Today I want to talk about an important distinction that can make the difference between you being a starving artist barely scraping by, and making a sustainable full-time living from your music. It’s the distinction between content and experience.

I want to tell you a story about something that happened to me recently because there's an important lesson in there for you. I was going to tell you about this 5 weeks ago, and then all hell broke loose with Coronavirus. So I put it aside to deal with the more immediate concerns people had. But I've since realised that this has become even more important for you to be aware of in our current climate.

About 5 weeks ago, I had an awesome week. First, I got to see Elton John, my idol, on his farewell tour. And then a couple of nights later, I got to see one of my favourite movies and one of the greatest films ever made, Casablanca, at the cinema on the big screen.

And it got me thinking. Obviously, I've seen Casablanca before. I own the 70th anniversary Blu-ray collectors box set. Some people would probably question why I would bother to put on pants, leave the house, go to the cinema, and pay money to see a movie that I already own and can watch for free in the comfort and convenience of my home.

And by the same token, this was the 8th time I've seen Elton John live. Why would I go to the trouble and the expense of flying to another city 6 out of those 8 times, paying for a hotel room, battling the crowds, and paying upwards of $300 for a ticket to see an artist play live when I own all of his albums and concert DVDs and could listen to or watch them any time from the comfort of my home, and avoid the expense and inconvenience of travelling to a concert?

And then I had an insight. It's not about content. Casablanca is the same movie whether I see it at the cinema or watch it at home on Blu-ray. Elton's songs are much the same whether I go to see him play them at a concert, or I watch one of his concert DVDs or listen to one of his albums at home.

So it's not about content – it's about the experience. By experience, I mean more than just the transactional exchange when somebody purchases something. It's only about the content up to a certain point. Obviously, if Casablanca wasn't a great movie and Elton wasn't a great performer, then I wouldn't care about going and having the experience. But, as enjoyable as it is to watch Casablanca or an Elton concert DVD at home, going to the cinema or to see Elton play live were fundamentally different experiences for me; more immersive, more emotional, more captivating, and ultimately more memorable.

That's not by accident. That's by design. It's very intentional. Especially with a concert. Just because you go and play your music to a group of people somewhere doesn't automatically mean you're creating an experience for them. I've been to concerts, and I'm sure you have too, where the band just turns up and plays their music, finishes the set, and that's it. It's not memorable at all, or maybe it's memorable for the wrong reasons. In that case, they're just relying on the content. They haven't created an experience for the audience.

Here's why this is absolutely crucial to your success as an independent musician.

There's such an abundance of content now. There's more music online than ever before, more than any one person could ever consume. You've got 40 million songs available at the touch of a button on Spotify. There are also more musicians than ever before. So just being a musician who writes and records music doesn't make you unique. That might sound sacrilegious. Just having content won't necessarily be enough to make you stand out or be worthy of people's attention. What makes you unique, what makes you stand out, is the experience you create for your audience.

People generally aren't paying for content as much now. It's available for free in most cases. They can stream your music on Spotify, or watch it on Youtube. You're probably not going to make a full-time living just from selling your music. The bottom line is this: You're no longer selling music; you're selling an experience.

Yes, your content absolutely has to be good enough for people to want to engage. But you can't just rely on the content. It's about more than just singing the right words in key and playing the right notes at the right time. That's not enough.

Your content opens the door for people to come in, but the experience you create will keep them in the room, and make them want to come back again. Hence why I've seen Elton 8 times, Leonard Cohen twice, and Bettye Lavette 4 times. Maybe you’ve had the same thing happen with artists that you go back to again and again because they create a memorable, life-changing experience for you.

Start thinking about how you can create an experience for people. Think about experience as the sum total of all of the elements around your music. Your music is at the centre of that experience, but there's a greater context around it that's made up of various aspects that are indirectly related or tangential to your music.

The obvious place to create an experience is at your live shows. This can encompass:

• what's happening visually during the show,

• how you and your band members are dressed,

• how it looks on stage,

• lighting, props and stage decoration,

• what you project on screens if you use them

• how you move and where you're positioned on stage,

• verbal elements like how you introduce the songs and the stories you tell to create the context for the songs,

• how your merch booth is presented,

• even what you select for the house music that plays before you come on stage.

You want to ask:

• What emotions do you want people to feel at given points during the show?

• How can you heighten the impact of the music?

• How can you add other dimensions besides sound?

• How can you engage people more? How can you encourage more interaction?

When you do a great job of creating an experience for people at your gigs, that's when you sell more albums and merch, because they want a memento of the experience. The CD or the t-shirt they buy is a reminder and a continuation of the experience.

We've become conditioned to thinking that the value we offer as artists is $10 or $20 for a CD. But creating a great experience allows you to charge a premium for whatever product or service you offer. Fans are willing to pay for experiences: watching soundchecks, VIP packages where they meet you backstage before the show, seats in the first few rows, online experiences like having you custom-write a song about them.

The thing to really keep in mind is that the experience is about the person in the audience, not you the artist. Amateurs perform for themselves, professionals perform for the audience. Audiences can tell the difference. So you have to have radical empathy and step inside their shoes to craft an experience that's going to be meaningful to them.

It doesn't have to just be limited to your live shows. You can create an experience for people at every interaction they have with you: with your albums, your cover art, your photos and images, your merch, your social media posts, your emails, when they buy something from your website, your live streams, your marketing, your branding, your crowdfunding campaign perks, your Patreon or fan club, your album launches.

Creating an experience for people is going to be even more crucial to your success as a musician now, while everyone is home during the Coronavirus outbreak, and especially once the quarantine and self-isolation ends, venues reopen, and you're able to play gigs again. Here's why.

There are more artists live-streaming now than ever before. If you’ve logged onto Facebook in the last few weeks, you’ve probably been inundated with live streams from musicians. There's a saturation of live-streamed concerts like we've never seen before. That means music fans have much more choice available for what to watch. So there's a lot more competition for people's attention. Just because you jump on Facebook Live and play your songs, that doesn't automatically guarantee that people will watch you or hang around or come back the next time you do it. So again, it's not about the content. It's not all about the music. It's about the experience that you craft for people around that content.

The other result of the Coronavirus outbreak is that a lot of venues will not recover from this and will close permanently. There will be fewer venues hosting live music, which means fewer gigs available, and therefore much higher demand for those spots that are available.

The venues that do survive the economic fallout of the Coronavirus outbreak will be doing everything they can to recover as much money as possible. That means they're going to be very selective about which artists they book. They will give priority to artists who are guaranteed to draw a crowd, even more so than in the past. That will leave the artists with less of a draw fighting over the leftover scraps.

Booking gigs is going to become much, much more competitive, and a lot of artists aren't going to get a look in. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you can just show up at a venue, sing and play your songs, and that's enough to guarantee you draw a crowd and leave them satisfied and get booked again at that venue. If you want to draw a crowd and keep them satisfied and coming back for more, it's absolutely essential that you give them an experience.

Remember: you're not selling music; you're selling an experience. When you make that mental shift from selling music to selling experiences, your audience will engage more, they will buy more, and they'll keep coming back for more, again and again. You want repeat business. That's what increases your bottom line so that you can make a sustainable living from your music and quit your day job and become a full-time musician.