The Indie Artist X Project – Fan Development

I’d like to introduce a project that Artists House will be involved with for the next several months. Spearheaded by David Rose at KnowtheMusicBiz.com, the Indie Artist X project will address the current need for some kind of real-world, transparent information about creating a strategy for an independent artist that can show some measurable and material results. I think this will be a fantastic place to start.

About the Indie Artist X Project

The goal of the Indie Artist X Project is to develop a basic, actionable music marketing plan designed around simple strategy, prioritization of tactics, tools and a reasonable budget that can be implemented by any indie artist who has the inclination to follow it. A group of like minded people interested in helping foster the success of independent musicians have banded together to create this community based music marketing plan. It’s our hope that any hard working, talented musician can utilize this plan to grow their fan base and help lay the foundation for a sustainable career in music. We will be working with one anonymous artist to design and implement this music marketing plan then track and report the actual results over a four month period. All the details of the plan are publicly available.

The Sponsors

Each of the sponsors for the Indie Artist X Project have taken on the responsibility for developing the strategy, prioritizing tactics and identifying the best tools for a specific music marketing “channel”. The sponsors are allowed to offer suggestions, advice and guidance to the artist but are not permitted to do any actual work on the artist’s behalf.

This music marketing plan is designed to be a community based project. Each of the sponsors will be soliciting ideas, best practices and advice from those interested in providing suggestions. It’s expected that the plan document itself will evolve and change over the next few months as the sponsors receive community input. If you have any suggestions for a music marketing channel please forward your ideas to the appropriate channel sponsor. Your participation in this project would be much appreciated and hopefully benefit the greater independent artist community!

The channel sponsors are:

Andrew Goodrich
Artists House Music
http://www.artistshousemusic.org
Channel: Fan Development

Bruce Houghton
Hypebot
http://www.hypebot.com
Channel: Commerce

Cameron Mizell
MusicianWages.com
http://musicianwages.com
Channel: Awareness

David Rose
KnowTheMusicBiz.com
http://www.knowthemusicbiz.com
Channel: Artist Website

Heather McDonald
About.com Music Careers
http://musicians.about.com
Channel: Influencers

Martin Atkins
Revolution Number Three
http://www.revolutionnumberthree.com
Channel: Live Shows

The Artist

The artist participating in the Indie Artist X Project is a talented, hard working independent musician who has had two previous records released by a small independent record label. He is currently not signed to a record label, does not have a booking agent or manager. He has a day job and is married. His goal is to make music his full time career. We will share the name of the Indie Artist X artist once the project is wrapped up at the end of October.

The Fan Development Channel
Strategy

The Fan Development strategy will primarily be trying to implement the so-called “straddle” between the online and offline worlds. New fans will come from both online (via social networks, etc) and offline (via live shows). As with any venture, it’s harder to get new fans than it is to retain current fans. So, once fans have been won, we want to make sure that they stay fans. The best way to do this is to maintain a two-way conversation between artist and fan. We want to make sure that offline fans know about Artist X’s online presence, and that online fans know about Artist X’s offline presence. The Fan Development channel necessarily works closely with the Awareness and Live Show channels as the ‘second-step’.

Here are some of the initial things we’ve identified as being important to this channel’s success:

Tactics / Priorities

1. Ensure that the right information is gathered and organized to compile a fan list (Name, e-mail, zip code, twitter, website, etc). It should be equally easy for fans online and offline to join this list.
2. Artist X should establish a blog with regular updates (at least 2 times a week, can be short) and be active on twitter on a daily basis (both posting and engaging followers).
3. Newsletter: Send out a newsletter with a summary of activities once per month. The newsletter does not need to be extensive, but should add value beyond what the other ‘broadcast’ mediums do. Feature ‘live’ content such as a photo or two, or fan art, etc.
4. Fans should have an inside look into the creative process. Provide them with photos and videos of live shows, the recording of an album, etc.
5. Orchestrate contests and giveaways/promotions via Awareness and Live Shows channels.

Fan Development Tools

We are using the following tools for fan development: Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, ReverbNation 360, Flick, Youtube

Community Suggestions

Our strategy so far is by no means comprehensive. These are ideas from which to start. We would love to hear your suggestions for the Indie Artist X Project fan development channel. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail at andrewsgoodrich [at] gmail.com.

There is also a community suggestions section setup in the KnowTheMusicBiz.com forums. Again, our plan is publicly available for viewing here: http://is.gd/1pK63 Please take a gander. This is a dynamic document and will change over time to reflect the ideas that you send us.

The more conversation this project stimulates, the better. This is something meant for community benefit, so please do weigh in with your thoughts so that we can all learn something.

You can follow the project on twitter at: http://twitter.com/Indie_ArtistX. Use the hashtag #IAXP to tag related tweets.