Tag Archives: fan engagement

A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories

Get People’s Attention First

Tom Petty sang “Love Is A Long Road” and it should be the aim for every artist. There should be a need to foster the love of the audience into a sustainable career. But it takes time. In the words of Bon Scott, it’s a “Long Way To The Top”. You’ll get ripped off and on some occasions you’ll get paid. You will have highs and you will have lows. Relationships will break down, friends will leave you and your fans will fall in and out of love with you.

But no one wants to take the time to build the love. There is a general viewpoint that artists believe if they record an album and it gets released, they are entitled to some form of payment. It doesn’t work that way. It’s never worked that way. It’s the audience who decides who gets paid. I am sure the majority of artists understand it.

Relationships are hard. Anybody who tells you they’re easy is lying or has a bad one. And for any artist these days, it is all about relationships. If you want an audience to invest, you need to establish a relationship. You need to make the effort. The days of touring a city based on the sales figures of recorded music in that city/state are long gone. In vogue is data.

How many people are listening to your music in the city?

How many people are downloading your music in the city?

Ask Dream Theater, Metallica, Rush or Iron Maiden how many albums they have sold in Central and South America?

Then ask them how many people came to their shows in those countries. Mike Portnoy stated in the linear notes on the released bootleg recording of Dream Theater’s Santiago, Chile show from June 2005 that they didn’t know what to expect from South America as they haven’t sold many records there. They even went to the show with a cut down stage set to save money and proceeded to play to their biggest live audience.

All the technology companies have a simple method. Get people’s attention first and the money will come later. It’s not any different for musicians. Instead of breaking down what streaming companies pay per listen, focus on what people are listening to. Because everybody like me wants to find the good stuff, the kind of good stuff we can talk to others about.

Think about the times we live in. This news story has been in my inbox for a while, and it fits perfectly with what I am trying to say above.

Ryan Adams has 695,000 Follower on twitter and he posted a few tweets about “Christopher the Conquered” and how his album “I’m Giving Up on Rock N’ Roll” is blowing his mind. So how did Christopher The Conquered life change from this free promotion to 695,000 followers of another artists.

Here are the results that “Christopher The Conquered” shared;

• Website Page Views – 2489 views
• YouTube Videos: 1653 new views
• Sound Cloud: Single from album – 572 Plays
• Facebook: 82 new likes
• Instagram: 40 new followers
• Twitter: 31 new followers
• Spotify: 28 new followers
• Email Newsletter: 12 sign ups
• Internet Sales (Not including iTunes, Spotify, etc. – that takes a while to get those numbers): $86

So going back to my message, “Get people’s attention first and the money will come later”.

The numbers above show me that Ryan Adam’s doesn’t really have 695,000 followers who are invested in what he does and in what he says. The numbers show me that Ryan Adams fan to artist relationship  is more like 1 to 5% of that number.

This also applies to metal and rock twitter users.

Dave Coverdale has 180,600 followers but only 5% of that 180,600 number are interested in what he has to say or in what he does. Others might check out his tweets, but only a few engage.

Papa Roach has 566,000 followers but again, if you look at their account and the people engaging with them, the numbers are so much smaller.

Dave Mustaine recently posted a tweet so he can get to 1 million followers (at the moment he has 867,500 followers) but like all of the other Twitter users only a small percentage are engaging with him. However, in saying that, Dave’s entry into wine and beer making has given him a stronger following and there is more fan engagement because of it. In other words, fans of Dave Mustaine are engaging with him over music, beer and wine.

Persistence and perseverance are the key to life. If you give up when it gets hard, you will accomplish little and you’ll get nowhere. And you need to keep working on getting people’s attention every single time.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories, Stupidity

Cervello – A Great Band That Is No More. Find Out What They Could Have Done Different.

I heard Cervello’s debut album today. Released in 2011. And it’s good. Really good.

So I did what everyone does, I went looking for more. And that’s where it all fell apart.

I typed “Cervello” into Google and landed on a progressive Italian band from the ‘70s. Wrong decade. Wrong band. Wrong everything.

Strike one.

Then I went digging. Facebook. Twitter. Scraps of information. Half a story. No clear signal.

Strike two.

By the time I figured out who they actually were, I’d already done more work than most listeners ever will.

And that’s the game now. If it’s hard to find you, you don’t exist.

Here’s the brutal truth: Cervello didn’t fail because of the music. They failed because of everything around the music.

