An email is worth 1,000 streams.
Every time you interact with your audience, it’s an opportunity to upgrade your communication relationship. So make sure to turn the fleeting moments into something more long-lasting.
Here are some ideas across artist-fan interactions, including:
Tour Announce
Ticket Pre-Sales
Concert On-site
Album Release
Singles
Streaming
Live Stream
Giveaways & Exclusives
Best Practices
Tour Announce
Use this moment to collect addresses “to get notified of pre-sale”. Easy.
Laylo is a strong option, but you can also generate this directly.
Ticket Pre-sales
Run artist pre-sales directly.
Venues typically give ~10% of tickets for artists.
Fans pay lower ticketing fees.
Give them extra value.
Offer bundles.
Promoter partner pre-sales come with nice marketing angles, but these advantages + email capture make direct worthwhile.
Concert On-Site
Use QR codes with location check-in for exclusive content. Offer show specific content (photos, setlist, BTS, live audio) to revitalize the euphoria 1-7 days later.
Plus, the old mailing list sign-up. Paper or digital.
Album Release
Listening Parties: Host gated parties where fans can listen together early or on release date. Q&A, giveaways, contests. Easy to convert into premium sales. (I love Stationhead for there is not currently email access.)
Direct-Windowing: Let your community listen before anyone else. EVEN is doing this in a paid format as ‘Sell First, Stream Later’.
Completer: Make the complete album only available through your own channels.
The music industry collectively decided #2 + #3 were BAD.
• Bad for the industry (streaming is our savior)
• Bad for artists (First, you’ll piss off editors; Now, you’ll rankle the algorithm gods).
Managers & artists should wake up from this mistake. You’re building artists, not those platforms.
Singles
Pre-saves: Or, better yet, forever-saves. I don’t believe they drive streams, but use them to convert social followers into subscribers.*
NFT pre-save: Use Showtime’s free NFT in exchange for a pre-save & you’ll get both their email & on-chain address.
Drop Party: We lost song premieres. Now singles have no shared moments or immediacy. Drop parties can let people share that moment. Ideally, give out or provide the opportunity to get something scarce at the end.
More notes on pre-saves:
▪️ Don’t use them on your direct fans (email, community). You have better places to send them than back to the top of the streaming funnel.
▪️ Make sure fans are aware they are being added to your email list & will receive ongoing messages / save all future songs (for Forever Saves).
Streaming
Streaming platforms are notorious for making it difficult to connect with your fans & take the relationship off-platform. Here are some hacks.
Spotify:
Bio: Add a cell or email in your bio. Tell people to hit you up. Make it fun. Answer directly or use chatbots to opt people in.
Artist Pick: You can now add downloads to Spotify via the Shopify integration. Offer a free, exclusive track. Make it your artist pick or tag to related albums. Create messaging around “Join our community for an exclusive track”, etc.*
*I haven’t seen this executed yet. Let me know if you do it.
Soundcloud: They let you see & DM your biggest fans. One at a time. Early on, this is a great way to build relationships & move fans to your community.
Audiomack: Lets you message all followers or supporters in one shot.
General: Fill out all of your bio information at Spotify for Artists, Apple for Artists, Amazon, Tidal, etc. Include any socials that will allow.
Live Stream
Do free live-streams that begin on social platforms. Include a cut-off moment where fans can continue watching on a member-gated location.
For the right artist, this is something you can do continuously that provides:
📺️ Flow of video to everyone
🍞 Breadcrumbs to come deeper
👍️ Flow of added value to subscribers
Or, you can make the ‘gated’ content something different. A post-show chat, or community watch party. Whatever makes sense for you that is repeatable.
Giveaways / Exclusives
Many ways to make this work. Just don’t be cheesy. Here’s one..
Always get extra vinyl test pressings. Do a pay-what-you-want giveaway on Bandcamp with 10 of them. Signed. Let people know you’ll do a first-come, first-serve giveaway in the next 72 hours. They need to sign up to get the notification.
👋 You get tons of contacts.
💰️ On average, buyers spend high on this.
⏺️ Everyone who misses out still makes it to your merch page..
Other Best Practices
Link-in-bio: Sign-up should be a top call-to-action.
Website: Include email signup above the fold & an exit intent popup.
40% of Fred Again’s header links are to join his community