Engaging Fans

[Renascence]

I've been watching a Music Launch Summit online. Fan engagement and making relatisonships seems to be the number 1 important item to a successful 'career' in music.

It seems the focus of the Summit is indie bands. Doing live performances, having merchandise to sell with you downloads.

The question that keeps coming up for me is how does the Ambient Music Producer work through this method? How do YOU find, engage and create a fan base with your music. We seem a different breed than mainstream artists. I'd like to hear your strategies? Do you have a fan base? Do you have lots of email addresses to engage your listeners? What social media do you use to get the word out about your music? What websites are you go to areas for news and events in the genre of our music?

Thanks in advance

[synkrotron]

I have never considered making money out of music. Well... That's not strictly true. I think there was a brief period at around the turn of the millennium when I thought about it, but I soon come to realise that there are so many hobbyist musicians out there, doing their thing, that I gave up trying to push myself to the front.

For one thing, I can't take my "set" onto the road, and I think that that is one of the most single important factors in developing a pro music career.

Nowadays, I rely totally on striking up friendships at places like this. And on SoundCloud I do the usual following, liking and reposting, which does seem to help a little.

Back in the twentieth century, when I embarked upon my musical ambitions, the only people I could get to "listen" to my music were my very young children, family and work "mates." My eldest son will listen and provide a bit of encouragement from time to time, but that's about it.

So it's all about the interwebs for me.


If I have a fan base then no one is letting on hahaha! Except for comments on my stuff at SC of course, and on the odd forum, but I don't have any non-musician regular listeners, as far as I am aware.

I guess the only real way I can measure how I am doing is via SC downloads. I mean, why on earth would anyone go to the trouble to download a tune unless they wanted to store it and listen to it offline? Up to now, if I check my stats on SC, my download count is currently at 299, compared to 7400 plays (which I take with a pinch of salt to be honest).


But I'm an old git, and a fairly grumpy, bitter and twisted and somewhat negative person :biggrin:

[Renascence]

Thanks Synkrotron,

I would have to agree that what I am doing is not going to "go on the road" I did that in the 20th century when I was much younger and not nearly as gray of hair.

As for the making of money... yes, I would agree again. I don't think what I am doing is about making money as about making relationships. Engaging listeners and growing an audience. I think I would rather have 100 plays on a site like Sound Cloud or Band Camp than 1 sale of a track. I think even more so knowing who is listening would be huge. Getting some form of contact information would help to create the engagement process.

I wonder if there is a benefit to focusing on one outlet (Sound Cloud or Band Camp) There are so many webbish ways of going about things.

[synkrotron]

Call me andy by the way... I forgot to sign the above reply in my usual fashion

I think it is worthwhile keeping a presence on a couple of websites to be honest.

Band camp for sure, because I use that place to buy stuff all the time. I have a presence there but I don't push it at the moment because I don't have an album to sell as such, but when I do I will be shouting it from the rooftops.

I also have a presence on Google play, strange as that seems. It was my eldest who suggested that. It is a bit lacking in content at the moment and I was just curious about how it would work. There is an upfront one off cost but uploads are then unlimited. Took a couple of days for Google to approve my account. They insist on a profile picture that is representative of the artist so they knocked back my logo.

I have a presence at reverb nation but I just don't like that place for some reason.

SoundCloud just does it for me so that is my main focus at the moment...

Cheers,

andy

[Guest]

Reddit is pretty good for generating plays on soundcloud - you will get very little feedback, but plenty of people will at least have a listen.

[aoVI]

The feedback you will most likely get on reddit is a guy named eric4man who will tell you your stuff isn't whatever genre subreddit you post in and that you only self-promote, then submit your profile to the spam subreddit.

But I concur, decent number of plays when posting on reddit.

[Guest]

The feedback you will most likely get on reddit is a guy named eric4man who will tell you your stuff isn't whatever genre subreddit you post in and that you only self-promote, then submit your profile to the spam subreddit.

But I concur, decent number of plays when posting on reddit.

I've never been harassed by eric4man - I feel quite left out and ignored now

[synkrotron]

Which reddit forum do you post?

[aoVI]

then you probably aren't breaking the rules. or even bending them.

[Guest]

Which reddit forum do you post?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ambientmusic/

there is a drone one as well - some darkambient too I think

[Guest]

then you probably aren't breaking the rules. or even bending them.

I think I am just patting them

[synkrotron]

Thanks, yeah, I did a Google search for eric4man which led me to the same forum.

