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Can Your Music Career Survive On 1,000 Fans? [VIDEO]

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The old saying goes that artists only need one-thousand dedicated fans to lead successful careers, but does that hold true in 2022?

The problem with so-called timeless business lessons is that they rarely work in the 21st-century. Most of the basic tips and tricks for successfully building and sustaining a career in any field no longer apply in the internet age. Employers can hire people from anywhere, and employees can work for anyone. Similarly, everyone can be a fan of any artist without spending a dime. Meanwhile, artists are expected to engage with fans of all sizes, despite the growing number of platforms and time-consuming content creation efforts needed to appease each follower.

Still, without fail, we hear old advice regurgitated as a timeless fact regularly. One of the most prominent beliefs is that the only thing an artist needs to sustain their career is 1000 dedicated fans. 

The “1,000 True Fans Theory” was proposed by Wired magazine’s “senior maverick” Kevin Kelly back in 2008 and states that all an artist needs is 1,000 true fans to maintain a fruitful, if unspectacular, career, thereby relieving the artist of the need for some of the nastier things in life as a regular job.

Kelly’s idea is that if an artist can find 1,000 fans who spend an average of $100 per year supporting them, then they’re more or less living the dream. That amounts to $100,000 gross income per year, which would leave a livable wage even after taxes and expenses. 

Kelly’s theory predates the launch of Spotify by nearly three full years and barely arrives in time to catch the launch of Twitter. How we define a fan has drastically changed in the fourteen years since the original observation was made, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s untrue.

The trick, or one of them at least, is finding how to accrue that many fans willing to spend money to support your career.

There are a few issues with Kelly’s theory that we should address.

Your 1,000 fans need to spend an “average” of $100 per year.

Some fans will spend $500 to support you in a calendar year. Others may only pay $20. Generating enough income to make a $100,000 gross will require you first spend money. You have to print merch, record music, and promote your content, all of which costs money that you have no guarantee of recouping. 

The theory doesn’t work as well for duos or groups.

$100,000 gross may be enough to give one artist a comfortable living, but the idea falls apart when you add more people to the equation. A four-member band, for example, likely needs far more fans to create a livable wage.

Expenses can really add up.

Let’s say you earn a gross of $100,000 as a solo artist. The expenses you need to subtract from those earnings can include a manager (on average, 10% of the gross), booking agent, publicist, recording costs, “hired gun” musicians for studio and tour work, promotional fees, merch costs, and upkeep for your tour van/bus. All that, plus taxes, will take a substantial bite out of the initial gross. 

People are spending less per artist than ever.

Kelly’s theory came about before the streaming age, back when people paid $10 or more for albums. Artists make a decent amount from physical media sales, but that marketplace has cratered since Spotify and similar streaming services became the most popular way to consume music. Today’s listener gives an average of $10 per month to the streaming platform of their choice, which pays fractions of a penny per stream to artists. A fan can listen to their favorite artist thousands of times in a year, and that musician will not earn anywhere near $100 from their consumption.

That is why, as many of us know, artists rely heavily on live performances and merch sales to make ends meet. It’s not enough to have a fan attend a show. It would be best if you had fans buy a ticket, convince their friends to come along, and (ideally) buy merch at the gig. 

Attrition is a problem.

The fans that support you in 2022 may not help you in 2023. Some listeners won’t discover your music until your second or third album, and they may only pay to see you or pickup merch on one occasion. You cannot rely on a single set of 1,000 fans to support your career over time. Instead, your goal should be to make new, financially supportive fans faster than you lose them. Do that, and your job has a fighting chance of thriving.

Kelly’s theory is much easier to achieve with fan clubs.

Services such as Patreon, which give fans access to exclusive content from an artist in exchange for a monthly fee, can create reliable revenue streams. It’s easier to ask someone for $10 per month than it is to request a single payment of $120. 

So, can Kelly’s theory work? 

Yes, it is possible to survive with 1,000 fans supporting your music beyond merely streaming it online. However, finding and retaining those fans is a tricky proposition that Kelly’s idea ignores in favor of simplicity. 

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How To Win Fans Without Annoying Your Audience [VIDEO]

Everyone wants to win fans online, but not everyone can grow their audience without alienating their listeners.

Digital promotion is a complicated proposition. On the one hand, it has never been easier to reach your audience and engage with fans regularly. At the same time, every attempt to grow that audience runs the risk of alienating the people who already love your music. As with many things in life, successful digital marketing it’s all about finding a balance, and we are here to help.

