Preparing for Online Success as an Artist: DSPs & Social Media

In Part II Marc and Brian dig into fan and artist interaction and maybe how fans interact with other fans might be even more important. The artist still needs to lead. Brian also drops many tips on how to deal with Socials without having a breakdown, and he takes questions from some of the artists attending the event.

Marc Brown: The superfan or community want to interact with the artist but also with each other. Not a lot of people talk about how the fan interaction, between each other, is in many ways as important as the classic artist-to-fan relationship. 

Brian Zisook: I could make the argument that it is even more important than ever. There have been a tremendous number of studies that have been published over the past few years, especially coming out of the pandemic, that have highlighted that as a society we are extremely lonely. There is a need now more than ever for connection. If that connection can begin online and then transfer to offline, and the artists and their music is the source of that shared connection – that’s a beautiful thing. On Audiomack, we allow our users to leave comments under songs and albums, and we tell artists to log into their account and reply to those comments to foster that engagement. We believe the action of responding to user comments does two things: one, it strengthens the bond between the artist and the individual who left the comment and two, it signals to other fans that you are invested in them. That typically tends to supersede any one individual release. 

Marc: Do you know who Jelly Roll is?

Brian: I do. He’s an artist who has been building and building for over 10 years and finally had his breakthrough at the end of last year.

Marc: Yeah, his continuous attention to detail is exactly what you mentioned.

Brian: That is what shows that you’re invested. I think because there are so many options at our disposal now and consumers have this limited amount of free time. As an artist, you have to know what you’re competing with. It’s not just with fellow artists, but also with social media, audio books, podcasts and other things. So just the action of leaving a comment or saying thank you strengthens this bond so that when they have the free time available, they’re allocating it to you. 

Marc: I’ve always heard that one failure with the super fan theory is that they quickly can move on to other things. So, from album to album, you can lose fans because they may have gone in a different direction musically. I think your perspective, that people appreciate the artist for the artist, not necessarily just for the music, could be viewed as cynical. It’s actually the reverse. It is getting people to buy into the idea! Like Jelly Roll – I don’t necessarily listen to his music, but I’m here talking about him because I think he’s an interesting person. That in a way is equally as valuable, especially considering you do not get much money for streams these days. 

Brian: I think it is really important to remind everyone that artistic development is really human development. The shared connection that we all have, whether you are the creator or the consumer. There is a natural journey that an artist will go through that typically begins with them making the music that they are most passionate about, but as they see more and more success, there is a tendency to lean into what is more widely consumed for the purpose of mass-marketing. Once they reach a certain level, they have the freedom and flexibility to try new things because they now have this built-in audience, built up over a lengthy period of time. You see fewer artists take those artistic risks, because there is that inherent fear that the audience will not be interested in a new style. My counter to that would be that there are super fans that are going to stick with you no matter what. Also, it is okay if you lose people along the way.

Marc: Yeah, if you’re trying to appeal to everybody, you’re gonna end up appealing to nobody. 

Brian: Now more than ever, we are in the niche era. You want to have your corner of the internet that has a vested interest in you. You could be the biggest artist in that corner, and still not have name or facial recognition broadly, and that is fine. 

Marc: I think one of the biggest stresses that artists have is that there are too many channels to try to reach people. I would love to talk about advice for people who are just getting going. How do artists, especially newer ones, get going on a platform like Audiomack and start bringing people into their orbit?  

Brian: The first tip that I give all artists is to present as organized and cohesive. It sounds silly, but here is an example – you have at least five platforms with which you want to maintain some semblance of consistency. So let’s say Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. If I’m pitched an artist, I will go to all 5 of those platforms, a lot of times the profile pictures, bios and stuff are all different. So it looks a bit disorganized. You do not know what anyone’s entry point is going to be to you and your music, so wherever it is, you want to make sure that from a branding perspective you are presenting how your music sounds and how you want your music to come across on all platforms. You want there to be consistency,  so, for example, make sure your handle is the same on all platforms. Next, you want to make sure that it’s very clear that you are a musical artist, so you should absolutely post a pinned tweet or post that highlights your music.

