How Musicians Get Their First Fans In 2022 // INTERACTING WITH YOUR COMMUNITY
So trying to get your first fans is always
tough and whether that’s your first ten or 10,000 there are techniques and a mindset to
be in – to make it happen as well as techniques that make it more effective. And while for some of you, it’s obvious what
to do in your community to find fans – I find time and time again that people ask me what in
What the hell do they do to talk to people in their community?
So I’m going to show you examples of how
you should interact with your community so you can do the most important work you can
be doing for your music. So in this video, I will show you how to interact
with your community and get your first fans. Hi, I’m Jesse Cannon a music marketing nerd
who’s teaching musicians how to grow their fanbase from zero to 10,000 fans and this
is Musformation.
Ok so some of you may not know this but this
is part 2 in a series where I am discussing some of the most important work you can be
doing to build a fanbase which is finding and building your community. So if you’re wondering how you find these
communities or what the hell I’m talking about when I mention the spreadsheet of all your
targets, well you should probably go back to the first video in this series and that
video is linked on the screen or in the description below. Making This Effective
Ok let’s do some quick theory and if you are one of those viewers who are tired of my theory
this video has chapters so click past this section but also know you’re a lazy loser
who is going nowhere cause you don’t want to listen to me rant um j
k? So if you
are new here you probably don’t know that I think Facebook ads are the biggest con musicians
who don’t yet have a huge fanbase to fall for – since tons of con artist YouTubers selling
their services or even worse courses with tons of obvious information pretend this is
musicians only hope for building a fanbase since they have never actually built one.
But one of the many reasons I tell musicians
to never use Facebook ads is they never grow you within your community. They target music fans who are gullible enough
to take recommendations from an ad on the most cursed boomer playground on the internet. Whereas this work finds the tastemakers, the
movers and shakers in your community, and people you have things in common with that you can
grow relationships with your entire life. But now that that’s out of the way – I feel
the need to remind you of a few social graces of the Internet since I see so many of you
breaking them all the time.
1. Remember what you’re trying to do here is
make a lifelong friend in your community that you have things in common and will
enjoy the company of as you do cool things for years to come. If you think this person sucks or don’t
like them and force it you’re gonna waste your time. When the vibe is off this is going nowhere. That’s not to say you always clique with someone
at first but if you interact with someone regularly and they are not making you feel
good you don’t have to force it. Go into each of these interactions as trying
to build a friendship with them that will last for decades and run like hell if the
red flags start waiving since in my experience you never regret running from giant waiving
red flags.
2. Be yourself what makes genuine connections
with people is not faking your interests and who you are. Ask people questions you’re genuinely interested
in and hope for the best if the vibe doesn’t happen that’s how it goes and it may happen
one day. I started conversations with people that
didn’t work and three years later we meet again and become lifelong friends. 3. Let’s also remember a relationship is an ongoing
thing.
Far too many of you try to get married before
you’ve even gotten past the first date. Your pitches to collab and trade shows will go
way better if you have bonded and had a casual conversation first. 4. If you are approaching a musician who isn’t
in a huge band doing DM slides is cool. But when approaching industry professionals
or what I like to loosely call “adults” since I consider myself one of these – a DM
slide can be super unprofessional. I hate Facebook and Instagram messages from
strangers to a degree that’s probably irrational and make my assistants answer them but I know
when I go out with my very important music business friends they say the same thing.
Whenever possible if you are trying to approach
a professional in the business do it over email or that cursed linked-in site. Reaching out to fellow musicians
Ok, so some of the most crucial work of finding and building your community is reaching out
to other like-minded musicians of a similar size to you. Particularly those who have about the same
size fanbase or are a little bigger than you. So let’s say you’ve established some targets
and have researched them enough that you can do a DM slide or an email and are ready to
reach out.