We believe it is entirely possible to steadily grow your audience without feeling tethered to social media at all times or driving yourself crazy trying to develop content ideas. Figuring out the right recipe for your career and audience will take time, but we can give you several things to consider when planning your future promotional efforts. 

The most important thing you need to know about digital promotion is that people are more intelligent than you think. Nobody needs to be told where your music is available because they assume that it’s available everywhere. Very few artists only post their music to one or two platforms, so you don’t need to tell people where to find your art. Your music, like the music created by everyone else, is available wherever people consume music. That is the world we live in.

The next thing to consider is what type of contact you are creating. Most social media managers will tell you that they try to balance different pieces of content that entertain, educate, or inform. Some posts can do all three, but others may only tackle one or two. Here are some quick examples:

Entertaining content makes people feel something. Artists often use song clips and video teasers to elicit an emotional response from their audience. 

Educational content teaches us something, such as how to pre-order your new record or follow your account on Spotify.

Informative content tells us something important, such as tour dates. 

Once you figure out the type of contact you want to post, you may wonder how frequently you should be posting to various digital platforms. You can find many tutorials on maximizing reach online, but we recommend prioritizing your mental health above all else. You should only post every day if you have the content and time to do so. If that feels too overwhelming, then maybe posting two or three times a week instead is a better approach. Your fans will adjust their expectations to match your output, so as long as you develop a routine, whatever you choose to do will work.

In the latest Music Biz update, host James Shotwell teaches you how to win fans without annoying your audience. He walks through things most musicians do not consider before posting online and offers advice to make all your promotional efforts more welcoming to everyone they reach. Check it out:

Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Start your one-month free trial today and gain instant access to the same promotional tools used by BMG, Concord, Rise Records, Pure Noise Records, and hundreds more. Visit http://haulix.com/signup​ for details.

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Fans matter more than listeners

You will never please everyone, so don’t bother trying to win over those who don’t care. One-thousand diehard fans are better than one-million casual listeners any day of the week.

One of the biggest lies that has been sold to us in business is the idea that constant growth is the only way to be successful. Take a look at the largest corporations around the globe, and you will find that they are obsessed with finding ways to increase their bottom line. They want to raise revenue and cut costs no matter what, year after year, until the end of time (or the end of their business).

We bought into this thinking for a long time as well. When we first started Haulix, our goal was to be the industry’s only promotional distribution platform. We had competition even back then, but we were headstrong and confident in our product. Ten years later and the competition has only increased, all while the industry has undergone one of the most radical changes in its one-hundred-year history. We’re still here, we’re bigger than ever, but you know what? We’re still not sure if we’re truly the biggest company in our market and we’re okay with that. Really!

You don’t want to be for everyone. When everyone relies on you the opportunity to be unique is removed because you continuously have to appeal to the broadest possible audience. Creativity thrives in the margins. You want to appeal to people who get what you’re doing, and you want to empower them to spread the good word about your creative output to those who will listen. Anything beyond that, any attempt to cater to people who otherwise wouldn’t give you the time of day, is a hollow effort that will eventually burn out.

The artists who thrive in today’s industry do so because they understand the value of a fan. A single fan can do more for your career than a thousand people who hear your song on the radio and think it’s “pretty good.” You know why? Because real fans feel your success in music is somehow representative of their success in life. If you can make it, they can too, or vice verse. Real fans join you on the journey.

The only way to attract this type of fan is to be true to yourself. Make the music you want to make, and the fans will follow. It may only be a few at first, but if you engage with them and make it known their support is appreciated more fans will follow in time. You see, people like to be appreciated because it means they matter to someone or something, and when they feel that way they are inclined to promote whatever makes them feel as though they belong.

You don’t want to appeal to everyone. Those who appeal to everyone are destined to get lost in the shuffle when the next great artist or song comes along. You want to appeal to the people who feel the way you do right now. If you can manage that, the sky is the limit for your career. Maybe you won’t be an international star performing to sixty-thousand people a night, but you will find a way to earn money from your creativity while engaging with like-minded people. The value of that experience has no price. It is something rare and true and only allotted to those who chase their dreams to the fullest without sacrificing themselves in the process.

Stay who you are. The rest will follow.

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Six Ways Artists Can Give Back to Fans During the Holiday Season

Everyone deserves a gift around the holidays, including your fan base.

Thanksgiving is basically here, and before long you will see images of Santa Claus everywhere (if you haven’t already). With Halloween behind us, retailers and marketers have wasted no time making it clear that the gift-giving season is upon us.

