How To Better Understand Your Fanbase

To survive in the modern music industry, it is imperative that you understand your fans in order to help your audience grow. Part of this requires being able to recognize the difference between your casual fans and your core fans.

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Guest Post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0

Your place in our current music world is totally dependent upon the development, care, and feeding of your fanbase, and this excerpt from my Music 4.1 Internet Music Guidebook will help you better understand your audience so you can grow it.

First of all, understand that your core fans or “tribe” is only a piece of your total audience. Your audience can actually be broken down into the following two categories:

your casual fans and your core fans.

Your total audience, or your fans, is fervent about a particular small niche of music that’s usually a subcategory of a larger genre, which means that they love speed metal (as opposed to the much larger metal or hard-rock genres), bluegrass (as compared to the larger country-music genre), or alien marching bands (as opposed to either of the larger alien-music or marching-band genres).

If you’re an artist in a particular niche, your audience will automatically gravitate toward you, but still might not be your fans. This includes casual fans, occasional listeners, and people who like what you’re doing yet aren’t particularly passionate about it.

Although this part of your audience can’t be ignored, it’s probably not a good idea to expend all your energy on it. They’re aware of you and will probably give you a try with every release, unless they’re disappointed too many times in a row. They can be turned into passionate fans though. One “hit” song or album, a change in image, or a change in general perception, and they become the passionate critical mass needed for the breakout that turns a respected artist into a true star.

In Music 4.1, your most important core audience contains your most passionate fans, or your “tribe.” They’ll buy whatever you have to sell, work for free, recruit other fans, and basically do anything you ask.

All they want is access to and communication with the artist, which is the basis of Music 4.1.

In the end, every fanbase has the same characteristics:

Your audience consists of your casual fans and your core fans
Fans may like an artist but may not be particularly passionate
Your core fans (true fans, uber-fans, super fans, tribe) are very passionate about everything you do
Most of your energy should be directed towards your core fans

Understanding exactly who makes up your audience will help you grow it.