This is how you do to get real fans.

4) Your Follower Numbers Don’t Matter As Much As Your Real Life Numbers

Oh really, you have 100,000 Instagram followers? Cool. Oh, you can’t pay your monthly bills? Not so cool. Everyone knows followers AND engagement can be bought. Follower numbers aren’t as impressive as CONVERSION numbers. How many people are actually backing your crowdfunding campaigns, showing up to your shows, buying your merch? Just because you got bots to Like (and comment) on your shit means nothing. Well, it means you’re desperate and have no desire to make a living with your music. Bots don’t come to shows. Bots don’t buy your merch. Bots don’t back your crowdfunding campaigns. Bots don’t support you in any way financially. Bots don’t help you become a full-time musician.

We are now living in a post-follower count reality.

Don’t tell me how many followers you have. All I care about are how many fans you have who are willing to support your career.

The red part is from an article in Digital music news, here is a link to the whole article.

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/07/27/millennial-musicians/

This has passed on to the pros in the music industry. Still, 90% of the business thinks these numbers counts, so this is not just a misunderstanding by the artists, most of the industry is equality dumb. Just a couple of months I was at a meeting called "Off the record" arranged by IFPI of Sweden. They presented a new company that was built on that they would take artists out of the streaming numbers and social media numbers. I was baffled. This we tried 2010 now it was 2017. I mean the majors tried this five years ago with Spinnup and failed heavily. I just wanted to stand up and just scream how stupid and behind they are. I just left straight after with no network. It's a big reason I don't want Swedish music industry on my panels when I talk (i choose the good ones, there are starts in the darkness), sorry to say in this field they are so damn after. Even worse was that this company also ripped the artist off of different incomes.

We will be in this mess at least in five to ten years more. I meet people all the time that talks that about numbers like it would matter. 2015 we stopped this after we saw the results of Major Lazers - Lean on. They got million of streams but when they played in Stockholm they only could sell 900 tickets in a venue with 1500 capacity. In reality, they should have sold out in an arena with 50 000 people if the numbers were correct.

Like the text says, the numbers don't show how many who really care. Like AC/DC fill out that arena three times in a week and they are not even on Spotify. But yes people care about AC/DC. To be honest no one knew about Major Lazer it took them until now and several hits to be close to where they should have been in 2015.

We took the decision to build an artist from scratch the old way that year. Don't care so much to have the biggest numbers. More to have the real numbers with people that care. Sure it's not easy and with the stupidity, you get overruled many times with talentless artists that have used bots to take your space. Our strategy was to build up a live show that was easy to take around and get people an experience. We looked quite much on the EDM scene that was fading and realized that people were tired of a guy standing behind a computer waving a hand. They just started to add explosions and stuff then but the audience was still lost.

Of course, we got critic from the artist that often felt that their numbers were too low. Still, we wanted to reflect what we did. Instead, we pinpointed places to go over and over again to build up a crowd and build a base to stand on just locally. The new thing was to spread these bases over the world at once. in the old days, you started with your own country, we started abroad.

Yes, it's really tempting to boost your numbers. But it will come back and bite you in the ass. We are back in the 50:s where you broke and artist by showing them to people. When you reach a certain massive point it will work by it self. The good part is that it's more outlets than in the 50:s, the bad part is the same you are competing against the whole world.

What you have to do is stand your ground, take every chance to show off your art. The express highways are not that attempting. Yes, it takes longer than before to make it today. Pick these suoerfans one by one, the tools to keep them is here.