You don’t have to enjoy or even celebrate Christmas or Chanukah to appreciate their importance in culture. As much as we have become a global community connected through devices these holidays are still viewed as a time for people to come together in a shared physical space. They create opportunities to not only catch up with those we love but also to express that love through the exchanging of gifts and warm sentiments.

Musicians find themselves in a unique position during the holiday season. There are many opportunities to profit from this time of year, be it at holiday shows or through gift-related merchandise sales, but those who focus solely on how they can get ahead during this time of year are missing the reason for the season (which fans notice). Those who stand to benefit the most during the holidays are those who give as much, if not more than they get. Here are 5 ways to show your fans how much you appreciate their support in the coming weeks:

1. Free Music

There is an old adage about the best course in life often being the most obvious one, and that is very much the case with this suggestion. Your fans support you all year long in hopes that you will both come to their town and continue to release music that touches their lives. Though you are unable to be everywhere at once on Christmas, you can make your music available for anyone who has yet to add it to their personal collection. Whether you choose to make a song, album, or even your entire catalog available as a free download, you should see a rise in engagement as a result. People who have been waiting to buy your album when they see you live won’t be able to resist the free download, and there is a high likelihood they will recommend your friends take advantage of the offer as well.

2. Record and release a holiday cover (maybe give it away as well)

The world has heard countless covers of holiday classics, but the world has yet to listen to your take on great seasonal staples, and that is why you can still use them to give back to fans this Christmas. I know my favorite Christmas covers are those performed by my favorite bands, and I’m willing to bet the same can be said for most music fans. Record a holiday cover, be it in a studio or in your own home, and share it with fans in the days leading up to December 25. You can even take things one step further and ask fans about their favorite holiday songs in advance, that way your cover will have an even higher likelihood of being shared by your followers.

3. Surprise your fans with free stuff (no contest necessary)

Everyone is thinking of others during the holiday season, or at least they should be, so many fans may not have money to buy the limited edition winter merch items you have available in your online store. To show fans you understand their dilemma, consider offering a give away where you send a prize pack including numerous merch items, as well as items not available in your store (handwritten lyrics, drum head, etc.) to one lucky fan. Don’t make it a contest and don’t ask for contact information in exchange for consideration. Simply pick a fan, or four, and send them a present. With any luck, the fan(s) will share their surprise with the world, and you will earn brownie points for being one of the more thoughtful artists in music today.

4. Stream an acoustic performance from your home/studio/van/bus/basement

There are few things music fans love more than seeing their favorite artists playing bare-boned versions of their favorite songs. Since there is no way everyone who follows you could attend a single performance, especially one planned close to Christmas, make the event special by broadcasting your set on one or more of the popular live streaming services that have risen to prominence over the last year. If those services require you to charge consumers, like with StageIt, then you should also consider giving all the money earned to charity. This way, fans feel like they are giving back by tuning in, and you walk away having established yourself as an artist who hasn’t lost sight of the problems that exist outside your immediate surroundings. Win-Win.

5. Holiday scavenger hunt

This idea has become increasingly popular in the age of IG and Snapchat stories. The setup is relatively straightforward: In the hours before an event or while traveling to a new city, musicians leave merchandise/gifts for fans in public spaces. Clues on where the items can be found are then posted to feeds, which fans can then respond to as they begin their hunt. These activities encourage engagement and help bring fans together in the real world. As people converge on the location of whatever you’ve hidden they encounter others who follow your music. This can lead to community building, which in turn helps you.

6. Give the gift of other artists’ music via playlists

Mixtapes are dead. The once popular way to share your favorite music with others has gone the way of the dinosaurs, and in its play we have playlists. Many artists already maintain playlists on services such as Spotify and Apple Music, but the holiday season presents a unique opportunity to further connect with your audience through a well-curated playlist that takes the holidays or end of the year roundups. Select one song from all your favorite albums from the last 12 months. Gather your holiday favorites. Heck, put together a compilation of songs from artists who you wish to tour with after the new year. Create something that is personal to you and fans will feel more connected to your efforts as a result.

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Ask yourself: What does my audience want?

I’ve been emailing with a few up and coming artists about their summer and fall plans. In every exchange, I make it a point to ask artists what they’d like to be doing in the three months, six months, and one year from the end of our conversation. I don’t expect a detailed answer, but whenever someone tells me their goals without mentioning their audience, I get worried.

There are a limitless number of paths to success in life and music, but if you are thinking about the future without first considering the demands of your audience, you are a blind captain steering a lost ship. We live in the age of on-demand entertainment for every taste, meaning there is always something to meet the needs of consumers. To build the following you need to make a career out of music, you need to be taking the demands of your audience into account.

