Engage Your Fans

01/23/2009

Music

engage_your_fansI get frustrated when I want to find out more info on an artist when I go to their website… (example – www.artistname.com) and up comes a splash page that has a nice picture of the artist with a link that only goes to their myspace page. Why does this frustrate me? Because what you are telling me, dear artist, is that you don’t care about me your potential fan and that you don’t think the internet is the place you will build a following.
In the music economy of the day, myspace is a good place to listen to samples of an artist’s music. But when a myspace artist page is filled with ads and nothing more than a tour schedule and a ‘myspace blog’ written by someone at your label, then myspace is a bad place to connect.

Why?

Because outside of the general comments people can leave on your page, all your doing is creating a one way dialogue. Today there are a growing number of artists who realize that connecting with their fans online with a great blog, twitter and maybe FaceBook will mean the difference between having a career and not having a career. Radio singles are a crap shoot to get on the air and brick/mortor stores are becoming fewer every year.

Wouldn’t you think that if more and more people are buying downloadable music from places like iTunes that maybe you should hang out where the people are going to buy their music? Where are they? They are online commenting on blogs, video blogs, responding to twitter messages and tagging their favorite artists in facebook pictures at last night’s concert. For the amount of money you spent paying someone to put up a lame splash page the redirects us to myspace, you could have a fully interactive site that engages your fans.

Dear Artist…. There is a conversation about you happening online right now as you read this. Do you know who these people are? What they are saying? Why don’t you? Do you know what they want from you? Why not? Why haven’t you made more of an effort yourself to get them to buy your CD or come to your show? Because it’s your manager’s job or your label’s job? Because you are afraid of letting fans in too close? Yes there are stalkers but seriously… you don’t have to give out your cell number or street address. We just want to know you are participating in life as we are and are engaged in the conversation that IS ABOUT YOU. YOU are the best authority when it comes to the subject of YOU.

Stop letting someone else do it for you and jump on the bandwagon… it might actually work in your favor. If you haven’t made millions selling records and playing shows, then one day you are going to wake up and realize the booking agent is getting fewer calls to book you, the label seems uninterested in your career and you will feel like the kid who is getting picked last to be on a team during recess.

Does this make you a little nervous? If you aren’t engaging your fans online… it should. The longevity of our career just might depend on it.

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  • http://mostlyorganized.com Susan Unthank

    Wonderful post. I have tried to convey this message to clients for years!

  • http://www.spencesmith.com Spence Smith

    Thanks Susan! It's a frustrating conversation but i think some are on the change!

  • http://www.newreleasetuesday.com Bill Lurwick

    Spence;

    On the money as usual.

    I do a ton of interviews for New Release Tuesday, and just yesterday, before today’s scheduled interview with a new artist, I had this very thing happen when i was doing research on them.

    It is mind blowing to me, especially for the new ones who are just staring out. Why? Why would you not want someone to know the important info right off the bat? Instead, I have to spend 15 minutes searching and reading other peoples articles and opinions about them.

    Bill

  • http://www.smoothstones.net Dadooz

    Thanks, Spence, for the great "admonishing". We are a local gospel rock band, just about to release our first full length, self-produced CD, and we know that the web is the way to connect. We struggle to get gigs, get people to listen to our music and build a base of "fans" to interact with. We are on facebook, myspace, xianz, shoutlife, purevolume and will soon be active on youtube. We want to know how to build a community on the web, drawing from those social sites, but with our band site as the hub. We also want to manage the social sites, garner some control over the look and content.

    What are the important elements that are important to have on the site? What elements make people want to return (music that connects, sure, but what more)? What information needs to be there to engage people?

    We don't look to be big-time, we just feel like we have been given some songs to share, and we want to share them. If this is our ministry to God's people, we don't want to hide it, we want to let it shine, to find the people it is meant for…

    Thanks for your great blog. Peace and blessings!

  • http://euphrony.blogspot.com euphrony

    I agree, it's way too common and very frustrating. I do a few reviews of new music on my blog and I want to tell people something about the artist. I've actually dropped a review because I couldn't find any artist info, because if I can't talk about the artist (who would hopefully be around for more than just one album) then what good does it do to talk about an album (that will be largely forgotten in a year or two). The artist is the brand, the enduring mark, and the music changes; I like to talk about the more concrete of the two.