If you’re wanting to be a full time producer, then you need to have an organic fanbase that supports you on your journey. As Electronic musicians our fanbase is everything. It’s who pays for your music to get you up in the charts. All so you can either get more fans, or finally hold the beloved International Dance Music Award – the crown jewel of the industry.
However, before you get there you need to know how to organically grow your fanbase so that you can get the best support possible. Where do you begin when it comes to growing your fanbase?
Use a Mailing List to Grow a Fanbase as Electronic Musicians
A mailing list is one of the best ways to organically grow your fanbase as Electronic Musicians. Think about it, if you’re able to get someone to sign up on your mailing list, it means they want more immediate content from you. So much so that they’re even willing to pay for it right away!
Social media algorithms will also change and adjust, which means you won’t always be put in front of new people.
Hell, you’ll even be blocked by the algorithm so your most loyal and dedicated fans can’t even see you! E-mail lists are yours, you own them, you get directly in front of your most loyal fanbase at all times.
This directly affects how you can grow an organic fanbase as Electronic Musicians!
A lot of these social media sites will eventually dwindle away *cough* *cough* Myspace *cough* *cough*. When that does happen and a new site takes its place, you’ll be able to e-mail every single person in your list allowing you to not have to start fresh at 0 “followers.”
Instead, your dedicated fans will immediately follow the link you send them so that they can continue to support you on this new platform.
If you can manage to package the right content that hits directly at your target market and offer them something sweet for free, you’re guaranteed to start growing an organic fanbase!
What do you need to get started? Well as I stated before, get something really sweet to offer to your fans that you can give away for free. This is what will entice them to want to be a part of your growing community.
Throw some ad money at this via Facebook/Instagram. Lastly, make sure you have additional content lined up to send them via your mailing list for at least 5 weeks.
What’s nice about software like Mailchimp – a free e-mail marketing service – is that you can set up automated campaigns so every time an e-mail gets added to the list, your automated e-mails will go out whenever they meet the necessary requirements!
Curious to learn more about e-mail marketing lists? Check out this episode of my podcast, Electronic Dance Money Episode 022 – EDM Promo Lists & The Key to E-mail Marketing Part 2
Tik Tok
If you follow me even just a little bit, you know how much I talk about Tik Tok. If you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know what Tik Tok is, let me tell you a little bit about it.
Tik Tok is an app where it’s users can create a video that is up to 1 minute long. They take sounds that are uploaded into the app and use these to create different videos with. You can also just create your own little video with you talking, but this sound will be imported into the app for all of the other users to create with.
A majority of the videos created are lip sync videos, as well as dance videos.
If you’re marketing savvy, then you can probably see how lucrative this app can be for producers. I’ve seen producers go from nothing to famous overnight because a big Tik Tokker used their track to create either a lip sync or a dance video and millions of people saw the video.
This means that millions of other users are also using this audio, which then makes millions of other users hear the track.
Ever heard of a little song called Old Town Road by Lil Nas X? Well guess where this song first blew up? That’s right, Tik Tok.
I had a friend just the other week that was telling me about how he knows a producer that had posted his track on Tik Tok. Within 24 hours his track started to gain major traction!
My buddy, who was telling me this story, is someone that I’ve told for well over a year to get his tracks on Tik Tok! Hopefully this was clear evidence that he needs to be putting his music on this app.
Tik Tok is a surefire way for you to gain a completely organic fanbase, as Electronic musicians, without having to spend any ad money. Your song just needs to end up on what’s called the For You Page at the right time for the right people to see it.
If the right people see it, they may use it in their next video. If they use it in their next video, other people will hear the audio. I think you can figure out what will happen next.
This is how you grow an organic fanbase as an Electronic Musician.
If you’re not on Tik Tok, you better open up your phone and download it right now! Let’s say you just want to put your music on Tik Tok and that’s it, next time you distribute your own music through Distrokid, just remember that there’s a button you can press to have your track added directly to the app!
Whenever you release through a label, ask if they use Distrokid and if they can distribute your track to the app!
As of right now, you’re unable to receive any sort of compensation for plays of your music.
However, people can only use a minute of your audio, which is great free advertisement if your song blows up. And trust me, if your track blows up on Tik Tok, you’re going to be getting hundreds of thousands, if not millions of streams on Spotify.
However, a lot of artists, and especially record labels, are calling for Tik Tok to have to compensate for music on the app.
Who knows if that will ever happen, but if it does, then Tik Tok will have solidified its role in being one of, if not THE best app for musicians to be active on.