Not many people know this but becoming a music marketer and building this amazing community was never something that I planned. It was more of a fantasy that was just never realistic as I shared the thought that I’m sure many of you do… “there’s no money to be made in music.” Before I elaborate more on the money that YOU could be making, let me take you back. I was a freshman in college, making music with my friends all the time doing whatever I could to just be around music, I just had to be around it. So whether it was going to shows, helping friends that have creative events for their music, being in their music videos, scouting locations for their photo shoots, or being a character in some of their projects, it was all fun. I just loved to soak up that creative energy. Nothing felt even close to what I felt when doing this and that's what I did all throughout college — even though I was majoring in computer science and computer information systems... But after college, I just did what my family wanted. I didn't go into music at all. I got my computer information systems degree, got a job, and started making money. Everything was all good until I began to feel stuck. In my free time, I started figuring out how to be around music again and started helping out my friends who are artists and DJs market themselves, get attention, build their audience, sell merch, set up house parties, and do real-life pop-ups in the middle of the street with my friend, interviewing people on the streets. I had to keep my creative juices going. But at the same time, I kept working my 9-5 job. I wanted to work in music but I just had no idea where the money would come from. It just seemed like those people never made money and I didn't grow up with money — so a career not making money wasn't an option for me. But boy I loved what I was doing. Every time my friends came to me needing my help it was always “I need more people to listen to my music, more people to show up to my event more people to buy my merch more people to follow me on Instagram or YouTube”. These folks needed marketing. And for some reason, for me, once I was able to put it together like that, I realized, oh, there's a legitimate opportunity here…

This platform is pretty awesome! Learned a lot on this zoom call 💯

TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube are amazing platforms where you can build up fanbases using amazing tools that these companies have spent millions developing. The only thing is that these platforms don't belong to you. You have an account with them but the platform and all the data they collect belongs to them. At any point any one of these platforms can take your content down or, even worse, your whole account. This would leave you having to start from scratch to build up the audience that you've worked so hard to build. Whats ONE common piece of info ALL of these websites collect about all of their users, besides a First Name? THEIR EMAIL! As an independent artist, it's important to collect your fans' Names and Email addresses and compile them in some format that is easy to import into a CRM (Customer Relations Management) Software. The easiest way i've found is to use an Excel or Google Sheets document to keep the list organised. When you own your own list, you have a lot of opportunities that you can then take advantage of: 1) You can do email blasts for new releases and immediately have a good portion of the list check out your song. Usually for email marketing, 30% open rates are the average. So if you have 1000 emails, immediately you could havre 300 views on any new release that you send out. 2) You can sell products or services, either of your own or as an affiliate. The same principle applies from point 1. You can have a certain number of persons buy a product as soon as you launch it. If you have 1000 emails and a 30% open rate, then you have a 10% conversion rate; that means that if you sent out an email blast for a product worth $20, then you could make $600 in sales from one email blast! 3) You can continue to collect information on your audience by sending out questionnaires and surveys, where you incentivise your fans to provide info like their location, other artists they like and whether they attend live concerts or not. This can help you plan tours and help you understand who you need to be targeting in your paid marketing campaigns.