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.
Showing posts with label strategy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strategy. Show all posts
Friday, August 4, 2017
Thursday, August 3, 2017
This is the hardest to learn as an artist
3) Your Branding and Story Is More Important Than Your Music
This is a hard pill to swallow for every artist. But the ones who not only accept this reality, but approach it head on are the ones who jump leaps and bounds past their counterparts. People judge you based on your aesthetic, story and image long before they hit play on one of your songs – if they even make it that far. Your branding (which includes your image, your story (!!), and really your overall aesthetic) are what non-musicians (bloggers) talk about. They ain’t talking about your drum tones, syncopated rhythms, plugins or mix techniques.
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/
I was lecturing one time and was talking about brand your self and of course, some of the artists in the class took that to be a "sellout" or like they said being "commercial". First of all, you are commercial if you try to sell something and I guess you want to get paid for doing your shows and you like the money that comes from the PRO:s and Spotify. So starting to state that if you require money you are commercial, even if it is money you need to pay your bills etc.
When you are commercial then you are a brand. If I go to a Bruce Springsteen concert I would be kind of disappointed if he just played cheesy country songs. If the poster and the commercial around the event told me that it would be only cheesy country songs it's different. If it was market as a normal Bruce concert I would have been really mad.
Why? Well, Bruce brand is that he will play rock songs and including in that should "Dancing in the dark", "Born in the USA" and "Hungry Heart" be on there.
The artist started to understand, then one guy raised his hand and said,
- Do you need to be successful? Are you not allowed to write songs that no one wants to hear?
It was funny, but there is a point in it. I started to see artists that are a bit of afraid to be professional and take the big leap, actually doing songs that are really hard for an audience to get and in that way, they can always blame that people are not smart enough to understand their music. In reality is more a fear of making a great song and then get refused.
This is not actually new. It has been done for the past 30 years to get an artist into media. Right now it becomes more of it though because of the bloggers and small media outlets. The story has to be more clear and kind of straight forward, the band has to be understood in just a couple of seconds.
I also get a lot of artists almost getting angry at bloggers and media not asking about how they recorded or the drum loops and mix techniques. I even have seen them rehearse the smart answers they would tell when they get these questions. A big part of my job is to actually clean out all that mambo jambo from the bios they send in. It's not unusual they write in the names of the person who mixed and master it, and in severe cases, they even name dropped name of equipment. Of course, for a normal reader, it's damn boring to read about. A little light in the tunnel is though there are special magazines where these type of questions are held, it will take you a long journey until you get there.
Look on it today. I actually had heard more about Ed Sheeran in writing and about his personal life before I heard a song from him. The story that took me was when he got all 12 songs on the top chart. Then I had to get into and listen to one of them, and I was like...okay not that blown away. Right now though I have been exposed to "Shape of your body" so many times that I really like it. Still, I have known about Ed Sheeran in over five years.
Everybody has a story just pick the one up and stick to it.
When we have worked with The Magnettes we have applied this quite much. They have a couple of stories that they use depends on the situation. The three biggest are these ones.
Coming from an exotic place! The Magnettes is from Pajala a small village above the arctic circle. On the summer is daylight the whole day. And in the winter just an hour of sunshine. they also have their small minority language. To have grown up there and still have that is their headquarters is a great story and appeal to a lot of people that have been brought up in small villages all over the world.
The music is fuck pop! What the hell is fuck pop? That is the point, the expression was actually invented by Jay Frank head of their record label. People would read it and say - what the hell is fuck pop and listen to the songs. And if you look around you will see that a lot of the press use the term and do spins on it, for example, Metro Uk wrote like this
- In taking a message that once upon a time was more synonymous with alternative and emo bands like My Chemical Romance and placing it in a pop application as anti-heroes of pop music, The Magnettes are doing pretty f*cking well.
Earmilk wrote - Each song on "Ugly Youth" is well thought out and meant for lovers of pop.
Fuck-pop group The Magnettes release "Ugly Youth" album
The fuck pop term works well since the band curses quite much in their songs.
The last one is the feminist approach. This is the broadest so it's not that unique still it opens certain doors. The members in interviews give their view how women of today are portrayed, the song Bones is even about that theme.Look at this picture from a photo session and see the tattoo on the finger.
Like you write your songs about certain things you decide the branding. We get it that you are more complex than just these topics. Still to be complex in a tweet will be almost impossible. And that what the media looks like today, short texts and pictures. But yes you are a brand but you decide what that brand is about.