Is there enough demand to support a tour through the midwest? What should our setlist be? Should we continue pursuing this new sound? What kind of merchandise should we be printing? If we were to sign with a label, what label rosters would be a good fit for us?

All of these questions are important decisions, and they should not be made without considering what you audiences wants/expects from you.

Social media has made gauging your audience’s interest easier than ever before. On Twitter, for example, you can run custom polls asking your audience to weigh in on virtually anything.

You don’t have to do what your audience demands. Your music is an expression of yourself, and only you can determine what that means for your craft. If you need to make a bold change, do so with confidence. Your audience will believe in you as long as you believe in yourself.

That said, where business is concerned, the smart plays are always in listening to those still invested in your product. The people who love your music have heard it and talked about it as much – if not more – than you have, and they know a thing or two about it. Listen to them.

James Shotwell is the Director of Customer Engagement for Haulix.

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Stop comparing your career to outdated music business models

Earlier this year I traveled to Detroit in order to interview an Leo Bautista, a young man who is better known to the world as Rival Summers. Leo’s fans had requested I feature him on my podcast several times in the months prior through emails and tweets, which in itself wasn’t entirely usual, but the volume of requests far exceeded any other artist week after week. Anyone in entertainment will tell you that is the kind of thing you need to pay attention to, so – I did.

I was largely unfamiliar with Rival Summers before scheduling the conversation, but the ten hour drive from Minneapolis to Detroit provided ample time for me to become immersed in Leo’s discography. He’s single-handedly creating (and recording – Leo often plays most, if not all the instruments on his albums) a style of pop rock that takes just enough cues from the soundtracks of John Hughes film to feel timeless in their own way.  It is immediately accessible and undeniably catchy music that people of all ages can relate to, but there are layers to the material that provides a depth many in his genre struggle to achieve. There is also an ever so slight edge to it all, making Rival Summers a project that could just as well be found on Warped Tour as it could opening for bigger radio rock artists in arenas. In short, it’s something special:

After realizing all of this over the course of my drive you can probably understand how surprised I was to hear Leo tell me, on record, that was a bit disappointed with how his last EP, Undeniable, had performed. The album was the product of nearly five years’ work, and Leo’s fans had contributed money through a crowdfunding campaign to allow him a full month of recording time in California alongside one of his music idols, My American Heart frontman turned producer Jesse Barrera. It was a month that Leo says changed his life and career. For the first time he was able to fully focus on music in a place that inspired him in a way his home in the midwest could not replicate. He was more or less on his own and doing the thing he loved because people who believed in his art cared enough to support his continued development without knowing what would come from doing so.

Undeniable, a name Leo chose because it is what he inspires to be in music, was released in April of 2016. Leo did his best to promote the record online, receiving several mentions on blogs and a few positive reviews, which his fans then promoted through their networks with retweets, likes, and shares. Everyone who heard the record seemed to enjoy it, if not love it, and that made Leo happy. Still, in the back of his mind something was missing. Despite all the love and support from his fans Leo was not seeing the opportunity to take the next big step in his career that he believed the album could create. Add to this the fact he parted ways with his creative partner at the time, which hindered touring as a full band, and it is easy to understand why there seemed to be a negative for every positive.

Leo eventually came to realize he was wrong all along. Like anyone striving to turn their passion into a career he unknowingly allowed himself to get caught up with the business of art, which has a nasty habit of making people undervalue their creativity based on how they believe the world outside their audience feels about their work. Leo’s fans had told him Undeniable was a record they needed and were willing to support before it was even created. He was empowered by an audience he built through his own hard work to further chase his dreams and build a career. The record may not have brought a label deal his way or provided a management contact with a massive network of powerful influencers, but it reaffirmed his relationship with his audience and brought numerous new believers to his craft. Touring may hurt in the short term, but we are quickly approaching an age where digitally-inclined talent can build thriving careers without going broke on the road to play for 30 kids a night. Leo has the ability to try alternative paths because his fans are already dedicated to seeing him flourish.

You probably realize this by now, but Leo is not alone when it comes to this problem. Entertainment as a whole has changed very quickly in the last ten years. The ways we tell people to think about careers in entertainment however, have not. In today’s industry anyone with an engaged audience can build a meaningful, financially stable career as long as they are willing to work hard and constantly give back to those who support them. Today’s artists can create Patreon pages that allow fans all over the world to give as little as $2 a month to see their continued success, which can very quickly turn into hundreds or even thousands of a dollars per month total, all without an artist having to leave their home. Today’s artists can use StageIt and similar platforms to host concerts from their living rooms. As long as an artist has a fan base that wants to hear more from them it is possible to completely circumvent the traditional music industry model and find major success, including platinum records and sold out shows around the globe.

