Leveraging Community-Building Strategies to Cultivate Dedicated Music Audiences
Long before anyone had uttered the term “superfan,” smart musicians and their teams understood that a key to sustainable success was building community. Here, we look at how to identify, grow, engage, and service a fan community.
by Charlie Fletcher for Hypebot
Finding an audience for your music can feel like an impossible challenge. The music world is highly competitive and can be abrasive towards new artists looking to build a following and score a contract with a major record label.
Rather than waiting for a music executive to come calling, consider taking proactive steps to cultivate your following and build your brand. You can do this by tapping into community-building initiatives that help you share your music and build a loyal audience who will stick by you.
This proactive approach to community building will help you engage your existing listeners, too. By offering incentives like freebies, meet-and-greets, and behind-the-scenes content, you show fans that you care about their support and want to reciprocate the passion they have for your production.
Audience Research
Music is both an art form and a business. This means you have to understand your audience if you want to connect with the folks who listen to your content and produce music that resonates with more people. This can be a challenging idea to understand if you’re used to seeing music as a purely personal venture.
Conducting market research can help you build an audience as a beginner artist. Understanding the market will help you pitch yourself to executives and create content for your social channels, too. If you’re unsure of how to read the modern music market, consider deep-diving into a popular subgenre that aligns with your current interests.
Setting aside time to research your market can help you find new ways to engage with your audience, too. For example, if you’re a fledgling hip-hop artist but have struggled to make headway on major platforms like Spotify, you may find that other free platforms like YouTube, Instagram, or Soundcloud attract more attention to your music. This gives you alternate ways to engage your audience online and build a bigger digital audience.
Community Engagement
Engaging with your audience requires a lot of extra work on your end as a growing artist. You’ll have to spend plenty of time traveling to small shows and should be prepared to answer questions and engage directly with your followers on platforms like TikTok and Facebook. This can be a real challenge if you’re an introverted artist and prefer to work in the peace and quiet of a recording studio.
Maintain your passion for community engagement and the best version of yourself forward by taking steps to manage your stress. Simple self-care steps, like practicing meditation, improving your diet, and getting enough sleep, can help you sustain your community engagement efforts and give you the energy to attend more shows and network with local artists in your area.
If you struggle to build momentum when engaging with your audience, consider partnering with other artists who can help you promote your work. Opening for bigger bands and recording mixes with similar artists is a proven way to expand your influence and engage musical audiences. This will expand the size of your community and improve your brand image amongst existing listeners. If working with other artists isn’t for you, consider other community engagement ideas like:
- Fan-Meet Ups: Work with your manager to determine a time and place to meet up with your most loyal fans for an autograph session and meet-and-greet. If you only receive a few attendees, consider offering them a special experience like a live showing of covers and songs that you haven’t released publicly yet.
- Forums: Digital forums offer you a chance to engage with your audience in a moderated space. Facebook groups and Reddit pages encourage participation and may help you build some hype around upcoming releases, too.
- Fan Collaborations: Engage your fans by hosting cover art contests and reposting original content that your superfans share on social media. This will encourage folks to keep sharing their fan-made content and help you engage with your wider community.
These community engagement ideas are designed to help you reciprocate the love that your audience shows for your music. Even simple acts, like resharing a fan-made lyric video or art project, can make a world of difference to your superfans and help you cultivate a dedicated audience.
Increasing Audience Loyalty
Successful musicians know that their brand is built on consistently re-engaging their existing audience. This can be a real struggle if you’re a small artist and only afford to tour once every few years. Rather than lamenting the limits imposed on beginner artists, find other ways to increase audience loyalty.
Start by using audience engagement tactics like fan clubs or paid memberships. Sites like Patreon or Substack are ideal for fledgling artists and give your audience an additional way to support your art. You’ll find it easier to engage with folks on these sites, too, as members have a genuine interest in supporting your creative production.
If you do develop a legion of dedicated superfans, try to spend more time listening than talking. This will improve your emotional intelligence and help you build authentic relationships with your supporters. Active listening helps you empathize with your audience and shows that you understand why they’ve been drawn to your brand as an artist. You can use these insights to make better decisions in the future when writing lyrics or working with an agent to put together a marketing strategy.
Conclusion
Community-building strategies should be at the core of your marketing approach as a musician with a growing audience. Showing your followers that you care about their support will help you land more superfans and increase your ability to engage audiences when you release new music. This will impress prospective record labels and help you sell out more gigs while you grow.
