I think a lot about how musicians can leverage subscription models. One of my pending tasks is to redo my Patreon to make sense for my current reality. It’s not the biggest priority because at the moment I’m still looking to cultivate a new fanbase. There is a bittersweet feeling to starting over with better knowledge, confident in the future but frustrated over the past.
In another life I dabbled around with retention efforts to keep people subscribed to the employer’s software product. Once you’ve gotten someone to sign up you’ve only just begun the work. It takes a lot of effort to keep people subscribed. For something like software, your retention rate is going to be based on if they find value in the product and if they still like dealing with you come renewal time.
I also have some experience getting Patrons for my podcasts. While I wasn’t vastly successful I did achieve 150$ a month at one point. Then I lost them one by one. Entertainment faces similar struggles across the board. I thought I’d share some thoughts as I puzzle through future moves.
People will subscribe to consume the content they like
While that is a broad sounding statement, it’s still true. I have dabbled in several types of content. People liked watching us do album reviews. But only when we used to argue all the time and they felt the tension. For a while we were gaining some popularity.
At some point it was made clear to me that toxic behaviour is toxic behaviour. We got nicer to each other and some folk who previously paid us, no longer felt entertained. The charm of watching us ignorant folk discover Hip Hop was replaced with just another podcast breaking down projects. Our attitudes had gone from a flagrant disregard of other people to caring about offending our viewers.
After many years we got bored with the reviews. Interviews became the focus and for a few years we pushed that. Anyone that cared about reviews left once they realized we’d never consistently produce reviews again. It wasn’t just the patreon folk, the vast majority of our online community, a couple of hundred people, more or less stopped watching the content.The interview run happened and it gained us some new fans. A couple of new Patreon subscribers that supported the new mission. Unfortunately we were unable to grow that interview series. We were talking to very local, English, Montreal rappers. People without much of a fanbase. Unlike album reviews where the prospective audience is fans of that album, interviews rely on interest in your guest.
While as a host I was able to collect supporters, the only episodes that performed well were ones that people would tune in to see if they were mentioned. I’ve tried to make video games part of my brand, no one supports it. I’ve dabbled in all sorts of content. People subscribe for the things they want to see, and that is it.
Today I have a channel that I have no idea what to do with as I grow two other podcast brands.
Price your subscription offers accordingly
I can tell you exactly what ended our joy of album reviews. Once the Patreon was live, we sold reviews at a 5$ a month tier. Then we ended up getting a little backlog of review requests. We didn’t understand the amount of work we were getting relative to the money we were bringing in.
At first it was all exciting. We were happy to learn about new music. The problem was keeping up with Patreon left us at a place where nearly every review we did was picked by the community. Sometimes we were not a fan at all of the choices, but we still had to do it. The patrons started wanting particular people on particular reviews and it got messy. While I was willing to suffer for the cause, inevitably every cohost I ever had quit the reviews.
We sold out for honestly no money. It wasn’t like each review generated 100$ and at least we could order some nice food after. It was more like we’d get 15$ for a review. I had no idea what I was doing and like many new entrepreneurs I was chasing feel-good metrics. Yes, having paying subscribers validated us. Not making anything for our work ended up draining our morale.
Not everything should be about the money but in hindsight people were sacrificing a lot for this to grow. And it did not grow. It started and then instead of seeing the pivots we needed to make (like going live on Twitch in 2018) I drove the ship in the wrong direction. The things I was proud of actually cost me future followers.
I wanted to be better than the algorithm and I was wrong. It’s fun to make money off your art. It sucks when you lose money and time trying to fulfil a promise that will only make you 15$. I still feel a bit scarred from the experience and some of these scars are becoming mental blocks as time goes on. I really hope writing through it all brings me back on track.
The TL:DR in this section is to make sure you actually make money off your Patreon. Include your time (and the time of others) in that cost. Price rewards related to their cost.
Provide ongoing value
I have a friend who signed up for a local media company’s Patreon. They do events live and release the content to YouTube after. At first, they launched the Patreon and a few people signed up. Then the company blundered and dumped all the content at once.
My friend proceeded to watch everything he wanted to watch on the weekend. Then he wasn’t sure why he’d want to stay subscribed. There are other ways to support this company, like purchasing tickets later on. The avenue of Patreon was pointless once he had extracted all value from it.
Later on, they would take the content from an event and stagger the release. At the very least you’d need to stay subscribed for 2-3 months to see all the content before it hits YouTube. There is a community of people who want to see that content before everyone else. By the time they have stretched out the content their next event has taken place. Teasing people into staying subscribed with further first access rewards.
With music, and entertainment, the subscription offer needs to provide some level of exclusivity. Perhaps you drop a freestyle every day for the Patrons. Or perhaps you create a fun behind the scenes content series. Either way whatever you come up with needs to be exclusive to them, while also being related to your art.
It’s also a good idea to get some low cost merch. Using Sticker Mule I have received buttons, temporary tattoos and stickers. These are all gifties I can send people to increase the cost of my Patreon tiers. I’d love to hear about how you leverage subscription services for your art. Your ideas can become my inspiration. In the meantime I hope I can inspire you.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone