Being an independent musician is a fun job. You get to write music and share your art with the people who love it. These people are a lot more than just fans. The dictionary defines a fan as “a person who has a strong interest in or admiration for a particular person or thing.” The people who love our music love us because they relate to our core values, our style, our personality, and what we stand for. They support us because they have fallen in love with what we provide for them and that goes way beyond just music. We provide them with an avenue to escape their stress. We give them something to think about. We give them a feeling. That’s why they support us and they are a vital part of our music business. However, finding and connecting with these people is not easy.
The best way to do it is to attract them to you. In my experience, in order to do that more effectively I’ve learned to not look at a music fan as a Facebook Like, a Twitter Follower or a subscriber, but as a person. You can connect with a person more deeply than you could a fan. Strong interest and admiration can fade with time, but an authentic connection will stand the test of time. When changing your perspective in this way, you can seamlessly attract people to you with less effort. Here are 3 unique ways you can attract your ideal music ‘fan’.
Leverage Your Personality
Your personality is part of your brand. Your brand is what sells your music. Therefore, it would make good business sense to highlight the parts of your personality that resonate in your music. For example, let’s say you write a new song and post it on Facebook or send it to your mailing list. Instead of introducing your new song as a new song, you would introduce it as a thought, a feeling, or something you recently experienced. Surely, there’s a reason why you wrote the song. Did something happen to you? Did someone say something to you that prompted you to write this song? Were you moved to write a song because of something profound, happy, or sad that you witnessed? Why not talk about that? As an independent artist, you’re a vessel used to convey messages of hope and inspiration to your community. So whatever you’re going through, it’s safe to say other people are going through the same thing. How much more effective can you be if you talked about it while sharing your song? Trust me, if you made a habit of sharing your story and your experience as a person while promoting your music, you’ll get a much bigger response.
Participate in Community Activities
Learn to love people. As a musician and performer, you get to peer into people’s hearts and souls. When you see the impact you’re making on a soul level, you start to notice how much people are aching and longing to be heard, felt, and understood. That’s what makes getting out in the community such a strong ingredient for attracting new ‘fans’ to your music.
It allows you to make genuine connections with people in your local community which naturally leads to them learning about your music. Volunteering, participating in community events, networking events, interest groups, socials, etc. can help you broaden your network. In the music business, the more people you know, the more opportunities you have. Get out and make connections in your community and be consistent. You’ll be at the top of people’s minds by just being you and engaging in your interests. Just being in someone’s company can be uplifting to both you and them. Meeting people out in the community can be an extension of your mission as an artist. Actively pursuing your own personal interests and goals within your community will organically push people to your music in more ways than one. As people get to know you, they’ll naturally want to look up your music. They will refer you to other people looking for entertainment. They will hire you to perform at their parties. The biggest benefit to this approach is that since you’re engaging in things that interest you, you’ll find things in common with others who are there as well. These are the people that will most likely connect with your music. They already share common interests with you.
Go Hard for a Cause
Speaking of common interests, standing for a cause is a surefire way to organically attract people to your music. When you actively promote a cause, you’re bringing the community together to support that cause. Other people not connected to your music will learn about you through this process. Organizations and nonprofits you work with will promote your music and you’ll benefit from exposure by simply caring about a particular cause. You can leverage this in many different ways such as getting publicity in the local newspaper or on the news, get connections for future paid gigs, network with businesses and officials in your community, and use it as a source of generating valuable content on your blog, newsletter, YouTube, and social media.
So, what do you care about? How are you impacting that cause with your music? If not, you’re missing out on a great way to attract people to your music and gain exposure.
Ultimately, attracting music fans is all about being clear and committed to who you are as an artist. You must be able to present your music in a way that resonates with people’s hearts. In this way, you’ll make lasting connections with your music fans and they will see you as part of their lives instead of something distant that they admire. Similar to the relationship you might have with your favorite brand like Coca-Cola or Home Depot. You like them not only because of their product, but because of what they stand for and the ideals they convey. As a musician, your lifeline is your fan base. Wouldn’t you rather have loyal fans who are connected to you by core values and ideals rather than interest and admiration that can be fleeting? Some of the ways you can make this connection happen are leveraging your personality, being active in the community, and standing up for a cause.
But that’s not all you can do! If you’d like to truly level up your music business as an independent artist, it’s time to invest in your own artist development. With artist development, you’ll learn how to highlight the aspects of your personality that resonate well with your fanbase. You’ll learn how to identify ways to get in front of the folks who are most likely to fall in love with your music and ultimately make more money. If this sounds like something you’re interested in, take a look at our Artist Development Course. It’s an online course that you can follow at your own pace. It provides step-by-step guidance to upgrade and polish your brand.
In this course, you’ll also learn how to position yourself and tell your story in a way that’s organic, authentic, and appealing to the right people. You’ll learn how to polish your presence to get yourself more gig offers, more opportunities, and more fans. Check out the Artist Development Course HERE.
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Wow, gr8 post Anitra! Really deep and inspiring! <3 ^-^
Thanks Brooke. I appreciate you reading!
No problem, I do plan on learning about being a singer & songwriter after all! ^-^ : D