When you talk about revenue streams, the biggest source of revenue for the majority of major artists these days is live performances and touring. Compared to traditional spins or record sales, you may sell a million records as an artist, which could take a year to sell. Or, maybe you get a million spins, and it could take 10, 11, or 12 months to reach that point.

An artist who is getting that level of sales and performance royalties is most likely able to sell out Madison Square Garden. An artist will make more in one night at Madison Square Garden than they will in the first six months of releasing a song. Every big artist realizes music is the business card that gets you in the door to touring and really generating income. At the end of the day, an artist will end up making more money in one month of good, strong touring than they will in a year of spins and performances on the radio and likewise.

The best advice that I could give to any aspiring artist is to make your live show great. The way that you make a live show great is to play live. There’s no secret — that’s how you do it. The old adage in the music industry is a band that plays 100 shows live is a completely different band than the one that plays their first live show. A lot of times when big artists tour, you’ll find that within the first couple of weeks of the tour, they’re playing secondary or tertiary markets. You may ask yourself, “Why is Rihanna in West Palm Beach and San Antonio as opposed to New York, Dallas, Boston, Los Angeles — the major media mecca centers?” That’s because artists always want to gather steam, get the machine running smoothly, get the kinks out of a show, and really make it run well. With today’s shows, that’s no small feat. Between the pyrotechnics, the sound, the lighting, the staging, and all the things that go on, it’s really important that all pistons are firing at the same time to make the show great.

Online Music Education: How to Build Your Fan Base

I understand that you guys aren’t all going to sell out Madison Square Garden like Drake. You need to make your live show compelling on the club level. It doesn’t matter if there’s five people there, 50 people there, or 500 people there. That means you rehearse. That means you build your following. That means you slowly build your audience outside the epicenter of your home base. For example, if you’re a New York-based band, you shouldn’t overplay New York. You should play a show in Brooklyn, maybe a show in Manhattan, then take a little break. Do you play a show in Westchester? Yes. Maybe try and hit Philly. Maybe you go to Hartford. Maybe you go into Boston, and slowly build your center out. That’s how you build your fan base.

Build a Base at Home First

A great story that I love to tell is a friend of mine has been a manager in Chicago for many years. They’re a very big manager and have managed a lot of really great acts. Artists would call him all the time in Chicago and say, “Hey, we’re looking for a manager.” And he would say, “Can you sell out the Metro?”

Those who don’t know, the Metro is a historic club in Chicago. Every great artist has come through the Metro. It doesn’t matter if you’re the Smashing Pumpkins or Kanye. It’s about a 900-person capacity room and very famous. And every great artist that has come to Chicago has sold out the Metro. More often than not, the artists say, “Well, no, I can’t sell out the Metro. I can sell like 300 tickets.” And he would say, “Well, when you sell out the Metro, give me a call again.”

You’re not going to be the biggest band in the world if you’re not the biggest band in your hometown. Build your fan base locally. Build those fans, the real fans who are going to stick with you through thick and thin before you try and take over the world. Everybody starts with 1,000 real fans and builds out from there. You need to do the exact same thing.

Get critical feedback about your show. Make sure your show’s great. When you play, make sure it’s an event. If you overplay, nobody’s going to want to see you anymore. On a long-term basis, that’s how you’re going to make a significant amount of money in the music industry if you’re a performer. If you’re a manager, that’s also how you’re going to make commission.

When we talk about utilizing social media in the music industry, one of the really important things to think about is something that social media is really good at: spreading stories. A lot of times, especially in the music world, we look at it from a different lens. We’re focusing too much on just what we’ve made and not the story around it.

I’m sure everyone reading this has a friend who worked really hard on a song, was excited to put it out, and posted a link to the SoundCloud on Facebook. They think, “Watch it go; it’s going to be huge.” They post it, and then nothing happens. That’s because the existence of your content is not, in itself, interesting, and not something that will spread in social media. A story around it that’s truthful absolutely can.

An Online Music Education Assessment of Social Media Success

In the music video for “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, they jump in the air and transform into cowboys.

What about that song made it perfect for a meme? Music education will show you there’s usually one line or something strange in the song. In this particular song, it’s the phrase, “I got the horses in the back.” For some reason, that’s what people latched on to.

Social media was one of the biggest factors in the song’s success. Social media is the biggest factor in every song’s success nowadays.

The Proof in the Practice

I used social media to my advantage, and it worked. I produced a record a few years ago that I was really proud of, and I did that exact same thing I say above. I was really excited the day it came out. I was like, “Watch it go, it’s going to be huge.” I posted a link to it, and nothing really happened.

Fortunately for me, at the exact same time, someone else related to the record took a very different approach. The artist’s little brother, actually, went on Reddit and not only posted a link to the album on Bandcamp, but also started telling the story around the album. And the album had an interesting story.

We had recorded all these different musicians in different places, different locations, 30 different studios. It was interesting, inherently, and the little brother just started talking about that story and linking to the album. Lots of people started asking questions about that on these music threads, and people started linking to the album. By the end of the week, it was the number one album on Bandcamp, all from him posting the stories on Reddit versus me just posting a link. No one cared when it was just the link itself.

That was an amazing lesson for me: it’s context that leads us to the content. The content alone will not be enough to get us hooked in first. You need to think about the story around what you’re doing.

When looking to build your career in the music industry and thinking about gaining a fan base, it can be really difficult and stressful to be thinking that the sky’s the limit. Obviously, you want to attain as many fans as possible. But it’s really hard to reverse engineer a strategy for an unlimited number of them. But, what we can do is make a very specific plan to find enough fans, up to a certain number. In fact, we can literally find which places have that audience size and go get them.

There’s also another element to this that’s really important. For those of you that want to make the transition into making your living from music, you need to define a starting dollar amount goal. Then, you need to just figure out how many fans you actually need to provide you with the financial support to reach that goal.

This comes from a concept called “1,000 True Fans”, from a great thinker named Kevin Kelly. And basically what it states is this: Let’s say that I was able to charge a fan, for example, $100 over the course of a year—whether this person is coming to a couple of concerts, or buying a t-shirt of mine for $20 or $30, or maybe they support me on Patreon or Kickstarter.

Now, if I had 1,000 fans worldwide, and I was getting $100 in a year from each of them, that would be a six-figure salary. That’s a life-changing amount of money for a lot of artists that are just getting started. The really important thing there is that you’re getting that life-changing amount of money without having to have millions of fans. Instead, it’s just about your 1,000 being really true fans. And that number can be as low or as high as you want, based on where you’re at in your career.

I believe it’s good to ask yourself when you’re just starting out, how do you get those first 50 true fans? Everyone’s goals are different, and for you, they might be that you want to make one third of your regular day job salary this year from music, and maybe that means you need your first 50 fans to each spend at least $75. Once you figure that out, you start coming up with ways you can make that happen.

Looking at it this way really lowers the stakes and makes these transitions into being a professional person in music a lot more doable. This whole idea that you need millions of fans on Spotify right now is just not true, particularly if you’re giving the fans you do have an opportunity to financially support you as well.

To learn more about these concepts and other lessons for success in the music industry, think about exploring online music education. If you’re looking for a music education, you’ll find that there’s no more affordable, accessible, or convenient way to achieve it.

One interesting piece of music industry history is the start of the phonograph. The phonograph started as a cylindrical piece of wax, and then it became a shellac disk, and then later on a vinyl disk, and so on. This was a way, by using acoustic and electric technology, to have somebody perform in front of a microphone, and get that recording onto a piece of material that could be played back in anybody’s home, using a phonograph record machine.

The principle of the record business is the same principle as the publishing business. If I were to just give you a piece of vinyl with no grooves on it, it wouldn’t be worth anything to you. What makes it worthwhile is the information that’s on it. The idea is what’s valuable. However, it’s not just the idea that’s on the record—it’s the performance of an idea.

To outline the difference, there is the idea that’s fixed in form with paper and ink, and then there is the actual performance of that idea, which is then fixed on the vinyl record. So, the two parts of the music business become the idea and the performance of the idea. And in the record business, you’re not only paying the performer who’s on the record, but you’re also paying the author of the idea that’s being performed.

Sometimes, when we talk about the music industry and say that there are two sides to a record, we aren’t literally talking about the two sides of a record. We’re talking about the publishing side, which is the initial idea, and we’re talking about the master side, which is the actual performance of the idea and the person or people behind it.

Just as it is with sheet music, a performer is not necessarily going to know where to buy vinyl, where to press it, where to create the little pieces of paper that go inside of it, or the names of all the stores that sell records across the country. Because of this, we need record executives, who are able to take care of those things. So, the record business, just like the sheet music business before it, becomes a partnership between musicians and entrepreneurs—between artists and business people.

