🦄 How To Grow A Loyal Fanbase While Facebook & Instagram Are Dying!
In order to create, artists need to survive. In order to survive, artists need fans and their invaluable support. What options are there to interact with fans, besides platforms that limit reach?
Every two weeks or so, the Soundfeed Spotlight exclusive newsletter covers the complex world of music, offering tips, insights and valuable information from some of the most experienced professionals. Don’t forget to hit the Subscribe button below!
If there is anything precious these pandemic times have taught us, is that the independent artists need to grow and nurture their own virtual communities, regardless of how small or big these are. If given enough attention, fans tend to become musicians’ best ambassadors and promoters, without spending anything than a bit of your preciouse time!
But, with so many options and platforms dedicated to interacting with your fans, where should you focus in order to achieve the best results? Well, here are your best bets, tested successfully by some of the Soundfeed users.
Facebook and Instagram
Facebook’s organic reach has shrinked in the past years to 5.2% 🙄 Meanwhile, someone coined the “Instagram Boredom” term. As in: instagram turned itself into a platform full of influencers and brands trying to sell stuff to you in various way. Much like when you open your main door to find on your front yard a bunch of salesmen yelling various offers and discounts at you!
So, should you invest time in your facebook page and instagram account? Yes, moderately. Facebook groups is one option, where you can test new songs, interact with fans, share polls and get involved in discussion threads created by fans.
On the other hand, Instagram is more like a vanity mirror, putting you in the center of things (or feeds, if your lucky enough 😂) Yet, there are workarounds to engage with your hardcore fans: add a few of them to your close friends group and start a live streaming for them!
Discord
Extremely popular in the awkward world of video gaming, Discord servers are the natural evolution of forums and chat servers. You can install and customize your own server, fill it with rooms, talk (like real audio talks) with your fans, install bots to ease up the moderation process, listen to your Spotify stream in real time together with your fans. Discord became hugely popular in the music-related communities nowadays. As popular as 800K listeners from Discord to Spotify in one month, according to Spotify. Yes, most of the artists need to start their Discord communities from scratch, then again, the reach will not be controled by a cold hearted AI, like it is on facebook and instagram.
Spotify
As limited to a Follow button as are Spotify’s tools of interaction between the musicians and their fans, the Swedish green music giant started to make a few small steps in this direction. Capitalizing on Clubhouse meteoric rise (and extreme fall, acording to some), Spotify has recently launched Greenroom, an app that allows its users to create rooms and host live conversations about music, culture and more.
Youtube
Everybody has a Youtube account, right? Now, with the introduction of the TikTok-esque Youtube Shorts, new users and minutes spent on Google’s video platform might surge. Maybe it’s time to get more into its social features, like the Community tab, as well as Stories and Premieres
Slowly but surely we’re more and more connected with the avatars of our fans through the interwebs. The music industry changed in the past 5 years more than it changed in 5 decades before. Yes, we’re now living in the future!
