Musicians, Deprioritize Social Media
what's required, what's not, and how to use your energy to better connect with fans
This week I had a subscriber request that I write about alternate (non-social media) ways to build and nurture your fan community because they, like me, and many others are made miserable by the vertical video scroll.
Before diving into this post, I’d love for you to participate in a quick exercise with me. Rank the top three places you’ve discovered artists (wait for it) that you actually became a serious fan of. If you’d like, feel free to drop your response in the comments!
I’ll list mine:
Bands my friends discovered online. My cousin Ben has immaculate music taste. He took me to see a band called Bob Vylan last year that immediately became one of my new all-time favorite bands. My friend Sam texted me about an artist called Liquid Mike last summer that I’ve been playing nonstop. My buddy Jared sent me a Seattle band called Great Grandpa whose 2019 album is, to me, an absolutely perfect record. (They’re finally preparing to release a new one on Run For Cover!) If you’ve spoken to me in person for more than five minutes in the last year, there’s a 100% chance I’ve referred one of these bands to you. Because bands that are good enough to refer to your friends are good enough to refer to your friends.
Call me old fashioned, but trusted media outlets - college radio stations like KEXP and KALX, NPR tiny desk, and BIRP.FM.
Local bands who I’ve heard are great live. Gumby’s Junk, Sarah Coolidge, and Mr Stranger are all bands who I checked out specifically because I heard they were amazing live from multiple people. I’ve also been added and sent music by countless local bands on social media, and frankly, they all blend together. Not that they’re bad, but adding me isn’t enough to catch my actual attention - it’s just part of the noise of social media. In contrast, hearing first hand from friends about a band they want to go see again is exciting and it probably only happens a few times a year.
Do I think my music discovery habits are typical of the average person? No, but I’m also a high-value fan, not a passive listener. I’m the kind of person who buys t-shirts and tickets and recommends artists to my friends, neighbors, allergist, etc. In short, I’m the kind of fan that makes artists money. You want fans who act like me.
So Where Do You Get Fans?
Most artists following general social media trends act with the hope that social media will be the top of their funnel, which is to say, where most people hear about their music for the first time. This is *a* strategy, but it’s not a good strategy for reaching every audience. I met with a client recently who is getting his awesome NorCal jazz/jam project off the ground. Some of his core demographic may be Instagram users, but most of them probably aren’t on TikTok.
Having social media as the top of your fan funnel (calling it that is gross, sorry) can be an effective route if that’s where your target demographic is, you’ve got an air-tight visual brand, and you’re a smart social media marketer. But for many artists, busking would be a faster, easier, and more impactful way of making new fans, not to mention more fun than joylessly cranking out another reel. Also busking brings music back into the real world. If you can busk, please busk.
Live Shows
I wish more bands put more effort into creating magical, inspired live sets. Yes, partly for selfish reasons, but also because seeing a truly amazing live show is the kind of thing fans can’t wait to tell other people about. It’s the kind of thing the sound guy tells the talent buyer about.
Treat each live show as an experiment to see how much fun you can have and share with the audience. Or if you’re a sad band, see how profoundly miserable you can make them.
BTW, I wrote a 9-page workbook all about how to book shows and tour regionally without taking time off work. Check out if you’re interested in growing your following in multiple markets. You can pick one up here!
IRL Communities
Below are two of my favorite places to plug in with local fan communities.
College radio stations are excellent, run by music goblins, and almost every market has at least one nearby. Learning about the shows and DJs at your local station, befriending one or two, submitting your music, and attending shows they put on is a great way to get plugged into those scenes. College stations put on festivals and concerts that you should be playing! Go befriend those goblins.
House Shows are another great way to plug into a local community of music superfans. Websites like Concerts In Your Home are great ways to build your audience and make money doing it.
Small Potatoes
Before you go turning up your nose at this small potatoes community hoopla, please consider how many of your social media followers convert to merch sales, concert tix, etc.
I think all the time about how if you have 1000 fans who spend $8.4 a month on your music, that’s a six-figure salary. You could keep trying to hit the jackpot with a viral hit on social media OR you could put on your big they pants and start collecting your first 1000 real fans, one at a time, if necessary.
The magic of this is that as you grow and nurture your fanbase, it will naturally grow more quickly as more people share your music with people in their lives. The more you retain and connect with your fans, the closer you come to this goal.
The inverse of this is an artist who has a viral moment but no systems in place to retain and nurture their fans, so as soon as their viral moment is over (they’re called moments for a reason) they’re right back to trying to strike gold. Even if social media is the top of your funnel, be sure to build the bottom out too. Keep reading to learn more about how to do that.
Baseline Socials
This is a post about how to get off of the social media hamster wheel, but if you’re an artist trying to grow a career, I think it’s good for you to have an instagram for your project where your broader friend group can follow your band and people like talent buyers can look at what you’re doing.
For instagram, and any other social media platform you use, at a bare minimum, you should have a few quality pinned posts where someone who has never heard your music before can get a good sense of what your band looks and sounds like. This can be live videos, music videos, photos with music, whatever.
You should also have a link to your most important fan-retention thing, like email list sign up or Patreon or whatever. If someone wants to listen to you on Spotify, they’ll figure it out. Direct your traffic to somewhere people can support what you’re doing. More about your most important fan retention thing in the next bit.
At a healthy minimum, use your social media like a website - post updates about upcoming shows, releases, and merch. But if it doesn’t feed your soul, please don’t waste your life trying to make viral reels to feed the beast.
Your Most Important Fan Retention Thing
If you want to make money as a musician, you need to retain and nurture your fans, and by definition, there’s going to be a social component to that. There’s also going to be a marketing component. But if you’re doing it right and authentically, it should feel like a clear and aligned extension of your art.
You need to give your fans opportunities to support you over and over and over. How do you want to do that?
Think about your fans and who they are. (Don’t overthink this, they’re probably a lot like you!) Think about your art and the easiest ways to share your music or the process around making your music. Build a way for fans to buy into what you’re doing (literally, with money) and stay connected. Pour your heart into one of these income-generating fan nurturing structures or do a new one of your own!
Standard email newsletter selling exclusive merch
Patreon by offering consistent exclusive content
Sell access to a private discord where you chat with your fans about your hyperfixations and release voice notes
Love performing and can’t get enough of it? Have a cool home studio? Twitch might be a nice fit for you!
Love writing long winded articles about music? Consider Substack!
And for goodness sake, get out into the streets and play us some music.
Hope you all are having a great week! Sending nothing but love and a suggestion that you listen to the new Great Grandpa single.