Driving Early-Stage Growth: For Startups & Musicians
Early-Stage growth for independent musicians looks a lot similar to early-stage growth for startups. Here's how.
A couple weeks ago, I was invited to speak to emerging artists on a Twitter Space. The brief was vague—talk about marketing techniques for musicians.
It didn’t help that I didn’t have a lot of experience in music marketing (the organizer assured me this wasn’t an issue). It did help that I’d spent some time the past few months speaking to musicians, producers, songwriters, and artist managers to guide work I was doing for an MVP-stage startup, Corefans. Corefans is a crowdfunding platform that lets musicians offer perks to fans who donate to their creative projects.
As I collated key points to speak on during the Space, I began to see a pattern form. While I didn’t have a lot of experience with music marketing, I did have experience driving marketing and growth for early-stage startups. As I stared at my notes, one thing became painfully obvious to me.
Early-stage growth for independent musicians looks a lot similar to early-stage growth for startups.
The more I thought about it, the more it made perfect sense to me.
Passion: In music, early-stage musicians are often driven by fierce passion and belief in the greatness of what they do. With startups, founders are also driven by an urgent fervour and a conviction that they have a great product (or at the very least, a great idea) that could solve real problems.
Early adopters are everything: One point I hammered on during the space was the importance of early fans and the power they had to drive viral growth. It didn’t escape my notice that early adopters are also incredibly important to the growth of early startups.
Do-It-All Founder: During interviews I had with some up-and-coming musicians, one thing that stood out to me was how many new skills early musicians had to learn because they didn’t yet have the money to pay producers, songwriters, videographers, graphics designers, promoters, etc. Similarly, early-stage founders often have to wear many hats to create that first MVP and acquire first customers.
Once I saw the parallels between these two seemingly dissimilar industries, I could see the way the strategies I was planning to teach the musicians was very easily applicable to startup growth and vice versa. I found this interesting, which is why I am sharing some of those tips with you here.
The tips for musicians are in bold and their link with startups is in brackets and italics.
No record label, no problem. Start with what you have. Don’t wait on a record label to start honing your craft and being intentional about your music.
(No funding, no problem. Start with what you have. Don’t wait on a VC to help you acquire your first 10000 users.)
Build a community of your early fans and engage with them. Offer them perks and include them in your creation process. They’ll be your strongest advocates and initial drivers of your growth.
(Be intentional about building a community of your early adopters. Share product updates with them and have genuine conversations (not polls or surveys) with them about what works or doesn’t work for them. They’ll drive your initial growth.)
Don’t promote your music without a sneak peek. If you’re dropping links to your music, show people the reason why they should click the link, e.g. add a snippet from the song.
(Give people a reason to buy. Offer free trials, record demos, get testimonials from early users. Whatever it is, give users a strong reason to use your product by showing them the product itself or its benefit to them.)
Especially if you have a niche audience, you need to find communities and events where they are. If you sing alternative music, find the alté community. If you sing folk, go to open-mic-type events.
(Meet your customers where they are. Embed yourself in their communities or attend events they’d attend. Not only will you get to acquire users, you’ll get deeper insight into their interests, behaviours, and problems.)
You won’t have money to pay a songwriter, producer, songwriter, manager, etc. So you need to learn many skills and wear multiple hats at that early stage.
(Learn a little about everything that needs to get done. You won’t have the funds to hire the full team you need. Knowing a little about everything would help you manage more work yourself to get your MVP ready. Even if you have the funds to do some hiring, having broad knowledge will help you choose the right people and make it easier to explain what needs to get done to them.)
Collaborate with others to make beautiful music together. They don’t have to be paid gigs. You can lean on relationships you have with other creatives (especially those who are in early-stage like you) and grow together.
(If you don’t have the funds you need to hire an early team, you can lean on your personal relationships. Find people in your network who have the skills you need and get them to buy into your passion. They’d understand if you don’t have the money yet, as long as they’re sure you’ll grow together to that stage.)
I think that these tips can be incredibly helpful for you, whether you’re a musician or a startup founder. Perhaps you’ll feel more inspired to look into more similarities and unlock deep insights to help you drive your growth.
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This post was first published on Medium on October 1, 2022.
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