What Does It Take To Make A Living As A Musician Now?
If you've struggled at all to get the success you've dreamed of in your music career, you might be wondering, “What does it actually take to make a living as a musician in the New Music Business?”
The answer is deceptively simple: fans.
No business can survive let alone thrive without customers because without customers you can't make sales - no matter how great your product is. Your fans are the lifeblood of your music business; they are your customers. So no matter how great your music is, without fans, you don't have a viable music business because you won't be able to sell your music and make an income.
A lot of times we look at the artists we admire and see that they have thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of fans, and we aspire to that and think that's what we need to do to be successful as artists. We get overwhelmed by that and wonder how we could ever possibly get that many fans. But we don't actually need to.
So how many fans do you need to make a living as an artist?
You don't need a million fans… or even a hundred thousand or even ten thousand fans.
You only need 1000 true fans.
There's a distinction here. Notice I didn't just say “1000 fans” - I said “1000 true fans.” It's really more about quality than quantity.
This idea comes from Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired Magazine. He wrote an article titled “1000 True Fans.” In the article he talks about the idea that all you need to make a sustainable living as an artist (or any kind of creator) is 1000 true fans; 1000 people that love what you do so much that they will support you financially – they buy what you're making whether it's CDs, merch, concert tickets, VIP packages where they can meet you.
This is a pretty revolutionary idea for most of us because a lot of us are stuck in the mindset that we need hundreds of thousands of fans to make a sustainable living.
Here's how it works: If you have 1000 fans who buy $100 worth of stuff from you a year, you make $100,000 a year. So 1000 true fans equals a six-figure income for you.
You can break this down in different ways. You might have 2000 true fans who buy $50 a year from you, or maybe you have 500 true fans who buy $200 from you a year. Or even if you had 1000 fans who only bought $50 a year from you, that's $50,000 a year... would you complain about making $50,000 a year from your music?
Any way you choose to slice it and dice it, you don't need tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of fans to make a sustainable living. Just 1000 true fans is all it takes. Does that seem more achievable to you?
This doesn't just mean that if you've got 1000 Facebook followers that they are all true fans. That's not the case. Your music isn't for everyone. People will have different levels of engagement with your music. If you want to make a sustainable income as a musician in the New Music Business, the key is to focus on doing things to build your audience of 1000 true fans. This is very counter-intuitive because we're so used to the old music industry model where major record labels would spend millions of dollars to promote their artists to the masses. As independent musicians, we don't have that kind of money to throw into promotion. But the good news is we don't need it. The internet has levelled the playing field and given us powerful ways of finding and building our audience of true fans relatively cheaply.
Out of a population of 7.6 billion people, do you think you could find 1000 people who love what you do so much that they're willing to pay you $100 a year to keep doing it? That's one person out of every 7.6 million people. Those seem like pretty favourable odds. Instead of trying to please a million people, try to delight 1000.
1000 people might still sound daunting, especially if you've only got a handful or a few dozen people that follow you on social media, and chances are that most of them aren't true fans. Some will be your family and friends who follow you just to be polite or supportive. That’s all well and good, but they aren't true fans. Relying on these people isn't a viable business strategy to help you build a sustainable income as an artist.
So how do you find your 1000 true fans? Well, the answer is actually counter-intuitive. You start not by looking for 1000 true fans, you start by looking at one true fan. If you can accurately identify the traits of one person who would be an ideal fan for you, then it's relatively easy to go and find more people like that.
This one person will function as an avatar (no, not the big blue aliens), an embodiment of the traits that all of your ideal, true fans would have in common. Get a sheet of paper and write down the common traits of your ideal fans. Ask yourself what your potential fans have in common. You're going to discard things like they all have skin, they're all human. We're looking for more specific characteristics. For example:
Do your fans happen to fall into a certain age group?
Are they overwhelmingly one particular gender?
What kinds of TV shows and movies do they watch?
What kind of books or magazines do they read?
Do they read at all?
What kinds of websites do they visit?
Do they have an affinity for a particular brand or company?
Where do they shop?
Do they dress a certain way?
Which celebrities or public figures do they follow?
Which other artists do they like and listen to?
What are their hobbies? Are they more outdoorsy? Are they more intellectual?
Do they have a particular level of education? Do they have a university degree or are they tradesmen?
Are they politically active or engaged? If so, which social issues are they passionate about?
Do they subscribe to a particular lifestyle? Are they gamers? Are they vegan? Are they into extreme sports?
Again, you only want to write down things that are relevant, not just general stuff. Some of the things I mentioned might not be relevant to your fans. The more detailed the picture you can build of your ideal fan, the easier it's going to be to find more people like that, build long-term relationships with them, and nurture them as true fans.
This is a really valuable exercise to do. Probably 90% of musicians don't know who their true fans are, they don't understand their audience. This is a huge factor in them failing to get the success they want in their music careers.
If you accurately identify your true fans, you'll know how and where to find them. You'll be able to bring them into your world and introduce them to your music. You’ll be able to build long term relationships with them, nurture them as true fans so that they will buy your albums and merch, come to your gigs, contribute to your crowdfunding campaigns, even become your patrons and give you money every month. They become evangelists for your music, telling their family and friends about you, like an unofficial marketing team. You'll be able to make a sustainable income from your music, quit your day job, and devote yourself to your music career full-time, and have your music make a bigger impact on the world and change people's lives.
If you don't accurately identify your true fans, you're really going to struggle to have people connect with your music. You're going to struggle to build a fanbase over time. You're going to struggle to get people to buy your albums and merch. You'll struggle to get people to come to your gigs. You'll struggle to get people to contribute to your crowdfunding campaigns. You'll struggle to get people to become patrons and give you money every month. You won't have anyone to spread the word about your music. You won't make enough money to quit your day job, you won't be able to devote yourself to music full-time, and your music won't make the impact on the world that you want it to make. Yes, it's really that important. This is one of the most important things you can do in your music career, so make sure you do it.
If you're wondering how to start with identifying your true fans, you might think about a Venn diagram with you in one circle, your true fan in another, and your music in another circle. What are the commonalities between you, your music, and your true fan? There is some overlap. Where those three circles intersect is where you want to focus. That's what's going to help you identify your true fan. There are things that you're interested in that your true fan is also interested in. There are things you're interested in that are represented in your music, which is why your true fan is attracted to your music. What is your music about? What does it represent?
If you find that you're stuck and it doesn’t come to you immediately, that's OK. You’re probably not going to get this in 5 minutes. A lot of artists do struggle with this at first because they’ve never had to think about it before. Just persevere and give it some deep, considered thought.
If you’re still struggling after a while and you'd like some support on this, reach out to me and we can go deeper into this.