-marketing-principles-for-artists-part-1-3/

http://arielpublicity.com/2012/04/23/basic-marketing-principles-artists-part-2-increasing-frequency-purchases/

http://arielpublicity.com/2012/04/30/basic-marketing-principles-artists-part-3-increase-amount-money-charge/

 

Learn from Ginger - a fan funding masterclass

This is pretty much the gospel when it comes to how to fan fund a record.

Ginger Wildheart has raised more than 5 times the money he asked for to make a triple album.

Sure, he has history and a fanbase to fall back on, but you should have some kind of active fanbase before you even attempt fan funding. Maybe not as many as Ginger, but the fabled 1,000 fans is a minimum really.

Read the interview with his manager here.

There's a lot I love about the interview:

People love music, they love great bands and they love a great story. The industry is very different than it used to be but in many ways is stacked more in the artist’s favour than ever before. With such a direct line into fans, an artist has complete creative freedom to explore, and at the same time fans also have complete control as to which projects they want to see come into fruition. Its an ideal scenario for both parties.

And then there's his view on what's essential for every artist:

The importance of honing your craft can never be underestimated. There are so many bands that rush to play live and record. It really is a false economy. You only get one chance to make a first impression, so make sure it’s one people won’t forget in a hurry. No amount of tweeting and Facebooking will make up for your band’s miserable live performance!

Read the whole thing as it has general insight for every musician plus great detail on fan funding.

Once you've read that go and watch Ginger's pitch for fan funding and look at how he updated pledgers with almost daily videos (the Activity area at the bottom of his pledge page). I know he has that heritage to rely on, but that didn't stop him doing a great job just to make sure anyway.

A lot to learn here.

 

Know your tribe

That image is from a post on my friends blog - Bloody Loud.

Check it out here.

The post is about a photographer who shoots people attending gigs and is fascinated by how the fans identify themselves with the band.

It's a bit of fun worth checking out, but there's a serious point that you can draw from it. As well as being gobsmacked by some of the shots!

Seth Godin wrote about 'tribes' as groups of people bound together by a common interest and it applies perfectly to music fans. Find posts about it or the book itself with a quick Google.

As an aspiring musician you must get to know how you fit into a scene and create your own tribe. If you don't know what you're about and where you fit in, how can possible fans be expected to do so?

GaGa did this perfectly and created a named tribe of 'Little Monsters'.

As well as suggesting that you check out Godin's book, I came across this article the other day which looks at a similar theme but not from the fashion / demographic point of view.

Your fans are your bread and butter—they are the ones who are literally going to keep you in business.  Most of us musicians don’t have the luxury of having a label or marketing machine behind us, but the good news is, if we’re willing to put in some effort ourselves, we don’t have to wait for that to happen.  If you’re a good musician, or have a good act, there is an audience out there that wants to hear your music.  You just have to identify and connect with that audience—find out who they are, and how to reach them.

Read that here.

 

Grow your fan base - experience & insight

This is an interview with an experienced and active manager who understands the modern music business - Randy Nichols of Force Media Management.

The interview is from the ever excellent Musician Coaching site. You might want to skip some of the early stuff about his own career (although it's interesting), but don't miss his thoughts on the industry, what it takes to make it as an artist today, using social media and more.

One of the biggest things I look at when I’m thinking about taking a client is whether or not the client is working really hard already. Not just working hard in the studio, but working hard on the street, getting to know people, talking to fans, using technology and doing everything a manager should be doing to build their own careers. The way I see it, a successful artist needs to be a good business person nowadays.  A manager can come in and help them run their business, but if they’re not already smartly running their business, chances are they’re not going to take my advice, they’re not going to follow everything I say, and they’re going to be in a bad situation quickly.

Read the whole post here.

Some fans are worth a fortune - even if they never buy from you!

Image by MoneyBlogNewz

I liked this article because it forced me to stop and think.

Not every fan is going to buy your music and other stuff - merch, tickets etc.

But they can still be very valuable in monetary terms - because their social network spreads your music.

Once upon a time, being a "diehard fan" meant buying a band's album, show ticket, T-shirt, limited edition signed LP — anything your earnings would allow. Today the term can have a very different meaning. You can be a "diehard" by blogging about everything the band puts out, posting links to your Facebook wall, re-Tweeting the band's messages, and commenting on its Soundcloud page, all without paying a dime.

Engaging with music in this way doesn't mean you're hurting your favorite band, either. Recent studies suggest quite the opposite: they show that fans who actively engage in social media bring more cash to the artists they love. Liking something on Facebook or re-Tweeting a favorite song can generate real world dollars.

Read the whole piece here.

 

Pull them in. Pushing won't work!

Great little video post from @thornybleeder.

It speaks for itself, but you can see more of Brian's tips at his blog here.

 

A tale of hard work and glory

Bob Lefsetz posted this the other day.

It's a response fom Fitz of US band 'Fitz & the Tantrums' (who are getting loads of attention in the US) to an earlier post where Bob talked about how he found out about them.

It's a great story of how talent and drive (remember the talent vs drive curve in our free eBook for musicians?) will get you where you want to go.

Let me start by saying that this band is truly an amalgamation of Old and New school music business paradigms and its been incredible to be a part of and witness.  I’ve been making music forever in this town with many musical projects that never went anywhere and certainly never got an ounce of recognition from the industry in the slightest.   With my heart finally broken one to many times by an industry that would never take notice I started working for a producer as his engineer and trying to pay the bills by writing music for film and television.

Read the whole thing and see how they earned their dues. 

Whilst you're at Bob's site I recommend reading these two recent posts too as they are full of brilliant insight:

On Perserverance.

Failure has to be an option.

And here's a video of Fitz and the Tantrums doing their thing. 

 

What to say to your fans

Don't dismiss this post as being off-topic. It's not.

In my advice to my management clients (but it also applies to readers of our music marketing blog) I am consistently finding myself talking about 'content strategy' and what they need to plan out and then pass on to their fans from their various online profiles.

That will be music (free tracks, DJ sets, covers, demos), videos (rehearsals, gigs, backstage, on the road, messing about), and......information.

That information will often be about them, their music, their releases, but it's also about other stuff that they're in to, their scene, other bands they like.

We try to plan out when things will be posted and released, but we also like to be able to react to what's going on in music and comment on it and be involved.

This is very powerful for an artist as it places them in the fan's sense of an overall love of music.

And, here's the point - we encourage artists to use tools to follow and discover things that they might want to Tweet, mention on their Facebook wall or blog about.

In order to be at the forefront of things happening in your scene, you need to monitor what's being said online and then get involved.

The best way to do this is to monitor keywords in a variety of ways. Once you have your keywords (things like 'London music', 'London Gigs', 'Post Rock', 'Post Rock London', 'Post Rock UK', 'Sigur Ros' - might be some of the things you'd monitor if you were a London, UK-based post rock band, for example).

You can then monitor these words using tools (Google Reader is the one everyone talks about but I'll show you a better way another time!) and regular searches on Twitter and pass relevant things on to your fans. That way you're not always talking about yourself!

In my example, if you pass on good and timely news about Sigur Ros or a new post rock band playing in London, your fans will appreciate it (as will the new band) and they will start to see you as an integral part of that scene.

This non-music post by a marketer talks about the same thing and gives some suggestions on using tools to keep abreast of your searches.

It’s a cliché, but the early bird really does get the worm. In this case, the quick and sly Internet marketer gets the traffic and the conversions.

Staying ahead of the competition in terms of social media presence is often an underrated weapon. However, in a world where there are potentially thousands of competitors, doing the little things often separates the leaders from the rest of the pack. Beating everyone to the punch and staying in the forefront of the buzz can take a website from obscurity to Internet prominence in a hurry.

Oh, I know – it’s physically impossible for you to monitor each blog, forum and social network 24/7. We’re not going to do that.

We’ll pick our spots so that even the upstart Internet marketer can do things that will move him forward.

Read it here.

2000 things to generate 20,000 fans

This is going to be interesting.

It's a year long project by Michael Brandvold on his blog where he is going to post 2000 ideas each aimed at getting him 10 fans. A great place to pick up tips on how to build your fanbase.

As he says:

Author David Meerman Scott made a honest and realistic quote, “if you want 20,000 fans you must do 2000 different things that each generate 10 fans.” This was my favorite quote from 2010 and I am going to take this on as a challenge for 2011 for an ambitious project to give you 2000 different things you can do to generate 20,000 fans.

I am defining generating fans in a few different ways:

1. A brand new fan who has never followed you before.
2. Engaging with existing fans to get them to participate.
3. Engaging with existing fans to get them to convert on an action.

Some of these items will apply better for larger acts, some items will work for any act. Some may work for you, some may not… not yet. Some these can be done with little effort, some will take some web development, some might even require some significant development. Some of these have successfully worked for me over the years. The point is to create a list of items that would cover a wide range of acts and abilities.

The post will be updated all year long, so it'll make a great reference to flick through at any time for ideas.

Go and check it out and bookmark for future reference.

How can I offer value to my fans?

I just took this video from the Topspin Blog.

If you can't see the video embedded below, you can watch it here on their blog - Ian Rogers Interview.

It's a great interview with Ian Rogers, CEO of Topspin - the artist direct-to-fan software - and it ranges over a wide range of topics, ALL of which are important for the diy musician to be thinking about and knowledgeable of!

I've timestamped the video below to start at the point (10 mins 38s) where Ian answers the question above and gives some great insight.

That's one great bit but the whole thing is well worth watching.

Let your fans ask you anything

I just joined Formspring.

It lets people ask you questions and I was inspired to give it a go by this article on Thorny Bleeder.

Have you checked out the latest popular social media site, Formspring?

It's a site which simply allows users to ask you anything, even anonymously, with no limits to the length of your reply. Fomspring encourages people to find out more about each other in a simple and fun way. Responses can range from straightforward to surprising and can lead to understanding something more about the people you know or find interesting.

This social website is growing very quickly, especially within the under-20 demographic, and already has over 20 million users. 

I'm about to find out if letting people reach out and ask you anything is a good idea. Although, I did say I thought it was awesome when Norman Cook added it to his site - as mentioned in this post.

So I figured I need to give it a go.

Don't overwhelm me as I have decided that if I get too many questions, I will just have to not answer them all. I might not get any!

But, as an artist - what a great way to build your fanbase - reach out and give your fans exactly what they want.

The emergence of crowdfunding

As part of We All Make Music's 'Best of 2010' series, Rocket Hub have put together this list of 4 signifcant developmenets in fan funding.

Fan Funding or Crowd funding - whichever you prefer - really came of age in 2010 and this list gives you some places to go and learn more about how you can use it in your music career.

Read the post here.

 

12 rules of keeping your fanbase engaged

This is a welcome return of Adrian at Buzzsonic.com to blogging rather than his recent habit of uncovering other blog's golden posts and tweeting them. Which he does brilliantly!

Read his post which dissects another article by Dave Allen of Gang of Four and pulls out a simple list of 12 Golden rules of fan engagement.

There’s a bunch of quotable bits from the whole piece but I thought that Dave’s twelve bullet points were a good starting point  for ideas on how to keep your fan base regularly and consistently engaged.

Not your usual, “the CD is dead” diatribe.

“Music fans are no longer patiently waiting for their favorite bands to deliver new music according to the old customary cycle – album, press release, video, radio, tour. No, the fan base has to be regularly and consistently engaged. Some Ideas:

Just read his post here - or follow through from there and read the original as well.

How to make your fans more dedicated

You'll have noticed that there are few sites that we regularly refer you to on the MiiM Dailies sites. That's because they invariably write really insightful stuff that we think will help you in your quest to be a successful musician.

One such is the blog at Mic Control. I batted a few emails back and forth yesterday with Jon Ostrow who writes the blog. His take on online music marketing is bang on.

The latest post looks at how to make more of your fans be more dedicated. Great post.

A 'Super Fan' is the most important player in your fan base. In chess, it would be your queen. Influential, proactive, genuinely dedicated, and most importantly willing to spend money on you. So of course, it makes sense that you want to cater to the needs of your super fans.

But what about all of your other fans?

Many will argue that by categorizing your fans and focusing only on the most dedicated, you are alienating those less committed to your art. However in reality, these boundaries allow you to understand your fan base at all levels of dedication and interest, and gives you the opportunity to convert weaker fans into more dedicated ones.

Read the whole post here.

 

Build excitement before an album release

I love pretty much everything Mic Control write - insightful and no bullshit.

This piece on how an artist can engage fans in the lead-up to an album release has several killer ideas that all artists can employ but those engaged in a direct to fan release should be doing something along these lines for sure.

If fan-funding has proven one thing, it is that dedicated fans desire an experience more than a product, and are willing to pay good money to make that happen. Any fan can purchase a new album for $9.99 from iTunes or download it for free in exchange for an email address through Bandcamp, so why would they be willing to contribute $50, $100, $500 and even upwards of $2000 or more to experience the same music?

It is not because of some incentives or prizes, though some of them can be really cool, but because the super fans of the world are in love with the idea that they can join their favorite artists in the experience of creating their next album. This allows the fans to feel more connected to the music, simply because they felt like they were there with you through the creative process as it all came to be.

Read it here.

Superfans and how not to upset them

If you are relying on your superfans to promote yor music, which is a perfectly accetpable thing to do, what are they expecting in return?

Generally some of your time and attention and some privileged access - but what happens when and if you do become succesful, at least partly thanks to their efforts, and you can't give them that time and access?

In his column for a Seattle Weekly blog, singer and songwriter John Roderick gets to the heart of the tension between superfans and musicians. Together, they walk a thin line. Superfans do work on behalf of the groups they love. Only to find themselves neglected or taken for granted down the road.

New fans come along and the group isn't able to give them the access they crave. Superfans get disappointed. They're happy to see groups grow and gain more traction. Yet, all of the sudden, if they deem themselves to be mistreated, they start to second guess that show they booked and the cookies they baked.

Read the insightful piece here.

Facebook fans - you find them, they don't find you

We are always looking for tips on how to best use facebook for musicians.

And this is a key little fact that has been unearthed in relation to brands interacting with consumers on Facebook but it can equally apply to bands.

More than 75% of people who joined a fan page did so as a result of an advertisement or invitation - rather than finding it themselves.

Given that it was recently shown that people are far more likely to 'like' a page that was already proving to be popular - the herding instinct in action - it must be worthwhile to kick off your fan page and encourage people to join by inviting as many fans as you can and by advertising.

This eBook from AllFacebook has some superb ideas on how to do just that - 3,000 fans in 30 days. Well worth a read.

In some respects, Facebook Pages are the new web pages. With more than 500m registered users and counting, Facebook is to brands today what the internet was to brands in the 1990s when the consumer internet was in its infancy.

For that reason, many brands are investing in a presence on Facebook, and the number of brands on Facebook is growing all the time.

But how can brands succeed with their Facebook Pages? How do they acquire 'fans'? Will Facebook eventually enable brands to spend less on advertising, as they can reach consumers directly where they're hanging out online?

Read the article here.

Connect your fans to make your fanbase stronger

This is a great little post and something that I'd never really thought about.

It sounds kinda obvious when you read it and undoubtedly will help you to build your fanbase.

So, you’re doing a lot of things right – you’re show is tight, you’re giving out some free tunes and encouraging people to share, you’re building up your mailing list and nurturing it with content, you understand social media.

You’re building fans.

Now what?

Keep repeating what you are doing?  Yep.

But what else?

Go and read the article here.

Use the internet to build a fanbase but don't forget to learn to be good!

I like this article since it looks at how some acts have used the internet to build a following and then turned that into commercial success - either on their own or with the step to a traditional record label.

An article on our blog looks at exactly what you should do to use the interent to build your fanbase.

But, the key thing for me in this article is at the end where the writer points out that you need to take the time to learn your carft - a theme that we bang on about endlessly.

While you’re waiting for your big break, you need to hone your skills in front of an audience. Getting signed is half the battle, but if you want to be a band that makes a difference, you need to perform consistently and write memorable songs on a tight schedule. 

Read the whole post here.

How to build your 'tribe' of fans

Older article on MTT that I came across yesterday - but a real corker.

If you're looking at all the ways that you can use for your music promotion, then you'll want an army of raving fans spreading the word.

You may well have heard of Seth Godin and his seminal book on marketing called simply 'Tribes'. Whether you have or not, some of it's finest principles are re-targetted in this article to apply specifically to music.

Fans of groups such as the Insane Clown Posse (the Juggalo), the Grateful Dead (the Deadhead), and Jimmy Buffet (the Parrothead), are all apart of communities that exists beyond the band. The music is what brought these groups of people together, and the loyalty to the music acts as the glue bonding them together, but the artists themselves have no responsibility to control the group - the community acts as it’s own separate entity, with its own leaders and followers.

These fans belong to a tribe.

Well worth investing five minutes to read in full here.