Marc: It seems so obvious, amazing advice.  

Brian: Thank you. I mean, think about it like this… Let’s say someone hears your work and then they post about you and tag you. From that tag, someone who follows them clicks through to your profile. The best way to immediately capture them is to allow that potential fan and follower the opportunity to easily press play. Hopefully, of course, they liked what they heard, it could be a lyric video, a visualized or a music video, an audio stream or a video stream. You want to have a readily accessible smart link or smart URL. This allows you to add in every single DSP that you’re on as well as a list of all of your social media and your website – you can even include a bio on there. That way someone doesn’t have to go looking for you anywhere – you provided them with every single location you are available.

Marc: You have also said that you want your profile to make it clear that you’re still active. Can you talk about that?   

Brian: Yeah. There is an assumption that is made far too often, which is that if you go too long without actively posting to any one platform, that you are either no longer making music or you have abandoned that profile. This leads to artists wondering what they should post so that assumptions are not being made. My suggestion.  there is a variety of ways that you can engage your audience without spending much time on the content. A few options are sharing behind-the-scenes pictures of your notebook where you jotted some lyrics down or a photo of you recording music in your apartment – things like that, easy. A lot of artists complain that no one wants to interview them, but if you have followers on social media, let them ask you the questions and then record the answers to those questions and make it out like a makeshift interview. 

Marc: I have a story for you that’s related to that. Someone sent me a link to an artist on YouTube. I had heard they were from Canada, so I went on Google to try and find out where they were from exactly. I’m telling you, it took me five long minutes. So it reinforces everything you said that if somebody wants to know some basic information about you, you need to make it very easy. 

Brian: Let’s talk about that experience that you had really quickly. So you work in music, like I do. Spending five minutes trying to find information is somewhat reasonable. The average consumer, however, they are not spending five minutes on a Google search. If the information that they want is not immediately available, they move on. We have found that there is a huge benefit to making it clear where you are from because regional consumption has never been higher, especially on Audiomack. We look at previous listening history and where you are based so that we can serve up appropriate recommendations through our recommendation algorithm. We make it possible to actually tag your uploads based on where you are presently living and/or what regional sound has inspired your work – to not take advantage of that is to potentially lose out on millions of listeners. Very important information.

Marc: Absolutely – OK so we have a question. How does an artist target a particular audience on Audiomack? For example, an Afrobeat artist in Toronto, Canada, wanting to explore the Canadian audience where there is less focus on Afrobeats?

Brian: Yeah, a fantastic question. So when you upload your music, you really can lean into the metadata section and go nuts with tagging. We offer the ability to designate a primary genre, a secondary genre, and then subgenres and moods and also to tag the location. So specific to that question, you could tag the primary genre as Afrobeats and the mood could be party or whatever you feel is most appropriate. And then you could tag the geolocation as Toronto, Canada, and Nigeria. That way you are checking off the local box, and also checking off the box of the location that the music was inspired by and which als has the largest potential audience – on our service at least.

Marc: This is a perfect transition into the other part of this sort of discussion that I wanted to have. So we talked a bit about social media, and the reality is that when it comes to those platforms and also streaming platforms, it is impossible to do everything at once. What is your advice for maintaining all of these? Everything you are mentioning about Audiomack makes total sense, but should you be doing that everywhere? 

Brian: Yeah, it would be ridiculous for me to paint a picture that this is not a lot of work. It can be quite burdensome and anxiety inducing. It is important that we start by recognizing what is obvious. If you are working with a distributor, that distributor hopefully is assisting you in ensuring the delivery of your products to all services with the correct metadata. Now, some platforms allow you to create an account and then have access to your profile so that you can update it yourself. Some services require the distributor to get involved to assist. The best practice is that if you want to update your profile photo with each release, on a DSPs, you are going to want to put that request in at least three weeks before your next song release.  