James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also the host of the Inside Music Podcast, as well as a ten-year music industry veteran. You can follow James on Twitter.

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What Adele, Drake, And Modern Baseball Have That Every Musician Needs

The only thing more annoying than bandwagon fans may be bandwagon haters. People who feel it is their duty as fans of a particular sound or genre to tear down whoever is currently dominating the charts because they believe it makes them unique or edgy in some way. We who embrace the hitmakers know better, as we understand there is a reason certain artists see their star shoot into the stratosphere while others must work incredibly hard for every tiny bit of success they achieve. The reasons for this are as numerous as grains of sand on the beach, but one thing that is almost always true about real music stars, and by that I mean those who are able to hold the public’s attention across multiple albums, is that they always find a way to connect with people in a way that feels personal.

To be clear, what I just said is far easier to grasp than it is to recreate. We all follow our own paths in this life, experiencing practically every aspect of existence in a way that is wholly unique to ourselves, yet for some reason there are certain songs and/or artists who have the power to make us feel as though we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Call it a community, or a culture, or a way of life, but there is something to the biggest material in history that connects with people in a deeply personal way. You may have never experienced the situation being described in the song, and you may never know the story that inspired the lyrics, but something about the way emotion is being expressed cuts through the noise and strikes you right in your soul. It moves you, as it does others, and as soon as it’s over we long to feel that connection again. That is the sign you’ve found something truly great in music, and it’s something that is completely achievable by pretty much every artist working today. That is, if they work hard enough.

The big star of the moment is Adele, and by now you’ve no doubt heard her single “Hello” between one and one-hundred times in your daily life. Her music is everywhere right now, and her new single “When We Were Young” seems poised to push her exposure even further. The production on these tracks is undeniably gorgeous, and Adele’s powerful voice is something that will be praised for decades to come, but what makes these songs work at Top 40 radio and beyond has little do with those factors and far more to do with the feeling you get when the music plays. Adele, like Drake on tracks like “Hotline Bling” or “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” has the power to make you miss people and situations you have never actually known. Something in the way the music compliments the lyrics, which are typically pulled from a deeply personal place, creates an atmosphere of turmoil and heartache that listeners take upon themselves to connect with events in their own lives. It doesn’t matter whether or not the events that inspired the song are the same as the events the lyrics are being applied to by the listeners, and it never will. All that matters is that the performer is able to capture a feeling, or perhaps a better description would be a sense of being, that translates on a massive scale.

What I’m trying to say is that the reason these artists skyrocket into the music stratosphere while others fight over lower chart positions is because people feel like the know them. When you hear the music of Adele and Drake, or even smaller acts like The Hotelier or Modern Baseball, you feel as if you are hearing an update from a close friend about what has been going on in their life since you last spoke. It’s entertaining, yes, but it’s so much more than that as well. You long for those updates, and when they arrive you click play with all the hope in the world that you and this person or group, whom you’ve never met, have been experiencing similar situations in life. You hope there is something in there story that relates to your own, and that kind of connection is incredibly hard to break. Even if the quality of the music begins to suffer, and the radio songs can’t crack the top 10, people who have connected to an artist on an emotional level will continue to follow them for as long as they are able.

I cannot tell you how to create songs that connect with people the way the latest singles from Drake and Adele do, but that is okay because writing material like that should not be your goal after reading this post. Writing music that would work for Drake or Adele is not guaranteed to work for you, at all. Your goal, or better yet your mission, should be to find a way to create the music you want to make in such a way that it connects with people like the material released by your musical peers. It’s not about copying someone else’s formula, but rather finding a way to tap into the same set of relatable emotions that has established countless artists as household names over the last hundred or so years of pop music. Even if you’re writing metal, the goal remains the same. You want to create something that is both personal and universal, which shares a part of you in a meaningful way while still allowing others to add their own meaning to the material. There is no recipe for that kind of creation, nor are the any guides I would suggest you spend time reading. The best way to make material like this is too simply keep creating, and in time you will learn to refine your skills. As your songwriting improves, so will the reach of your music, but you cannot allow yourself to get lost in thoughts of what a song could potentially be or do for you. As soon as you take your focus away from creating great songs that actually mean something to you, the artist, your chances of connecting with listeners begins to drop. Stay true to yourself and people will notice. It might take time, but that’s perfectly okay.

James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.

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