The Two Sides of Music Marketing
To understand this, we must first understand the two basic sides of music marketing: growing a fan base, and strengthening a fan base. The value of getting new fans by converting non-listeners to listeners is self-evident, but the latter half of the equation is equally important. Without a loyal fan base that cares about them, an artist’s career will be short-lived, as their listeners will lose interest in them and quickly dissipate. Not only that, but without dedicated fans, artists miss out on what would be their primary forms of revenue: touring and merchandise.
How to Attract New Listeners
For an artist to reach users who would be interested in listening to their music, the approach is fairly simple. Artists have to post their music. They might notice that their other posts perform better, such as comedy skits, and it may be tempting to instead focus on that kind of content. However, the issue with doing so is that they would be inadvertently targeting the wrong audience. Creators attract users interested in the kind of content they post. The followers an artist would gain from posting comedic skits would be interested in those skits, not in their music. For this reason, the conversion rate from social media followers to listeners on Spotify would be poor, and their efforts would have gone to waste.
Another clear issue with this approach is that if an artist doesn’t share their music, their followers might not even realize they’re an artist. An artist with a million followers won’t convert their audience into Spotify listeners without posting their music, because people can’t support music they don’t know exists.
Furthermore, artists should post their music to maintain their image. An artist who never posts their music online will not be seen as an artist, but instead as a creator of whatever kind of content they make. Users scroll past posts quickly and will remember only a key detail or two, if anything at all. If they see an artist performing a cover, they will live in their minds as a musician, not as an artist. It’s necessary for artists to post their music not only to reach the right audience and leverage the algorithm, but also to leave the right impression.
How to Convert Listeners into Fans
However, there is another side to this strategy. If an artist only posts clips of themselves lip-syncing to the same song endlessly, not only will their followers get sick of the repetitive content, they will also never become cult fans.
Fans don’t just want to love the music, they want to love the person behind it all. Although it initially may seem contradictory to the previous point, this means that artists should post content that does not include their music. The purpose of this content is not to gain followers, but to strengthen existing artist-follower relationships. Posting your music will convert non-listeners into listeners, but posting personal content will convert listeners into fans.
There is a lot of freedom with this latter form of content it can be anything from an explanation of a song’s meaning, to behind-the-scenes tour footage, to the artist engaging with a separate passion. Hip-hop artist Action Bronson famously shared his passion for food with his fans, and ended up launching an entire YouTube series with VICE, “F*CK, THAT’S DELICIOUS”, which was massively popular.
This series enabled fans to become even bigger fans by learning about a side of Action Bronson that they had never seen before. The stronger that bond is, the longer it lasts, and the more fans will engage with an artist through their music, tours, and merchandise.
The Call To Action
The third main form of content artists need to post on social media is a call-to-action in order to directly engage their fans. This includes tour announcements, merchandise drops, or anything else that enables fans to directly engage with the artist. The purpose is to give fans something truly memorable, whether that’s a show, a meet-and-greet, or just merchandise from an online store.
The Music, The Artist, & The Community: A 3-Part Framework
The following framework is a simple breakdown and recap of the three main kinds of posts an emerging artist should release, how frequently, and why they are effective.
What: Includes the artist’s music, either the official recording or a cover, depending on the song. This should be accompanied by an entertaining visual element, such as them performing it live in a venue, or a miniature music video.
Frequency: About 50-70% of posts. It is by far the most important form of content an up-and-coming artist can release, as it is the key building block of growing a fan base and the primary way of alerting fans of new releases.
Purpose: To attract new fans and alert existing fans of new releases.
Type 2: The Artist
What: Shows off the artist’s personality. Can be anything ranging from explaining the meaning of a song, to them enjoying one of their hobbies.
Frequency: About 20-40% of posts.
Purpose: Reveals layers of the artist’s identity, allowing fans to connect with the person behind the music, and cultivates the artist-fan relationship.
Type 3: The Community
What: Engages the fan base. Often a call to action, like tour announcements or other live events fans can participate in.
Frequency: About 10% of the time, or when applicable.
Purpose: To further cultivate the artist-fan relationship, to build a community of fans, and to give fans a memorable experience.
This approach to social media is a foundational base that will convert non-listeners to listeners, listeners to fans, and fans to cult fans, with each type of content corresponding to each kind of post. Notably, this framework is incredibly variable two completely opposite artists could use this approach, and the output would be entirely different.
It is important that the content is highly tailored to the artist in order to stay authentic, always taking into consideration who the artist is, the niche they occupy, and their target audience. With a personalized version of this framework, artists can build a long-lasting fanbase of listeners who genuinely love the artist and their music.