A record producer has two entities to pay. The first is the publisher and songwriter, who are the owners of that song. The second entity is the performing artist, who usually gets a royalty per record for the distribution of the performance. That’s how the music business operates; you either own the song, or you can own the performance of that song in fixed form.

The music industry today operates on those same principles. The only main difference is that today, in many cases, the performance of the song is not fixed in physical form, but instead available digitally.

Performances started in much the same way that songs did: in the oral tradition. A performance wasn’t something to be bought and sold. But then came the idea of modern theater, and the modern venue. The idea behind it was very simple: there’s a performer in a room. People are outside the room, and there’s a person at the door who’s going to take $5 from you. If you pay the $5, you gain entry to the room, and you’re going to hear the performance.

That is essentially the core of the business of being a performing artist. Of course, that artist can also record things on vinyl, or a CD, or on a digital file, and that’s worth something as well.

If you’re interested in learning more about how performing artists monetize themselves and their performances, as well as many other concepts regarding the music industry, think about exploring online music education. It is by far the most accessible and convenient way to access the lessons that come with a solid music education.

“A few decades after the start of Tin Pan Alley and the sheet music business, an entrepreneur comes along with another invention — essentially another way to fix a musical idea in form,” explains Dan Charnas. “And that entrepreneur was Thomas Edison. And in addition to inventing the light bulb, he also invented the phonograph or gramophone.”

John Carlin adds, “Thomas Edison was a true genius, maybe one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century. He invented a way to record music and commercialize it, and that’s really the key. Now, the interesting thing about Thomas Edison is that he was deaf when he was a young man. Someone had cuffed him on the ears, and he had lost his hearing. And not only did he have bad hearing, but he also was thought to have very bad taste in music. However, he was a mechanical engineering genius, the equivalent Bill Gates or Steve Wozniak in our world.

“Edison created this machine, the phonograph, which utilized a wax cylinder. It was a round device, and a needle would etch the sound into the wax. To use it for recording, people would push their heads or their instruments into a big horn, and the horn would record on the wax. Then, when you played it back through the machine, the sound was amplified through the horn.”

Carlin describes Edison’s early efforts as “somewhat of a niche business. He would sell the wax cylinders, but he was mainly interested in selling the machines to people. So, in the early days of the recording industry, the music was essentially given away to sell the machines to musicians and get them into people’s homes.”

With music education, you can learn more about the music industry’s roots and many other useful and interesting concepts. With online music education, you can learn all these things without having to leave home.

One of the catchphrases I use with students in many of my classes is “Make sure you’re possessed by your music every time you step on stage.” I kind of coined that term while watching “Stop Making Sense” by the Talking Heads, which is a 1984 live music performance film that features The Talking Heads.

David Byrne from the very first song is really just possessed by the music. You can see it in his body movements, facial expressions, voice performance and instrumentation. Every part of his performance reveals a person who is completely embedded in their music and their process.

Music Education

I use that film as a teaching tool in not only the persona class but in classes throughout the semester because it really focuses well on stage setup, instrumentation, sequencing and collaboration. The film displays literally every aspect of the music industry and associated careers that we cover in classes. An online music education can reveal to you more about opportunities in the music industry beyond this topic. A formal education can help you narrow down your career choice and consider everything required of you to achieve success.

My point of view is always going to be that of a talent manager. That’s my background. That’s what I came up in, and that’s who really nurtured my thinking. As a result, everything that I do is always going to be from the perspective of finding a way to evolve a vision. I want to be able to know how to achieve this, who a partner should work with, and how to share the vision with its intended audience.

The advice I would give, to any artist who is looking to understand their brand and what they want to say, is to find a point of view. What do you care about? Do you care about how you look, or fashion? Do you care about types of music and telling people what influences you? Find your point of view, and start there.

Keep in mind that this is not an exact science. This is not some miraculous thing where you can snap your fingers and suddenly you have 30,000 followers. It doesn’t really work like that. It takes time, dedication, and putting your effort into the right areas.

If you’re looking to build your personal brand on social media, I would challenge you to ask yourself: What are my values? What do I care about? What do I want people to know about me? Also, ask yourself what you want people to know about your music, your story, and where you’re going. As an example, if you’re a hip-hop artist, you might love hip-hop but decide that you’re not going to have any raps with curse words in them. And that’s going to be your MO.

