I saw a post today in a community group for an underground Hip Hop artist. This fan expressed that whenever they find out someone doesn’t like the artist they support, they lose respect for their taste in music. The comment thread was an explosion of agreement. I used to try and show up like, “wait, what?” on those posts but it was made clear to me in a private fan group, that’s not the time nor place.
The people in the group decided their person was GOAT. They also failed to understand why other people can’t see it. In their opinion it’s one of the great sins of this generation to overlook said artist as the greatest of all time. It’s super questionable that someone can be the GOAT when only a tiny minority support them, but each person can choose their own GOAT subjectively.
I also saw a “tag an artist you think should perform at <<insert show>>” Instagram post. I think over 2 thirds of the people who commented were artists or affiliates. I started thinking about how big the world is and how small our influence and opinions really are.
Montreal has nearly two million people on island
When we perform at a show and 200 people show up. It feels really good. We make new fans and it feels like a productive night, that will bring us one step closer to our goals. I know this grind is fan by fan and bit by bit. The more things we do, the more people remember us.
Sometimes it just all feels so fickle and aimless. I look around and see a tapestry of interweaving motives and ideas. Often people are in theory doing the right things, but personally I don’t often see the results. It’s not lost on me that being critical of people’s moves is a bad way to keep friends, but this is a business and I use the word friend very sparingly.
I’ll rephrase, the acquaintances aren’t always thrilled by how I see things. I’m not impressed by the lack of scalability. Most of the systems in place are there to make money off an artist. Without reaching too far out of my league, when the scene’s history has a lot of music periphery money washing, it actually makes sense.
The thing is we’re in a new world. Outbound sales is vastly being replaced by inbound content efforts. While you can go out there and pound the pavement, businesses spend a lot more time and effort attracting leads via content and community. Google Net Promoter Score if you want to go down a rabbit hole. Back in 2016 we were implementing NPS score capturing to validate how good we are in the day job life.
For those still here because why Google, it’s a score that measures how much people are likely to recommend you. There are two million people on the island, we need to get our scene to multiply. I bet most of our NPS scores are pretty low. It’s also our own fault. Collectively.
Far too often it’s some “me and mines” attitude
You can say what you want about me, but this blog is an effort to share knowledge and promote different thoughts. I spent a long time working for a 9 figure software company learning about how marketing works in different geos. I had a lot of pride and selfishness and because of that I thought I knew better than the math.
Turns out I did not.
I’ve spent some time looking at how people come up in the game. I’ve read several biographies, watched countless interviews and recaps from artists. I also listen to marketers, CEOs, teachers, politicians and a variety of other specialists. My mission is to understand community building.
This is both because peopleing isn’t my strongest suit, and selfishness. I, like many others out there, want to make bank off what I love doing. In order to achieve that I need to better integrate with those around me. My background is white collar, maybe I need to go work with more white collar people. It’s on me to go find my tribe.
The last few months have been a cool exercise in putting real thought and effort into what the community I want to be a part of looks like. I know there are results from the efforts because more people want to get involved now, albeit very different from the ones I was around last year. The projects I’m thinking up are also different. Like this skill sharing music program I want to build to teach new people music skills. Big picture, done right, I can pay my homies with grant money.
The second I put that into the universe, people jumped at it. People love helping other people believe it or not, it just has to make sense. People also bond over pickle love/hate, because it’s bigger than any one of us.
Fans are attracted to people who move forward in life
I’m not talking about sexytime attraction. I mean the leader/follower dynamic. In music, even the humblest introverts become leaders/figureheads for a community. If you are pursuing this commercially, it’s literally how this works. No community, no funding. How you feel about that role is pretty irrelevant, suffice it to say you will be a role model to someone out there.
If you feel stagnant, like often I feel, go give some of your time to a new cause. Find a way to volunteer. Another option is education. If you really feel bored, go to school. While that is boring in and of itself, it will help you meet new people to build with.
To tie this into the opening, I think we get caught into little fish bowl environments. We see the crowd of people and rarely leave our little pocket of life. One of the reasons you are supposed to travel is to broaden your horizons. We don’t even really travel across our city much. On the internet, people congregate in private groups of belief reinforcement.
One thing we all need to remember is that until a fan is paying, they are just passive supporters. We need to work collectively to give the fans something to invest into. People may have a favourite wrestler, but they pay to watch the WWE. Some individual wrestlers inevitably do get enough clout to sell on their own, but without leagues and bigger movements, it’s a super uphill battle.
I think the best way we can show the prospective fans we are moving forward is to present a culture, as a group. I have an idea of how to frame this to people. I don’t want to just come off critical, but we do need some discourse that is critical. Tomorrow I’ll explain more about what I mean with regards to a group.
In the meantime, think bigger than your ecosystem.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
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