This blog post is a draft chapter of my upcoming eBook “Release Your Album“. Here, I highlight three game-changing marketing concepts for jazz artists: “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson, the “Minimum Viable Audience” by Seth Godin, and the “1.000 True Fans” concept by Kevin Kelly. Three powerful concepts that will give your release strategy more depth and serves as a beacon on how to find and serve your audience of true fans better.
As a jazz artist, how do you create an album release strategy that utilizes the possibilities and developments which this 3rd decade of the 21st Century offers? For starters, a deeper understanding of marketing will be of great help. Understanding and implementing these three concepts can have a profound impact on your art and music career. Let’s get started!
The Long Tail
In 2004 a ground-breaking article appeared in Wired by Chris Anderson, called The Long Tail followed by his book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. It changed everything.
His article stated that the future of music is niche markets. These niche markets are made possible by the infinite digital shelf space of books & media products (Amazon, Spotify) and unlimited selection for consumers it offers. In short, a physical record store had to present a selection of albums, always including the major label’s hits. Now, any music lover can find any type of music from past to present online and buy it. Even better, if you like cosmic jazz, there are online shops and streaming services that offer you a rabbit hole for endless exploration, inspiration and consumption. The impact on people according to Chris Anderson was:
“As they wander further from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a lack of alternatives, and a hit-driven culture). Hit-driven economics is the creation of an age without enough room to carry everything for everybody. … This is the world of scarcity. Now, with online distribution and retail, we are entering a world of abundance. And the differences are profound.”
I truly recommend reading his full article at least twice.
The Minimum Viable Audience
Forget having a massive audience. In the 21st Century, by trying to please everyone you, in fact, please hardly anyone. Which album stands at number eight of most sold jazz albums of all time? Bitches Brew. See my point? (Source). And even nr. 1, Kind of Blue, was never intended as a mainstream people pleaser by Miles Davis. What would have happened to these two albums if he did…
The solution for building a music career nowadays is for many artists counterintuitive. Seth Godin introduced the concept of the ‘minimum viable audience’. It urges creators to not focus on maximizing your audience but on serving a few people extremely well. Ask yourself, what is the smallest audience necessary for you to have a sustainable music career? How many fans do you need as a minimum to be able to live as a professional musician? How can you truly please this small audience? To quote Seth Godin on this concept:
“Two things happen when you delight your minimum viable audience:
1. you discover it’s a lot larger group than you expected
2. they tell the others
On the other hand, if you aim for mass (another word for average), you’ll probably create something average. Which gets you not very far.”
To move on, with the help of Kevin Kelly, let’s turn this concept into a more concrete career goal.
1.000 True Fans
Ask yourself this question: if you can’t succeed in the small, why do you believe you will succeed in the large?
Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired, developed a concept called 1.000 True Fans. It explains how for you as a professional musician, having 1.000 true fans can be enough to have a successful music career. For starters, what does he mean by a ‘True Fan’?
To quote Kevin, “A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce. These diehard fans will drive two hundred miles to see you sing; they will buy the hardback and paperback and Audible versions of your book; they will purchase your next figurine sight unseen; they will pay for the ‘best‑of’ DVD version of your free YouTube channel; they will come to your chef’s table once a month. If you have roughly a thousand true fans like this (also known as super fans), you can make a living—if you are content to make a living but not a fortune.”
Translating this to being a musician means that your True Fans buy your album, see your performances, support you on Patreon, crowdfund your next album on Kickstarter, buy your band T-Shirts and other merchandise and spread the word about how great your music is to others.
Let’s do the math
If you produce a vinyl record which sells for €25 to 1.000 True Fans, that earns you €25.000. In a more overall perspective, if those thousand people spend yearly €100 on your products and/or services you will earn €100.000 a year. A decent income by any standard and enough to buy yourself some glow in the dark stickers on a daily basis. According to Kelly, there are two requirements for this:
“First, you have to create enough each year that you can earn, on average, €100 profit from each true fan. This is a good creative challenge in every area because it is always easier and better to give your existing customers more than it is to find new fans.
Second, you must have a direct relationship with your fans. That is, they must pay you directly. You get to keep all of their support, unlike the small per cent of their fees you might get from a music label, publisher, studio, retailer, or another intermediate. If you keep the full €100 of each true fan, then you need only 1,000 of them to earn €100,000 per year.”
Vulfpeck as an empowering example
The above two powerful points are exactly what is possible nowadays. An inspiring example that embraced the current technological and online possiblities to have success and ownership of their art is the funk band Vulfpeck. In September 2019, they managed to sellout their concert at Madison Square Garden. Perhaps easy when you’re Beyoncé, but they didn’t spend a cent on advertising and they never had a hit single. Furthermore, they don’t have a manager nor are they signed by a record label. They did it all by themselves. Read all about it here. Their combination of a creative retro-approach to content creation on Instagram and, using online distributors, and, of course, by making great music that touches hearts and bring their audience together, was how they did it. Sounds feasible don’t you think?
In short, cheaper recording equipment makes high-quality home recording easier. Streaming services and Social Media supply artists with an amount of data about their fans even major labels didn’t have in the 90s. Online distributors such as CDBaby or DistroKid will get your music to every online music platform. These are empowering changes for artists that put you in control of your fan-relationships, artistic work and income streams. You as a artist can now collect money directly from your fans leaving record labels and publishers out of the equation.
To summarize these three game-changing marketing concepts, make specific art for specific people. Create (enough) products that enrich their lives on a yearly basis. Spread your music by using insights from and community building features of streaming services and social media. Communicate with your fans by creating original content (artwork, photos, videos) that show your (artistic) personality. Set an aim on a sustainable yearly income. And, finally, sell your products to your (True) Fans.
With a world population of 7.8 billion people, if one in a million like your new jazz album that is 7.800 fans. Does that sound impossible?
Pieter Schoonderwoerd
Your Jazz Career
Find an empowering ebook on developing your artistic vision and writing a compelling artist biography here.
I’ve been coaching and educating jazz artists for years to achieve their creative and professional ambitions. If you are interested in a personal coaching session, you can read more about it here.