Check out these 7 steps to build fans and launch your career.
1. Build Your Fan Lists
What is the one thing that all successful artists have in common – LISTS. Lists are the lifeblood of your business as a musician and without them it’s almost impossible to make a living from your craft.
2. Develop Relationships With Fans
The relationship with your lists will sustain you emotionally, creatively and financially over many, many years if you do it right.
However if you disrespect your lists, speak down to them, or treat them as just a source of income then you are likely to have a very short career in music indeed.
3. Learn What Fans Want
There exists two main schools (or Tribes) in the marketing of music, the Cool Kids and The Musicpreneur. These two tribes have very different thoughts when it comes to innovation in music and the idea of listening to your fans.
4. Create Work That Excites Fans
A musician today has two jobs; creating and communicating. Music Business Institute is primarily about teaching the latter rather than the former because we have to assume you know how to create exciting work. Creating is about honing your craft as a musician. Communicating is about learning how to market and sell what you have created. It’s why we call it the Music Business. Music + Business.
5. Identify Fan Type
OK, by this point you know that building lists, developing relationships with them, learning what they want and creating work that excites them is important. The ‘fan ladder’ looks to move someone from just being mildly interested in your music to where they will buy everything you ever produce (concert tickets, recordings, merchandise). You want to move them from being a ‘suspect’ to a ‘super fan’ or “true fans”.
6. Empower Super Fans
Successful artists always have their own small army of super fans. Beliebers (Justin Bieber), Swifties (Taylor Swift), Little Monsters (Lady Gaga), Lovatics (Demi Lovato) and Smilers (Miley Cyrus) are all examples of Super Fans.
7. Promote Work Using Events
The final step is about promoting your work using events. Firstly events they create excitement around your music. There are different types of events which can be used to promote your work. There are product launch events, tour announcement events, promotional events and many more.
Interested in learning more about legitimate promotional strategies that will get you to your first 10,000 fans and won’t rip you off? Get on our email list and you’ll get an automatic download of some great marketing strategies and you’ll also be automatically eligible for free Beta access to our training library launching at year end. Just put your email in the box to the right of this article.