In a recent article on the HuffingtonPost Rapper, Singer, Entrepreneur wrote a great article that I think drives home the necessity of the new artist to think outside the box. Most of us don’t see the benefit in giving away our music and even though the artist is virtually an unknown with no established fanbase there is the mindset of ONLY making sales. This brings to mind the old saying of, don’t put the cart before the horse. What comes first? Do we increase our fanbase first and then make sales or do we make sales in order to create our fanbase.
In order to create sales the fanbase needs to be established first and foremost. To think the latter is only wishful thinking. Although I don’t agree with every aspect of this article such as ‘don’t do free shows’ there are many points I feel she hits the nail on the head. After all free shows when done right, can be used to promote specific web pages and drive those fans online to then be added to your fanbase.
Don’t Worry about getting signed! As a musician since I was 13 yrs old, I think it is engrained into our brains that we NEED to get signed, Ha! Why? Yes Labels can do certain things we may not not be able to do on our own, but the key benefit doesn’t really come into play until the artist is so BIG they need that major backing and until then (thanks to the internet) an artist can do everything they need on their own. Booking, Distribution, Marketing, Radio Ads, Publishing, Film/TV Placement, all of this can be done without major label support.
This is the key point that I think we really need to pay attention to:
#10. Email is the Holy Grail
What? Email? What is this, 2001?
Email is still, by far, the highest converting online marketing tactic. From my experience, your number of fans is determined by the number of emails you have.
- Not your Facebook fans.
- Not your Twitter following
- Not your number of Instagram likes on your cute puppy
And even crazier is that your number of fans = your email list opens, not your total email list. That number will probably be around 50 percent … so for every 2 emails you get, consider that 1 true fan.
How do you get these emails?
If you ask, you shall receive.
Once you give away your music for free and post it on all of the Creative Commons websites (make sure you put your social media links in all of the descriptions), you will begin to see new fans on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc.
Engage with them, authentically and from your heart. Ask them for their email address so that you can continue to send them free music / concert updates / anything that isn’t spam!
Since you now have someone on your team that is devoted to marketing your music, every new marketing idea you come up with should have an end goal of getting an email address.
