Dollars and Sense
Artist Audience & Monetization
Wanted to share a bit of graphic thought on modern artist monetization. In today’s music economy musicians have the opportunity to operate successful, self inspired business based solely on their ability to create an engaged audience and actionable products. Like any business, artists should be looking at monthly revenues as a factor of their combined fan and product bases.
What I find most inspiring in this regard is the attainability of both of these components in today’s open market.
With the use of social web and mobile networks, advertising, nedia outreach / public relations and strategic alliances / partnerships it is now attainable for artists to go from hundreds of personal contacts to thousands of close fan-friends to 10s and 100s of thousands of audience members. The key to this is consistent, inspiring and engaging contact from an artist to create a lifestyle brand around themselves and their creativity.
As that fan base grows, so does the opportunity for earning a viable income from their endeavors by introducing products to their audience. The challenge for artists here is rethinking the product of music that we have become accustomed to. The idea of a round plastic cookie with 13 tracks or a virtual 5 megs of data stream is a pretty confining medium for a musician.
What would your music look / feel / smell like if you had total control to create it? Although primarily an auditory experience, music touches all of our senses and emotional ranges. What products can you as a musician create that your audience can engage with?
A good blog with fans reading it several times a week is worth about $0.10 per user per month – not a massive amount on a stand alone basis, but when applied to an audience of 100k or more it is a pretty tidy sum. From there is goes up in accordance with the product portfolio you can offer. Merchandise from T-shirts to self branded disposable chopsticks (these do exist) sell for much higher rates, but may reach less people. At the end of the day your music is still your central product and must continue to be great and inspiring to your audience, but even that can (and needs to) be rethought (a topic for a later blog).
For now, print out the picture at the top of the blog, hang it in your studio and use it as a map for your progress. Best of luck and stay tuned for a coming post on thoughts of how to restructure your music, process and approach.
Till then – LIVE YOUR MUSIC!
Barrett
