The Live-First Growth Template
It’s tough to make profit in music and most seem to be hyper focusing on streams and digital exposure.
Very few make a profit on streams, after what they spend on promo.
The money for artists in the music business mostly comes from live shows, merch sold at shows, crowdfunding, and synch licensing.
If the majority of time, effort, and money don’t go into what actually makes profit, the ability to make a living becomes nearly impossible.
Streaming is great for convenience and discovery…not revenue. Nearly 43 million songs are release per year now.
So the real strategy isn’t how to boost streams or inflate metrics on social media. Digital is only a piece of the artist career pie.
The real strategy is how to tour and connect with those that will become loyal fans.
As a former touring artist that performed over 600 shows across the country and raised $12k in crowdfunding, Here’s a template for you to customize for your own unique style, budget, brand, etc.
perform 5-6 cities 3x year
make them unique experiences, not just another “show”
find local talent to co-headline and bring audience
book some venues standard door splits, rent a few spaces for more event autonomy.
never do pay-to-play
utilize Meta ads to run geo-targeted ads to each city for each show.
focus on the experience, not the sale
you don't want to clutter a viewers feed, so don't post individual show invites as organic posts/reels. Only use Stories and ads for this.
submit event to content calendars in each city.
most cities have multiple content calendars, add to a spreadsheet.
book day-of performance on a local radio station for each show, add to spreadsheet.
a bts and concert camera person is an essential to bring on every trip
this content will be used for social media and future concert ads.
organically: post highlights of the previous show, not upcoming dates.
paid ads: boost highlights, bts, and geo-targeted invites to individual cities. Customize ads to each city.
once new fans are warmed up, you can offer them opportunities: email list, crowdfunding, but only once they’re an actual fan...not just a follower. The age of the "help me, I'm an artist" is all but over.
bring merch, but only make merch you think your fans would like...examples:
A folk band could make hiking gear merch.
A metal band could do leather belts.
research 20 or so small sync agencies (not libraries) and pitch them your music.
personalize email, no attachments, include ownership percentage, only follow up once.
rinse and repeat until you get a deal offer.
don't give them more than 30-40%
Like any system, it generously takes some time to start seeing results. It’s also how you learn the unique things that work and don’t work for you. I suggest diverting all marketing budgets wasted on playlisting, music videos, and meta ads (for streams) to this strategy. Run this system for a year and view each show, ticket, email, pitch, as a part of a much bigger process.
There are best practices for each step, but this gets you in your way.
Carpe Diem!