I must admit, I find reddit a bit scary... I might sign up though and start to lurk a bit...

[Ambire Seiche]

I wonder if there is a benefit to focusing on one outlet (Sound Cloud or Band Camp) There are so many webbish ways of going about things.

I would think a variety of small niche outlets would be more fruitful. SC and Bandcamp are essentially the internet equivalent of big box stores, often there's better engagement by thinking outside of the proverbial box.

I'm not sure number of plays are the be all of promoting either. Martkin Atkins has a lot of lectures and stuff on youtube regarding marketing and promoting, which imho he's always been pretty brilliant at besides being a great drummer going back to his early days with Public Image Limited. It's not just the music itself being sold. And techno once had a lot of that same diy/post-punk attitude to it with people self-publishing on white label vinyl, pirate radio and self-done warehouse raves before the internet existed. Where the big outlets were/are playing catch up as part of their inherent business model along with the quantity over quality.

I don't think live performance is the sole way of providing people an experience either, that can be done through packaging too even just by including art/craft with it. That also potentially opens up different avenues of outlets and networks, where one could put their main focus somewhere like BandCamp and Etsy both, or places like Patreon. And even locally as opposed to live performance. Ambient as a genre would be well suited for things like 3d printed statues or figurines that play music, sort of like a modern music box, things like that, not to mention video games as art & interactive experience. The technology is there for that sort of thing and even in instances where something's not feasible today cost-wise it's becoming more accessible by the year. eta: even with NIN's Ghosts the pdf of photos that came with it were a part of it, not just the music itself. The equivalent of liner notes and artwork in the past, when great albums weren't just music - that was all about connecting with people.

http://www.avclub.com/article/martin-atkins-13507

[synkrotron]

Interesting packaging ideas, for sure, but I can't remember the last time I burned any of my music to a CD to be honest.

I had produced two CD albums some time ago. I bought an expensive printer that could print onto CDs and I bought a load of jewel cases. But that fizzled out quite quickly. Back then I felt that outside of my immediate contact with family, friends and work mates was going to be the limit of my distribution.

Then I joined a band. We did some stuff... Played gigs... Produced an album (their second one by the time I had joined ship). We paid to get a glass master made and printed a 1000 CDs. We went around small music stores, dropped five or ten at a time at these stores. I even took five into HMV where I live. We sold one at HMV (and I found out later that it was a friend of my wife's which disappointed me to be honest because she could have had a copy at cost rather than the ridiculous £11 that HMV were charging). I still have two hundred copies of that CD in my loft... John Peel even played the opening track on his late night show. Got us nowhere. Music wasn't too bad and I've heard much worse, so it wasn't the quality that was the problem. I just think it is so hard to "get out there," when there are millions of others all battling for the same space. The experience kind of jaded me to be honest...

[Guest]

Interesting packaging ideas, for sure, but I can't remember the last time I burned any of my music to a CD to be honest.

I had produced two CD albums some time ago. I bought an expensive printer that could print onto CDs and I bought a load of jewel cases. But that fizzled out quite quickly. Back then I felt that outside of my immediate contact with family, friends and work mates was going to be the limit of my distribution.

Then I joined a band. We did some stuff... Played gigs... Produced an album (their second one by the time I had joined ship). We paid to get a glass master made and printed a 1000 CDs. We went around small music stores, dropped five or ten at a time at these stores. I even took five into HMV where I live. We sold one at HMV (and I found out later that it was a friend of my wife's which disappointed me to be honest because she could have had a copy at cost rather than the ridiculous £11 that HMV were charging). I still have two hundred copies of that CD in my loft... John Peel even played the opening track on his late night show. Got us nowhere. Music wasn't too bad and I've heard much worse, so it wasn't the quality that was the problem. I just think it is so hard to "get out there," when there are millions of others all battling for the same space. The experience kind of jaded me to be honest...

I don't think there is any money to be made made selling music directly to the public ala "the old days" unless the music is part of a large corporate image process ie the music is one component of an integrated marketing plan that fits into the goals and culture of the highly integrated mass media conglomerates. There is some money in making music for video, theatre etc but my experience is that you have to be part of a community of media producers to contribute to the media they produce. Which is no different to every other job ie pretty much everyone prefers to deal with people they know or are recommended by people they know. The take home for me has been that being a part of a supportive community (or communities) is best for maintaining a positive continuing creative practice. The more actual real face to face those communities are the better (for me, anyway). Online is good too, but in-addition-to, rather than in-place-of