Artists are the worst direct-to-consumer brands on the internet

Welcome, artists & builders.

Each week, we navigate music’s future together. Today I’m diving into the shift towards a direct-to-fan music industry.

Inside Issue #37

💡 Ideas: Creating better d2c artist brands
⚒️ Tools: Stop asking your fans to pre-save
🗞️ Plus: State of music tech fundraising & more

Going Direct

Artists are the worst direct-to-consumer brands on the internet.

Sorry, but it’s true.

→ They know nothing about their fans
→ Drive attention to other people's platforms
→ Must compete to reach their own followers every single time

No other business would operate this way.

It's madness.

And listen – it’s not (all) their fault.

Platforms hoard data, partners don’t share their incentives & the industry chases short-term wins instead of building long-term artist businesses.

But artists are waking up.

Traditional models that rely heavily on 3rd-party platforms & algorithms are no longer sufficient for artists who want to build resilient & profitable careers.

Just ask James Blake. Or Dermot Kennedy. Or James Vincent McMorrow.

Each spoke out last week rejecting the idea that platforms, labels or anyone else should hold the keys to their audience.

These artists join a growing movement that sees the future clearly:

We must stop outsourcing fan relationships & put artists at the center of their own ecosystems.

Artists should be the ultimate direct-to-fan brands.

They should know everything about their fan’s history & interactions with them.

Why they love them
What's their favorite song
What shows they've been to
What merch they’ve bought
The nostalgia they've built up together

And they should deliver personalized value & experiences based on it.

This shouldn’t be scattered amongst 50 different platforms that give you a partial view or sell it back to you in the form of ads, but held directly with the artist.

Everything should come through your front door.

Want a ticket?
Want the LP?
Want full access?
Want to hear it first?
Want the best experience?

You better come through us — directly.

For Oasis’s US tour sale last week, it was nearly impossible to get a ticket without coming through Oasis’s front door (powered by Openstage). 

1. Sign-up with Oasis

2. Prove you’re a fan

3. Win their fandom-weighted lottery

4. Get a code matched to your fan ID

5. Get access to the pre-sale on Ticketmaster

The vast majority of tickets were sold this way. 

The band harnessed this moment into actual relationships by making them come through their front-door — rewarding fandom & gaining millions of fan data points in the process.

This is how you build your ecosystem.

Rather than constantly vying for attention on rented channels, re-advertising & hoping to break through the attention gauntlet over & over again, artists with owned channels can easily reach, engage & sell to their audience.

No algorithm necessary.

This sounds hard.

But it's not.

With the right tools & technology - and more importantly the right mindset & north star metrics - this is a far easier (and much more reliable) way to grow a sustainable artist career.

It's the way off the hamster wheel.

This doesn't mean abandoning platforms—it means no longer depending on them.

→ Use rented channels for reach
→ Use that reach to grow your owned channels
→ Superserve fans in those owned channels

Repeat.

This isn’t rocket science—it’s just good business.

It's time for artists to take control, so they can build stronger, more sustainable businesses.

It’s time to go direct.

— Rob

PS: I’ll do a deep dive on the Oasis fan ticketing project in a future edition. Reach out if you’re interested in setting up something similar.

PPS: See an example for non-Oasis-sized artists to welcome fans ‘through their front door’ below.

📚️ My 3 Favorite Things This Week

1. A GPU organ that plays music acoustically by controlling the RPM of each fan (this is very cool).

2. Green Day release ‘Dookie Demastered’: Album re-exploded onto obscure, obsolete & inconvenient formats.

3. Vérité makes her archive available to Buy or Steal

Thanks for reading. Til next time.

- Rob