It is nice to see a more practical angle discussed when talking about music as a career.

Having the drive and the patience is of course crucial. Danny sent us a story a while back where he talks about having a financially successful job but not being happy. He chucked it all to pursue his dream of playing music full time.

Check out his story at the link below. And if you like it give him a vote.

Thanks.
http://www.ahamoment.com/vote/danny

It’s not as simple as some have suggested because it takes time to reach enough people, and some artists won’t ever find enough fans to pay the money, but at least it starts to break down the numbers into something approaching a business plan.

I usually approach the numbers from the reverse direction. How much money do we need to generate? To do that, how many people do we need to reach? How much will each of them spend and what will they spend it upon?

I did a blog post talking about the fact that if a band wanted to gross $200,000 a year and do it by selling t-shirts, did they think they could sell 10,000 $20 t-shirts a year?

What worked for that artist who was grossing $150,000 with a mailing list of 3000 fans was:

(1) having grown up in her playing area (so she had made lots of friends over the years),
(2) working as a bartender in a music venue for 10 years until she finally felt secure enough to do music full-time,
(3) putting out a CD of great songs every year or two (she has 8 available now), so that she always had multiple CDs to sell at shows,
(4) having a deep list of outstanding original songs (just from her albums alone, that’s about 80+ songs),
(5) playing everywhere constantly over the years (solo in coffee houses, full band in clubs and outdoor concerts),
(6) playing music that people can dance to and that they never get tired of listening to.

And a few other things, too.

The necessary number of fans didn’t happen overnight. And when she first quit her bartending job, she was losing money on her band gigs because she agreed to pay them more than she was making per gig. That first summer as a full-time musician she was able to live on a $5000 private party gig that she got. So she had a bit of a financial cushion as she lost money building her club following.

But bit by bit she would play a venue and go from a few fans to 20 fans to 100 fans to 200 fans, etc.

I’m not sure everyone can put together the time and financial support in order to build a career until they hit the necessary number of fans to support themselves. That’s why some people raise their eyebrows at the 1000 true fan concept. How do you get to that point?

Kelly’s model isn’t perfect, and as some have pointed out the math may or may not work out depending on the type of band and what their situation looks like.

Even so, I think it’s a great goal for emerging bands to shoot for. It’s too hard to start your music career saying, “I’m going to sell a million records.” That’s too big, and that’s really not how the business works anymore anyway. You can’t go by record sales numbers anymore, it’s about fans.

Side note: I was skeptical of both Gladwell and more especially the Heath brothers who wrote “Made to Stick” until that Kevin Kelly thing really drove it home. Repeatability is a core feature of viruses in nature, I don’t why I had doubts…1000 True Fans is something people feel compelled to pass on and it’s come to frame the debate to an amazing extent since he wrote that.

These numbers are designed to be an informed guide to help artists to get the concept. As with any broad strategy, individual artists and bands will have to take a look at what they are able to do, and the resources available to them, and figure out a specific strategy that fits their situation and goals.

And as far as the revenue generated by individual fans I would encourage you to think beyond CD’s and t-shirts to more creative options like purchasing a house party, one of a kind artwork that ties into the music, etc. These may take time to produce or perform, but they the profit margins can be much greater than the conventional offerings. And they are more interesting and engaging for fans.