Artists - Don’t Use Musicians To Build Your Social Following

[john]

 

Targeting real listeners and genuine fans on social media is so important. For most of us, musicians are not your natural audience. That’s why relying on Follow for Follow (F4F) Is Killing Your Music.

 

Exchanging likes, targeting other musicians might see your follower count quickly grow but pretty soon your engagement stats will completely tank. Musicians chasing easy likes and followers might temporarily make you feel a little better, but it is much, much more likely to be a nail in your musical coffin.

 

You will eventually realise that they are “pretend fans”. In their eyes, for most, you are an asset for their music, not the other way around. Other than a very small core of people who might genuinely be supportive, most are not. For the pretend fans, your posts about your music eventually become unwelcome internet noise. They don’t engage with your posts, give social platforms the impression your content is dull, uninteresting…. Ie social platforms are being told, over and over again that your content sucks.

 

You need to connect with people who actually want to read your posts, want to listen to your music because… now here comes a radical idea… they actually like your music. Chasing anything else just sees your feed blocked with stuff that doesn’t help you meet your goal of finding genuine listeners, sees you eventually spamming everyone you meet for a shrinking percentage of actually interested people.

 

Have a personal account where you connect with family, friends and you follow people whose content you genuinely find interesting.

 

Have an artist account where you grow your reach to real, potential listeners. Grow engagement with them and encourage them to listen to your music. Put things in place that genuinely help you to build your fanbase.

You might find this blog post useful:

 

 

There is a very small window when it might, arguably, help you in the early days. Yet that is for a few days in the beginning, nothing more. The sooner you move from targeting false audiences the better. That means quickly identifying the genuine fans and taking them somewhere you use just for talking to your listeners.

 

Cheers

 

John

[Mahesh]

I've seen certain former members here on Songstuff who post their unfinished works on Twitter and social media and ask other musicians to comment on them there. I found this confusing because maybe sharing a demo or a small snippet makes sense. But the whole song being posted and then looking to build a following there that way doesn't make sense. 

[john]

I wouldn’t post anything sub par there. In other words no tracks in progress, no demos. Not if you are serious about building a following. Mostly I see this being done by people feeling under pressure to post without having a clear idea of what to post. Often they feel they must be posting music, and out of desperation post tracks in progress. Weirdly they simultaneously don’t promote their back catalog. At all!

 

It’s ok to post works in progress and demos here, simply because most end listeners don’t hang out on songwriter and recording sites. You don’t really compromise your music here, where as on X etc you are brandishing your material in the face of end listeners. There’s actually a long list of reasons, but I don’t have time today to go into them all! Lol

[Mahesh]

On 12/26/2023 at 11:12 AM, john said:

It’s ok to post works in progress and demos here, simply because most end listeners don’t hang out on songwriter and recording sites. You don’t really compromise your music here, where as on X etc you are brandishing your material in the face of end listeners. There’s actually a long list of reasons, but I don’t have time today to go into them all! Lol

 

This is exactly why I joined Songstuff as a teenager in 2011. I was advised to do so, interestingly enough, by the founder of CD Baby - Derek Sivers. I've not interacted with him in a while but he still responds to emails from indie musicians is what I've heard. Setting some boundaries within the webspace on what you post where (and why) helps to maximise growth so much more. 

[Kevin1]

you really think Derek Sivers really cares? Your part of his paycheck and everyone else who uses cd baby, me included. 

[john]

On 1/6/2024 at 2:58 AM, Kevin1 said:

you really think Derek Sivers really cares? Your part of his paycheck and everyone else who uses cd baby, me included. 

 

I don’t know him but not everyone who runs or establishes a business completely lacks compassion, or and interest in connecting with others. True, there are plenty that are focused on money alone, but not all. I always thought Derek Sivers was quite human, and has always been quite responsive to communications. Maybe he has changed? I haven’t heard anything to indicate that.