I simply start with a genuine comment and
I know many of you you don’t find the music of these people to be anything to write
home about but find something nice to say as it shows vulnerability and the only way
we ever connect with people is through that but I don’t want to get too self-help so let’s
keep going. After you’ve been nice to them and said who
you are let’s strike up some back-and-forth conversation before you give them the ask. That could be that you’d love them to write
a song with you, do a feature on your song, or trade shows in each other’s cities. You can also go a much more casual route of
asking them about their music.
If you like their mix ask who did it, if you
like a synth patch or a vocal effect ask about that. Maybe you ask them where they buy their gear. I mean you could even hip them to this super
helpful YouTube channel you’ve been watching! The point is to start connecting and people not
replying is to be expected this work works when you do it consistently. But so we’re also talking about how you get
your first fans in addition to how you connect with other musicians and some of the ways you
get those fans is by making these musicians a part of your community by being supportive
of them.
After you connect with them do what I suggest
doing in your consistent sustained promotion you make Spotify music and talk DJ sets and
include them and tag them on social media as well as add them to your Spotify artist
playlists and I talk about this in my 60-day plan for promoting your song if you want
to go deeper that’s linked in the description. And if they drop a new song you can also retweet,
and share their story. Hopefully, they will reciprocate the support
but what I often suggest to artists if they have supported that artist is to just ask
for some support when you have a big event like a new single or music video. If you have 10 artists who will do this for
you that is small but similar you will be well on your way to getting early fans who
start to spread the word about you. And a pro tip I have for you if you want this
to go even better. 2 years ago I made a video about this but
as you get a bigger community a low-key way to drive streams and get the word out is on
your release day or week depending on how big your community is, make a separate sheet for
all your contacts in your community who you’ve established a relationship with.
Go through this list and just start by asking
what they’ve been up to and check in and if they aren’t a self-absorbed main character
syndrome having sociopath they will inevitably ask what you’ve been up to and you can go
“We just dropped our new banger “Dabbing on the way to death” and drop that youtube
link in the chat. If they have any social graces they will get
the hint to listen and share it. If you’re making great music you’ve just incepted
being top of mind to this person when they are talking to someone else about an
opener for a show, a collab, a feature, etc. If you’re dropping music every two months
doing this check-in will reinforce these relationships and show people you’re taking music seriously
and they should recommend things. As well if when they put out new songs and
you add them to your artist playlists of your community and then link that on Twitter and
Instagram at tagging them you give the joint they should make one of these playlists and
do the same with you which will help you grow and rank higher for editorial playlist consideration
on Spotify.
Online Communities
OK, let’s talk about online communities. You’ve hopefully typed all your targets and
microgenre names into Facebook group search, discord search and Reddit search and joined
some communities. So the first bit of advice I have here is
so crucial. Let’s say you join one of those communities
– I implore you instead of going in and swinging your knowledge and ugh “cool personality”
around and talking like your the big boss who knows everything – READ THE ROOM. Watch the way people interact, is it jokey,
or serious, is there a ton of self-promo? Are people laughing at all the clowns who
say ALL YOU NEED IS GOOD SONGS AND YOUR MUSIC WILL PROMOTE ITSELF (because I sure do) Instead
of jumping right in really sit back and take in the vibe.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be yourself
and show off your unique personality but it’s to say we all can be ourselves more in
some places than others. But what this will also show you is when self-promotion or linking your music is ok. Some of the communities have threads on say
Friday where you can post your music and while this isn’t going to get you a thousand listens
most likely, it will get you listened to by the right people who are passionate
about this genre and spread the word about what they like. Now after you’ve read the room you will notice
that sometimes there are threads in which you can inception your music into a thread. For example, these communities don’t need to
just be your micro-genre or a subreddit of a band you sound similar to. They can even be communities you feel a kinship
to your other hobbies. One of my good friends was in this crazy cult
growing up and she’s written some songs about how it messed her up.
So someone in her recovery group will say
something on a thread and she will be like “you know I was there I wrote this
the song helped me heal. Other times dorks will sit around talking
about their favorite guitar pedals and you can be like “oh hell yeah dawg I used the
Hell Dog Snarl Sound on this solo peep my track” Other times someone will post them
need an opener and to drop YouTube I see this, particularly in local music communities
on Facebook groups like for example Brooklyn Indie Musicians or something like that.
Others won’t allow that self-promotion like
for example the Facebook group for this channel I reject a lot of posts since there are 100 other
music promotion communities are littered with trash and I try to keep mine junk-free
as possible. Yet again READ THE ROOM. And if you have read the room for a while
and you are clever enough you can inception yourself into conversations by starting a
the conversation you know will lead that way or asking a legit question about your song. Particularly if you have a friend in this
the community you can have them do a thread like “Post the best song about getting your heart
ripped out” and they will post yours then the next week you can do a thread “Post
the best songs about your dog running away” and post their song.
You hopefully, get the point. But these communities are also where you will
collect a ton of leads for your spreadsheet. Trust me as people hear your music at some
point someone is going to tell you it sounds like an artist you’ve never heard of who may
end up being one of your new favs. But they’re also going to show you places you
can promote your music. Just the other day I was hanging on Discord
and found one of those youtube channels with a big community that do one of those streams
where they listen to their communities songs live on stream, I passed it on to a musician
friend he got his music listened to on a stream and an artist with 200k monthly listens reached
out and asked him to send her beats.
Other times I find new playlists to follow
or someone who does a podcast I think I would be a good guest on and then send a pitch. That’s a lot of the effective work that happens
here and while I know you all want to drop your music in a comment that’s the real leads
you find that do the work of building you up. But the real work here is this: if you interact
and are a good member of the community people are going to message you to chat and build
bonds. This is how you find the artists to collab
with or trade shows with or whatever. A friend in these communities can do so much
as you both have your journey in music.
I have been friends with some people I met
on a Usenet message board in the 90s when I used to see a sign on AOL that said WORD
THE WIDE WEB COMING SOON. Were still intertwined musically and see each
other. Play the long game here. Social Media
Ok, so let’s talk about doing this on Twitter as well as Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok comments
and DMs. You have now followed all your targets and
some of the people you have seen in your research they work with since when you found their
booking agent and manager you search them out right? Since that’s smart but If you’re just following
the editor of Rap Caviar and The biggest A&R you’re missing it, the smaller players are
where this is at, the manager of a tiny artist with 30-100k monthly listeners is how this
builds and is what is most effective.
Ok, so it’s simple. Going in the comments of your targets and
being supportive funny or just adding interesting comments can go way far. The most obsessive fans aka the ones who are
most likely to check you out if they see you in the comments and recognize your name are
the ones reading these comments and I know for those of us with lives the idea of expanding
a TikTok Instagram or YouTube comment thread is something we’ve never done once, then you
are probably not that obsessive music fan whose only thing that makes their life good
is their fandom and they are looking for the next artist to stan. And getting in those comments, especially on
TikTok does so much work sending you to new people who are likely to be susceptible
to liking your music I can’t emphasize enough that this is a new potential fan so giving
that heart and reply is often the start of a relationship that gets you a new fan.
This work isn’t the type of thing that shows
results doing it once a month but a little each day can go miles. But let’s talk Twitter. For people who aren’t naturally drawn into
Twitter — you know unlike me who has had an addiction for 12 years and counting — Twitter
is most effectively used by following all of your targets as well as some of your most
adamant fans and the adamant fans of the targets most similar to you. Open it each day and here’s the key. DON’T FORCE IT. When you feel you have something funny or
interesting to add. ADD IT. When you can support your community with a
RT of their new song or tour announcement do it and hopefully, they’ll do the same for
you and help you grow your early fans. Twitter is a phenomenal place to build commonality
and relationships but also shows you’re a member of the community by supporting your community. This means when one of those targets you have
had some interactions with puts out that song, do a quote retweet of YO THIS SONG GOES, or whatever your vibe is I mean personally I miss the day when we called things extremely
my sh** but whatever you would naturally say is more than enough.
