Now, It's Your Turn

TL;DR This process does not happen overnight, nor is it easy, but building this model step by step will create a revenue source that you can rely on...even during a global pandemic.

Let’s walk through a hypothetical example of an artist that wants to put these strategies into action. This example assumes certain audience sizes and behaviors that are likely different from yours. Rather than focus on specifics, use this as a jumping-off point to create a strategy that is appropriate for your music and your fan base.

Our example artist is a fictional singer-songwriter named Kayla. Kayla is an up-and-coming artist with 8,000 followers on Instagram, 5,000 Facebook followers, 1,000 email subscribers, and 2,000 YouTube subscribers. She releases original music but also incorporates covers into her live sets.

Step 1: Audience Analysis

First, Kayla should audit her audience and social media profiles. Despite her audience being largest on Instagram, it is spread out across several platforms. This is not uncommon for most artists. One platform typically outperforms the others, but attention should still be paid to the platforms with smaller followings. In some circumstances, the audiences on different platforms could be very different; Facebook skews older, Instagram skews younger, YouTuber followers may be more interested in covers, etc. Kayla will think through this as she audits her own accounts utilizing her unique knowledge of her audiences.

Step 2: Live Stream Test

Performing a live stream is very different from recording a video or performing in-person. To start, it’s okay to do an unannounced test. Kayla decides to go live on Instagram to play a few songs and see who shows up.

Because it was unannounced, Kayla attracts a small audience over the course of the live stream. At first there are only 15 viewers but, as she keeps playing, more people tune in.

Step 3: Schedule

Now that Kayla has a sense of how to run an entertaining live stream, she puts together a schedule of live streams. Using her phone and laptop, Kayla will livestream for 30 minutes every Tuesday evening and Sunday morning, broadcasting simultaneously to Facebook and Instagram. She sends an email to her newsletter subscribers and posts this schedule on all of her social media profiles.

After each livestream, Kayla downloads the Facebook live stream and uploads it to YouTube, providing content to her small (but important) YouTube following. These videos can, and should, also be cut up and shared on her social media feeds.

Kayla’s entire fanbase can now take part in her live streams and their connection with Kayla is deepening with each stream, converting more passive fans to active fans and active fans to super fans.

Step 4: Partner With Friends

After a couple weeks, Kayla’s audience now considers live streams a part of her image and routine. They are sharing the streams and music with their friends, and Kayla’s audience is growing gradually. Now, Kayla wants to do something bigger. She decides to host a live stream with some of her friends where they will trade off songs and stories.

They decide to host this on YouTube because all of their fans are comfortable with the platform, and they can schedule it ahead and share the link. They set up a Zoom meeting that streams to YouTube so that they can all be in the same live stream remotely.

To promote the event, they announce it on their regular live streams, post about it on their social media feeds, briefly join each other’s Instagram live streams to cross promote, and share the YouTube link in their email newsletters.

For the day of the round live stream, they enable Super Stickers and Super Chats, splitting the money equally. They also turn on YouTube’s merch integration and put links to everyone’s channels in the video description.

Step 5: Monetize

Kayla has fans tuning in to her live streams every week and has gained new fans from the live stream festival. Now, she needs to monetize this growing fan base, beyond merch sales. She decides to set up a Patreon account.

To start, Kayla creates only one membership tier in her Patreon at $7. Fans that sign up for this membership get access to Patreon-only posts of behind-the-scenes photos and videos, weekly song demos and covers, and a 10% off code for her merch store.

As more people sign up and Kayla gets comfortable with the process of creating this exclusive content on a weekly basis, she considers adding more tiers with higher monthly fees in return for more content such as Q&As and a weekly video series.

Step 6: Try New Platforms

Kayla is spending 10 hours per week on her new business model:

• 1 hour live streaming
• 2 hours preparing and promoting her live streams
• 2-4 hours creating content for her Patreon
• 3 hours creating and posting her regular social media content

In addition to this, she is also writing and recording demos for a new EP. With all of this going on, Kayla finds that she still has some hours left in the week to try something new. She decides to stream on Twitch and create content for TikTok to see if she can tap into a new audience on those platforms.

Final Thoughts

This handbook is your guide. The traditional means of maintaining a career as an artist have been disrupted, and there is a lot of information and advice (good and bad) for artists being shared at the moment. Using the context of the marketing funnel and a strategy to implement these tools into your artist business model, you can make sense of the information that is available to you and execute on it methodically.

For every artist, this new period of remote work is an experiment. Every experiment includes small failures that we can learn from and use to improve our work. Take it a step at a time and don’t expect the results to be instantaneous. Just like learning an instrument, patience and consistency are key. Artists that can adopt these new tools and strategies will benefit from them long after the industry is back to normal.

Thank you to everyone that contributed to this handbook. You can find their credits and links below.

Credits

Author: Dan Servantes (Twitter: @DRServantes / Website: ghstrategic.io)
Editor: Peter Lockhart (Instagram: @_petlock  / Website: peterlockhart.nyc)
Contributors: George Howard (Twitter: @gah650 / Website: ghstrategic.io) & Carly Sheridan (Twitter: @_carlynoelle / Website: carlysheridan.carbonmade.com)
Design By: Brian Grunert (Instagram: @white_bike / Website: whitebicycle.com)
Published By: Entrepreneurship & Art (Twitter: @art_preneur  / Website: entrepreneurshipandart.com)