No real website. No consistent presence. No strategy. No signal that anyone was steering the ship.

Just a band shouting into the void and hoping someone shouted back.

No one did. Look at the engagement. Posts with 3 likes. 6 likes. No comments. That’s not bad luck. That’s feedback.

The market was talking. They just weren’t listening.

And then there’s the big one. They made an album. Ten songs. Full release. The traditional play.

But here’s the problem, by 2011, the world had already changed.

This was a singles economy. Attention comes in fragments. Discovery comes in moments. Fans are built track by track, not album by album.

Gotye built a career off one song. One moment. One entry point. Cervello dropped everything at once… to no one.

And look at the competition they were up against. Machine Head. Dream Theater. Five Finger Death Punch. Trivium. In Flames

These bands weren’t just releasing music. They were occupying space. Constantly.

Cervello weren’t even on the map.

Then in 2013, it was over. A Facebook post. A quiet goodbye.

“Internal problems.”

That’s how it ends now. Not with a bang, but with a post no one sees.

Here’s the part that stings. They had connections.

Max Martin. John 5.

That should have been leverage. Attention. A story to tell. But even that went nowhere.

So what went wrong?

No discoverability. No consistency. No strategy. No patience. And maybe the biggest one:

No understanding that music isn’t a product anymore. It’s a service.

You don’t release and disappear. You show up. Again and again. You build something that compounds.

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: The modern music game doesn’t reward the best song.

It rewards the artist who stays in the game long enough for the best song to be heard.

Cervello didn’t lose because they weren’t good enough. They lost because they disappeared.

And in this era… disappearing is the only unforgivable mistake.

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A to Z of Making It, Music

Social Media is Not Just About The Broadcast – What Dream Theater can be doing better compared to other bands?

Dream Theater is all about the advertisement/broadcast. Look at their Facebook account and it is all about the sell. This is expected as they have a new product and they are trying to push it. However, have they spent any time reading, listening or understanding what their fans are saying? The fans are the best advocates and for some reason bands are not realising it.

Compare what Dream Theater is doing to what Robb Flynn is doing for Machine Head with The General Journals: Diary Of A Frontman… And Other Ramblings. He is engaging with his fan base through personal stories. Of course they still have the sell aspect going on for their Mayhem shows and no one is expecting the artist to stop the sell. The difference is those personal touches and stories.

Compare what Dream Theater is doing to what Randy Blythe from Lamb Of God is doing on Instagram. He takes unbelievable photos and the stories he shares with those photos via Instagram is all about engagement with people. There is no sell here. It is authentic and heartfelt. This is pure gold.

Compare to what Dream Theater is doing to what Trivium is doing on Facebook. Both bands have the same label and both have albums coming out within a month apart. Trivium had the official download of the song Brave This Storm (it was just one post and the post was called Transmission #2) and then it has all been fan and band pictures posted from various shows. Dream Theater have plugged the new song post after post after post. We get it, you have a new song.

Also when Dream Theater had the corporate deal with USA Today to stream the song, a lot of their fans from other parts of the world couldn’t listen to it. Of course that problem was fixed within a couple of days and then Dream Theater started re-posting links for the song.

I recently posted that the years of when artists took a year to make an album and went on a two to three year victory lap are over. The artists that still take a year to make an album in this current climate are doing themselves a great disservice as they will have an album that is basically dead on arrival. The faithful will buy the album and then the victory lap is over.

It looks like the bigger the network around a band, the less they focus on fan engagement. Bands or artists cannot expect to use their social media accounts only when it suits them, just because they have a product to push or a song to push and expect that the fans will remain engaged.

A perfect example is Metallica, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden or Bon Jovi. Dream Theater is trying to play in this field, however they don’t have the runs on the board to play against Metallica or Bon Jovi.

Bands with better runs on the board than Dream Theater like Five Finger Death Punch, Shinedown, Halestorm, Lamb Of God, Sixx A.M, Kid Rock and Stone Sour are still looking at ways to engage with their audience on different levels. Don’t focus on how many followers or likes you have. It’s all about connections and trying to make those connections bring value to the relationship.

Bands like Metallica and Bon Jovi use PR agencies to run their social media accounts. Of course the whole business model of the PR company is the less is more model and to have total control over the message. This is in contrast with the social principles of giving out as much information and seeing what connects and what misses.

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