This can go far for future bonding and
if they retweet you doing that their fans see your name and you continue chipping away
at the stone of people recognizing your name enough to check you out. And while this sounds dumb and subtle this
is how music discovery works and particularly this is in front of the eyes of people who
love artists who sound just like you. But for all three of these platforms, the crucial
thing to do is after you have had an interaction or two with someone on socials slide into the
DMs and strike up a conversation. But I want to caution you that just cause your
DM slides go nowhere sometimes doesn’t make you an idiot it makes you someone doing the
right work. I for example don’t have my DM notifications
on Twitter since I work in politics and don’t want to read someone calling me a baby-eating libtard every hour on the hour, so I miss things from time to time and people
have plenty of reasons to miss DMs, it’s part of the game.
But I have to yet again tell you doing all
this is yet again an exercise in finding more community. For example, I love hyper pop, and while hyper
pop’s biggest influencers are 2-3 playlists and oddly enough two YouTube channels which
do a lot of taste-making. There are also Instagram pages that post even
better recommendations and I discover those as smaller artists post them. Being in your community like this will show
you who to follow and submit to. And guess what if they have an Instagram like
that they probably have a Spotify playlist too which will help get you on editorial playlists.
And you may be saying What about Facebook
Jesse? Unless your fans are older than 30 please
stay off the Anti vaxxer boomer meme playground and devote your time to something effective the
only place on Facebook I would concentrate on is which groups you can join and participate
in. And the cheat code here is to join them under
your music page so your community sees your music name and you can sign in as that page
and see just the pages you are targeting. IRL Interactions
Alright yall I am about to drop something crazy on you – You can even do community work
… in the real world. I know as someone who regularly wears a shirt
that says Always online never outside I may not be the best person to talk to on this but
let’s get into this. The first place and best place to do this
work are at your concerts and I went kinda long on this in one of my videos on live shows
so I am going to point you there if you want to learn more it’s linked in the description
but it’s some serious pro tips.
But there’s more than that, as you do community
work inevitably the artists you target will come to town. Seriously prioritize going and bonding with
them and supporting them by bringing out friends, promoting their show even if you’re not playing
on your socials, and being hospitable to them. If they need a place to stay and you can do
it be sure to offer help. If you know they are broke and hungry and
you can buy them food or lend them an instrument just be helpful. All this gets paid back tenfold when they
continue to grow and think of you when they get opportunities. But also going to their shows doesn’t need
to be all altruism, if you’ve never gotten booked at a venue hanging backstage with
your friend from the band is the number one way to change that. As well if you have an upcoming show, bringing
flyers and handing them to the audience is the best way to get a packed show in the future. I know we all have gotten comfortable
staying home and bingeing mediocre TV shows but getting out in the real world takes this
work to the next level.
But hanging IRL takes online relationships
to a much more real and coveted place and it took me years to accept this since I’m a
real sitting-at-home studying type of guy but I engineered my life to get around this. in my life I know I am not the most social
person I like sitting at home but I know its crucial to socialize if I wanna get where
I am trying to go, so I moved literally to the quietest street I could live on that is
also a block away from all the bars where people in my community hang out. I can be at a bar or restaurant in 5 minutes
to link up with someone but I also have my quiet sanctuary to make things in. Figure out how you make your life work so
you’re doing the community-building work you need to do.
So you may be thinking what in the hell Jesse
you told us you were going to tell us how to interact with our community but you didn’t
mention playlists or all those writers of articles you told us to put in the spreadsheet. You’re right! Because that’s not interacting with your fans
it pitching people and that’s a whole other video and discussion. Sorry but I promise in the coming weeks that
will be on your screen so all the more reason you should make sure you’re subscribed and
getting notifications I answer every comment so lemme know your questions below. If you want to
go deeper there’s a Thanks for watching.