Marc: That’s surprising, there must be a better way. I might be stating the obvious, but if you are working with a distributor, it would probably be good to get all the info right at the start, right? Would that be another way to approach not screwing these things up?  

Brian: That is correct. Ideally, you will have everything in place at the time that you submit your song or album and you are doing this well in advance of the date that you want to release it. The closer to the actual release, the greater the likelihood that the rushed process leads to someone making an error along the way. Some partners require you to have your release scheduled X number of days or weeks in advance for this reason. If your label or distribution partner allows you to rush a release, you’re definitely going to want to make sure that everything is correct the first time and won’t require updates.

Marc: No one wants to rush to release music anyway. People think they do, but it’s better to plan it out. One of the interview series we run on the web is called #Method ToMyMusic, there was one quote that I love and reference, it is from a woman who talks about how every time she releases music she spends the first three days rushing around correcting all of the mistakes she made. 

Brian: So having a little compassion towards yourself, knowing that you’re never gonna get it right every time is also another little piece of good info. This goes back to being organized when we were talking about socials before and having continuity across all your platforms. My recommendation is simple: create a spreadsheet, in that spreadsheet, you’re going to put in one column every single DSP that you either upload to or that your distributor delivers to. In every additional column, when is the last time that your profile photo was updated on that service, and then literally check it off once it’s done, and go through this process every time. I am a big believer that with every new campaign, you should have a new aesthetic, a new updated image. That doesn’t mean every time you release a song, but if you are leading into a brand new album representing a different stage in your career or life, you should have a new visual representation on display.

Marc: Good advice so as not to be too overwhelmed. It does not need to be super complicated, from day one have a spreadsheet 

Brian: Here is another question: asking about marketing: What campaigns have I seen recently that I would consider really engaging, innovative or inspiring? 

A fantastic question.I think something that a lot of artists do not consider, especially at the earliest stages of their career that they absolutely should, is being candid and transparent about the inherent difficulties one has as an aspiring artist. I do not believe that a lot of consumers understand how difficult it is to get a career off the ground. A lot of aspiring artists maintain hardcore full-time jobs in addition to working on their craft, and from a financial perspective, you know, it’s not cheap. You have to factor in the costs of creation and production and engineering and marketing and registration and copyright. I think the successful campaigns that I have seen are artists who are fully transparent with their following about all of these inherent difficulties. I think some artists are afraid to do that, that it comes across as complaining and we don’t want to hear it. The way I view it is, be as authentic as you possibly can be. What we have seen is that those artists who are truly themselves and authentic often form the strongest bonds with their fan bases. 

Another question: What advice do you have for developing artists trying to cut through all the digital noise? 

“A rising tide lifts all boats” I would encourage artists to reach out as a fan to other artists, introduce themselves as an artist, and formulate a plan to cross-pollinate, wherein you will introduce your audience on socials and DSPS to their music. Then of course, the expectation is they do the same introducing their audience on these platforms, to your music. 

Marc: Great answer. OK, one more question, how would you advise a new artist that wants to create a new genre or new style of music to market to the mainstream?

Brian: I would advise against that strongly. I think trying to appeal to whatever we consider the mainstream to be here in 2024 is a difficult mission. So when we talk about digital marketing, the first thing to always consider is who is your target audience. The mainstream is the masses, way too broad of a target audience to find success. Start smaller, start more narrow. Focus in on a specific audience based on age range, location and listening preferences. A good sort of like cheat sheet approach here is to scan playlists across all DSPs to get an idea of where the music you are currently making perhaps fits in, and then get an idea of how those artists on those playlists who are likely a bit more established, have gone out of their way to appeal to those audiences on their platforms and do your homework, do research. Again, start more narrowly, as opposed to trying to be all things to all people, because that is a very difficult path.

Marc: So you’ve got to do what you’re doing. It is not something you can control.

Brian: Very well said. 

Marc: Brian, this has been great, so much information. I think we have helped a few people get better organized at least.