Building Community — What a Concept!

There’s this thing I’ve been wanting to write about here, and I don’t know if it helps my cause to be so transparent. But I know many artists read my stuff so here goes, so heck with it, I’m writing about it anyway.

Three things happened in the last months of 2015 that got me thinking:

• an email from someone asking me how long I’d been in the music business (the simple answer: forever!).
• a friend chiding me for, of all things, how the industry was taking the money from musicians, how the radio played the same old songs over and over again as if it was all my fault. I did tell him however that I creating a better way for artists to have a music career.
• a local musician asked me how to know when it was safe to quit a day job to pursue something creative-yet-risky, like a full-time music career. Yes he truly wants to be a full time artist.

These things have been on my mind of late as I try to re-invent how the music business works, seek out artists that share the same passion and basically establish some sense of legitimacy that the way I see the future of the music business is possible.

I recently read something that gave me a point of reference for addressing this kind of stuff in my head. It’s called Only Play To People That Want To Hear Your Play.

But how to do that well it’s simpler than you think, how about asking your existing community if you can come and play for them in their house and have them invite their friends over. Then at that show find others that will invite you to come and play for their friends in their house. This takes music back to its routes when musicians traveled the country playing for people that wanted to hear them.

A few year back a theory was first floated by Brian Austin Whitney, founder of Just Plain Folks, in one of his monthly newsletters. Brian pointed out that an artist who has developed 5,000 hardcore fans who will give him or her $20 each year — be it for CDs, ticket sales, merchandise, donations, whatever — stands to make $100,000 per year, more than enough to quit the day job and still have health insurance and a drive a fairly decent car.

Now, while I understand the concept I remember the other original article 1000 True Fans which I commented on yesterday and it struck me that 5,000 is a big number, but not that big. That’s like, what, one-eighth of an average stadium’s capacity? And you might not even need that many.

Here’s an simple exercise for you:-

Take your own current salary, pre-tax, and divide it by 20. If you were to quit your job right now and start living as a full-time musician, that’s how many fans you’d need, each spending $20 each year to support yourself at your present level.

So, if you’re currently making $50,000 a year, you’d need 2,500 paying fans each year to replace that salary. But it gets better if you’re willing to take a pay cut.

In Arizona the state where I live, a person working 40 hours a week for minimum wage would make $15,456 per year and they would only need around 773 paying fans to replace that income. Trust me there are a lot of people out there working for minimum wage doing stuff they hate.

Notice that I say “paying fans” this is important, because depressingly enough, it’s a numbers game. You could already have more than 5,000 people on your mailing list, but only a percentage of them will actually invest some money in you. I have no idea what that percentage is, but it’s small.

If you’re lucky, you’ll have a few hardcore fans who offset those merely interested by contributing more dollars to your cause. At this point it (sadly) its starting to smell a lot like Statistics 101 from High School and I was never that good at Math.

And of course, it’s not a steady paycheck. Remember also that tastes change, and sometimes people just stop being interested in what you do. So your quest for new fans is never really over.

The attraction of 5,000 Fans is a theory and the numbers, while still large, are very much attainable. You really don’t need to develop millions of fans across the globe to be a full time music artist, just a few thousand who actually care.

But, yes you knew there would be a BUT, you have to have the passion and the commitment to go out and find them. I’m now gonna try to tie this all together to help you see what I mean.

If your a fan of a particular artist and you want to support them, the very best thing you can do is tell other people. Swap those MP3s, burn those CDRs, blog about them, play those tunes in your podcasts.

Then the next time they are playing in your local area bring a friend, two friends, ten friends, to their next show. Anything you can do to put their art in front of ten more potential fans. Get involved in the quest for fans and help make it happen.

Of course, you the artist have to do your part, too. If all you’re doing is pushing the latest album, your gonna be waiting a long time for 5,000 fans to discover you. You have to be comfortable to get out there and meet your community, yes it’s a community they are not just fans they are your community and you need to treat them well.

In closing start thinking how can you truly connect with 1 person, then 10 people, then a 100, 1000 then through these new fans to their friends and their friend’s friends its all about your community.

Remember a stranger is simply a friend you have not met yet and that stranger becoming a friend can lead you to a connection with their friends after all everyone knows people that we don’t so its time to truly connect and engage and build that community.

It truly is not about numbers its about building a true sense of community…