And here is some fuck pop from Pajala.
This is a hard pill to swallow for every artist. But the ones who not only accept this reality, but approach it head on are the ones who jump leaps and bounds past their counterparts. People judge you based on your aesthetic, story and image long before they hit play on one of your songs – if they even make it that far. Your branding (which includes your image, your story (!!), and really your overall aesthetic) are what non-musicians (bloggers) talk about. They ain’t talking about your drum tones, syncopated rhythms, plugins or mix techniques.
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/
I was lecturing one time and was talking about brand your self and of course, some of the artists in the class took that to be a "sellout" or like they said being "commercial". First of all, you are commercial if you try to sell something and I guess you want to get paid for doing your shows and you like the money that comes from the PRO:s and Spotify. So starting to state that if you require money you are commercial, even if it is money you need to pay your bills etc.
When you are commercial then you are a brand. If I go to a Bruce Springsteen concert I would be kind of disappointed if he just played cheesy country songs. If the poster and the commercial around the event told me that it would be only cheesy country songs it's different. If it was market as a normal Bruce concert I would have been really mad.
Why? Well, Bruce brand is that he will play rock songs and including in that should "Dancing in the dark", "Born in the USA" and "Hungry Heart" be on there.
The artist started to understand, then one guy raised his hand and said,
- Do you need to be successful? Are you not allowed to write songs that no one wants to hear?
It was funny, but there is a point in it. I started to see artists that are a bit of afraid to be professional and take the big leap, actually doing songs that are really hard for an audience to get and in that way, they can always blame that people are not smart enough to understand their music. In reality is more a fear of making a great song and then get refused.
This is not actually new. It has been done for the past 30 years to get an artist into media. Right now it becomes more of it though because of the bloggers and small media outlets. The story has to be more clear and kind of straight forward, the band has to be understood in just a couple of seconds.
I also get a lot of artists almost getting angry at bloggers and media not asking about how they recorded or the drum loops and mix techniques. I even have seen them rehearse the smart answers they would tell when they get these questions. A big part of my job is to actually clean out all that mambo jambo from the bios they send in. It's not unusual they write in the names of the person who mixed and master it, and in severe cases, they even name dropped name of equipment. Of course, for a normal reader, it's damn boring to read about. A little light in the tunnel is though there are special magazines where these type of questions are held, it will take you a long journey until you get there.
Look on it today. I actually had heard more about Ed Sheeran in writing and about his personal life before I heard a song from him. The story that took me was when he got all 12 songs on the top chart. Then I had to get into and listen to one of them, and I was like...okay not that blown away. Right now though I have been exposed to "Shape of your body" so many times that I really like it. Still, I have known about Ed Sheeran in over five years.
Everybody has a story just pick the one up and stick to it.
When we have worked with The Magnettes we have applied this quite much. They have a couple of stories that they use depends on the situation. The three biggest are these ones.
Coming from an exotic place! The Magnettes is from Pajala a small village above the arctic circle. On the summer is daylight the whole day. And in the winter just an hour of sunshine. they also have their small minority language. To have grown up there and still have that is their headquarters is a great story and appeal to a lot of people that have been brought up in small villages all over the world.
The music is fuck pop! What the hell is fuck pop? That is the point, the expression was actually invented by Jay Frank head of their record label. People would read it and say - what the hell is fuck pop and listen to the songs. And if you look around you will see that a lot of the press use the term and do spins on it, for example, Metro Uk wrote like this
- In taking a message that once upon a time was more synonymous with alternative and emo bands like My Chemical Romance and placing it in a pop application as anti-heroes of pop music, The Magnettes are doing pretty f*cking well.
Earmilk wrote - Each song on "Ugly Youth" is well thought out and meant for lovers of pop.
Fuck-pop group The Magnettes release "Ugly Youth" album
The fuck pop term works well since the band curses quite much in their songs.
The last one is the feminist approach. This is the broadest so it's not that unique still it opens certain doors. The members in interviews give their view how women of today are portrayed, the song Bones is even about that theme.Look at this picture from a photo session and see the tattoo on the finger.
Like you write your songs about certain things you decide the branding. We get it that you are more complex than just these topics. Still to be complex in a tweet will be almost impossible. And that what the media looks like today, short texts and pictures. But yes you are a brand but you decide what that brand is about.
And here is some fuck pop from Pajala.
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