August 15, 2010 Build Your Tribe Before Selling
Artists are quick to try to monetize on their audience, which is understandable because many artists aspire to create music as their career. I fully believe in the freemium model for upcoming artists, as it is a great way for their music to be heard, and their brand to be built. New artists should utilize social media in order to build their following (their tribe), and rather than sell them music, acquire information from them such as e-mails and start to take notes of the different interests of your tribe.
Many artists are quick to judge their audience based off of how many followers they have on Twitter, or how many friends they have on MySpace. The problem with this is that it’s often hard to measure how many of your followers or friends on these social networks are actual fans of your music. I believe Twitter is most effective as a word of mouth tool when people are actually retweeting what you are saying, as this is more important in my opinion then having a bunch of followers that you’re not sure are actually following what you’re saying. Twitter has different tools that assist artists in helping to spread your music, such as Tweet for a Track on Twitter.
When the artist’s tribe begins to grow and flourish, the information gathered from previous promotions should be used to offer them different incentives for purchasing the music such as free merchandise, or something exclusive that would cater to the artist’s audience. An artist will eventually reach a point where they will have to decide whether they should continue to build their fan base or focus on strengthening their current fan base. That is it for now, please let me now if you agree or disagree with this model.
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Reader Comments (5)
Sounds like you read the books Free and Tribes. I just read Free and I am reading Tribes now. It's a very interesting idea and continues to highlight what it takes to be a successful independent musician these days. It's not enough to sing and play well. To get ahead of the rest and stick out you have to research things like marketing... most musicians think that's for someone else to do, and they are still stuck in the day jobs. A modern day musician has all the tools at hand to spread their music, but the motivation to use them doesn't come easy. I see it as a job. I set aside a few hours a day for promo, emails, phone calls, web site desing/update, gig searching, social networking, status updating on FB, Twitter, Reverbnation, Myspace, checking my website stats to see where traffic is coming from. Then I try and write or play some.. but at the moment (I just released my debut solo album) it's 70-80% promotion and then gigging in the evening to pay the rent and get my rocks off.
It's not easy, in fact it's damn hard work and you have to be very self motivated, but for me it's worth it.
David
www.davidphilips.net
Market value in entertainment is a "perceived" value of your brand. A Ferrari has more perceived value than a Hyundai in the car market for example. If you set your market value at $0.00 then your perceived market value in the market place is $0. Your brand is worthless, it cannot be marketed it cannot be sold, your market value is set at $0.00. When you try to sell a track for $1, people will be insulted. Not only does free make you worthless, but it depresses the entire market value of the art form and hurts everyone else who is trying to feed their kids through music. I relate free music marketers not only as "scabs" who would cross a picket line strike, but worse, because they would do the job for free destroying the position in the workforce and making them volunteer. In our case in our industry it isn't called "volunteer" positions, they become "hobbyist" positions. These "Freemuim" purporters are people trying to destroy the industry; spotify, pirate bay and creative commons all profit while the industry implodes and looses operating capitol to fight these market forces.
~ http://www.myspace.com/crowfeatherproject
I think it really depends what stage you are at.
If you are just starting out, trying to garner information (e.g. email addresses or market research) while putting a $0 price tag on your music may have better long term value than charging $1 from the get go.
I was particularly talking about artists who are new and have yet to build a fan base. I believe that there is a certain point that an artist needs to start to monetize from his music even if it’s not directly. The freemium model is a tool in order to build your fan base, which is what a new artist with no fans wants to do. Once the artist gets to a point where they have a fan base, then they should decipher on whether to continue to cater to and strengthen their tribe, or try to make their tribe larger which could ultimately end up hurting the artist as it may become less valued to their more loyal fans. Also I don’t consider music being the only means to creating value to an artist’s brand, I believe the music is helping to build value for an artist brand, through merchandise, touring, and even the e-mails and information you acquire from your fans. An artist that can clearly indentify their audience will allow them to collaborate with other brands if interested, and leverage their brand beyond just music.
Crowfeather - I hear where you are coming from. I think this is a broken philosphy because it doesn't add up long term but it was written for someone with no fans.
Free should be used to change the pace of your brand not build it. Sure have free merch have a few free downloads this is key because people like free. You can compete within your own product line though if you are thoughtful about it. Sell certain tracks and make others free. Have 1 CD for $5, 1 for $10. Have exclusive and limited products. Think of it like dealing drugs.
When Radiohead offered "In Rainbows" for free it was a fresh of breath air because the position they were in the market, when an unknown band walks up to me and hands me a record I feel like... "Should I eat this? Where did it come from?"
The bottom line is if you build a rabid fan base someone will rip your files and put them up for free somewhere eventually. The least you can do is value a piece of your catalouge.
1 part whore, 1 part gold.