Figuring out these things — what you care about, what you want to share with others through your music, and what you want to achieve — are crucial when it comes to building your brand and creating your story in the music industry.

Exploring music education is an excellent way to learn more about these concepts, and building your personal brand and viewpoint in the world of music. With online music education, all you need is an internet connection and a desire to learn.

As many of you may be aware, when you perform on stage, you’ll sometimes have a music director. The music director chooses the best way to implement musicians around the song that you’ve chosen to perform. This could be an electronic track played in the background, a symphony orchestra or an acoustic guitar. It could be an electric guitar accompanied by a drummer. All of these instrumentations are different types of music direction.

If you don’t have a music director, then you’ll either be doing it all on your own or in collaboration with your bandmates. Because there are so many options, what we like to do is choose the instrumentation that works the best with our story. So, after we’ve chosen our story, we’re able to see which instruments should also be characters in the story that we’re telling.

For example, is it an introspective, intimate performance that we’re trying to create? If so, maybe an acoustic guitar and some hand percussion would work. Is it more of a wild and crazy party? If it is, maybe a track and a live drummer would be best. These are the questions that we need to consider and understand when we choose the new characters that we’ll take along with us on our story.

So, the structure of a show, and sometimes, the sequence of a show, is how we lay out all of the different songs and speaking moments, as well as any poetry we might be reading, opening acts, or DJs after the show. We ask ourselves, what is the best way for us to tell the story that we’ve written? How do we get the audience amped up for the show, and in the right place emotionally to receive the story that we want to tell them? And finally, what is the best way to relay that story and exchange energy with them throughout the show?

To learn more about the music industry and telling your story on stage, many people explore the opportunities of music education. With online music education, you can even learn about these concepts from the comfort of your own home.

It is important for a producer, or an arranger, mixer, recording engineer or anyone associated with creating a recorded work, to understand that the artist has quite a tough job ahead of them. They have to expose their persona. They have to expose their meaning, the intention of their individual work and their overall art, to their peers within the music industry and their audience.

Our Responsibilities

What we have to do as studio personnel or production people is make sure that they’re consistent. We must make certain that the message is always on point and that we’re always headed in a direction that they want to head without killing creativity or spontaneity.

You have to tread a fine line. But, it is the responsibility of the producer to keep someone on point and relevant to their own message. You could get lost in the woods really easy through the process, through any creative process, and then the artist’s intent is never revealed fully.

Music Education

With an online music education you learn the knowledge and skills needed to guide artists during their music career and artistic journey. You learn about these and other important areas that studio personnel and production people manage on a daily basis.

The next thing with social media that also piggybacks on this story is really trying to bring your audience with you on some sort of journey. One of my favorite examples here is the wonderful Vulfpeck. They’re sort of a funk group out of LA. And something they did a few years ago was they wanted to do a national tour. But they were just out of college, and they really didn’t have the size following or the money to pull off a full tour.

So, they came up with kind of a funny idea. They posted a whole album on Spotify of complete silence. It’s called Sleepify. It was 10 songs, 30 seconds each, complete silence, no music. And the idea was they were going to reach out to their audience and say, “Do us this favor. For the next few weeks when you go to bed, play our album and press loop so the album is playing all night. And our hope is that maybe we’ll earn a little bit of money from Spotify, and we’ll be able to go on tour.”

Their fans start doing this, and the money starts coming in. After a couple weeks, there’s a few thousand dollars that have come in through the band. And, so they think, this has been amazing. It’s hilarious. Is there a way we can even raise the stakes more here?

So, they say to that same group of fans, not only if you keep doing it can we go on tour, but if you get your friends to do it, if we can really blow this thing up, we’ll make every date on the tour completely free.

They knew their audience. They knew their audience didn’t have a lot of money to spend. They knew that that would resonate with their audience. If there was a fan of theirs in a far-off city from where they were that never sees this band, they would happily go evangelize and tell their friends to do the Sleepify stunt so they could see the band for free.

So, it really blows up. Tons of people start doing it. The money is rolling in. Eventually, Spotify notices it because it’s a little bit controversial. They tear it down. That gets the band lots of press. At the end of the day, they ended up making tens of thousands of dollars from this. They were able to do the tour for free.

And to this day, their fans that were part of that still talk about it. Their fans feel like they were part of this journey with the band. And especially when you think about fans who might not have as exciting lives as an artist doing things like this, this is an amazing psychological thing to tap into. Make your fans feel like they’re part of what you’re doing.