Building A Fanbase – CMU Library

Find out about the different ways that frontline artists go about building a fanbase, both during the DIY Phase and once they are working with music industry partners. Plus how artists can use fan data to inform and enhance their fanbase building.

#01: DIY Phase artists need to start the fanbase building process themselves

Frontline artists – also sometimes called featured artists – are the music-makers who are up front on stage, who build a brand and release music under that brand, and who seek to grow and monetise a fanbase.

If you were to map the career of the average frontline artist – from hobbyist to headliner – and broke that career down into ten steps, we reckon that the traditional music industry only really gets involved at about step four.

After that point an artist will start to work with business partners in the music industry – like managers, record labels, music publishers, booking agents and so on – with the aim of progressing to step six or seven, at which point the artist should be able to make a decent and sustainable living from their music-making.

But what happens in the initial three steps – what we call the DIY Phase – and how can artists progress through that phase to get to the point where business partners in the music industry want to work with them?

Obviously the artist needs to hone their craft as a music-maker and – in doing so – write some great songs, record some great tracks and learn how to put on a great show. But the other key task during the DIY Phase is finding an audience – ie building a fanbase.

Artists generally need to get the fanbase building process going themselves in the DIY Phase – to demonstrate to the industry, and potential future business partners, that there is an audience for the music.

Once on board those music industry business partners will help escalate the fanbase building process and seek to significantly grow the audience.

Record labels in particular are often key marketing partners, with a label usually having in-house marketing expertise, access to a stack of marketing data and insight, existing connections with key influencers, and a budget to pay for content creation, to buy advertising and to hire external expertise where required.

A label is primarily involved in an artist’s recorded music, so its marketing is focused on driving sales and streams of the recordings. However, that activity helps boost fanbase building more generally, and getting that fanbase building support is a key reason why many early-career artists will look to work with a label.

Some artists prefer to release music through their own labels and then partner with a music distributor. Higher-level distributors – aka artist services companies – can also provide marketing support, either through in-house marketing teams, or by advancing money that allows the artist to hire specialist marketing, PR or promotions agencies to manage different aspects of the fanbase building process.

However, to get to the point where a label or higher level distributor is ready to get on board and invest in marketing, the DIY Phase artist will need to undertake some fanbase building on their own. This is a tricky process and quite what works varies from artist to artist, but there are some tactics that most artists employ.

#02: At the DIY Phase, fanbase building will often centre on live and digital activity – though collaboration is also key

First the live activity. Although gigging and touring is obviously an important revenue stream for many frontline artists, during the DIY Phase it is also a key way to get the fanbase building process underway, and to find and engage with an initial audience.

This means artists need to put together a good but flexible show – which can be performed in various different formats – and then look for as many opportunities to perform live as possible.

In particular, they need to look for opportunities to play to potential new fans, including open mic nights, regular club and gig nights, guest spots and support slots. As momentum builds, festivals also become a great way to play in front of new audiences.

It’s important to remember that these shows are as much about fanbase building as they are making money – especially as some of these performances won’t make the artist much money at all. So artists should look for subtle ways to encourage potential fans to connect with them online.

Which brings us to the digital activity. Alongside the shows, artists need to have a presence on the key streaming and social platforms.

So, have some music (it can few tracks or an EP) available to play via the music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, and other content on social platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, X and Facebook.

Which digital platforms an artist uses – and what they do with each platform – depends greatly on them and their fanbase. If possible, it’s good to have a presence on all of them – so whichever streaming or social platform a fan goes to, they can connect with the artist.

But the artist’s resources are always going to be super tight at this stage, meaning they are probably going to prioritise certain platforms over others.

So the artist is more prolific in posting content to one or two of the social platforms, using the others for occasional more substantial posts or for providing simple updates on activity happening elsewhere online.

Artists should also think about setting up a mailing list so that they can directly email the core fanbase and having a simple website that sign-posts everything else happening online.

It’s also worth considering early on making it easy for superfans to financially support the artist though donations or memberships, or by buying merch, using platforms like Patreon and Bandcamp.

Collaboration is also key at this stage.

Aspiring frontline artists should seek to collaborate with other DIY Phase music-makers and creators, including on making content to share on social platforms and possibly on staging live events too.

Artists and creators who collaborate in this way can share the workload, utilise each other’s skills, and – crucially – access each other’s audiences.

#03: Every so often artists seek to escalate fanbase growth with a bigger campaign usually around a new release

The combination of live and digital activity – and creative collaborations – will be an ongoing constant process during the DIY Phase, with the artist regularly gigging, posting content and pursuing collaborations, and in doing so slowly but surely connecting with and engaging new fans.

However, every so often most artists will stage a more formalised and prolific marketing campaign to try to escalate the fanbase building process over a relatively short period of time. These campaigns are usually connected to a new release – whether that’s a track, EP, mixtape or full album – and will run for a fixed time both before and after the release.

Once an artist is working with management and a higher-level distributor – and especially if they sign to a label – those business partners will play a key role in planning and delivering these release marketing campaigns. Though many artists run the first couple of campaigns themselves during the DIY Phase.

These release-centric marketing campaigns will involve more live activity, digital activity and collaborations.

In terms of social media, this is when it probably makes most sense for the artist to spend some money on digital advertising, pushing their promotional content further through key social platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

However, there will likely be other elements to the campaign as well. There are specific digital marketing tools to use around new releases, some of which are provided by the streaming services themselves. These include pre-save links, and Spotify tools like Countdown Pages and Discovery Mode.

Then there is the process of influencing the influencers. Which means pitching the new music to key people at the music press, music radio, music TV, club DJs, music bloggers, relevant podcasts and creators on social platforms, and the curators of playlists on the streaming services.

An artist may also seek to collaborate with other creators and influencers who have relevant audiences on the key social and digital platforms, ie beyond the artist’s usual network of collaborators.

Plus, they should make sure that any current and past collaborators – and any existing champions within the industry – are kept up to date about the release, in the hope that they will shout about it via their social channels.

Obviously most artists in the DIY Phase will have a very limited amount of time and money to invest in these marketing campaigns – so the trick is to identify what marketing activity is most effective and prioritise that work.

There are some digital marketing platforms that DIY Phase artists can use to help with the release campaign, which usually provide digital promotional tools or help pitch music to journalists and playlisters, usually for a relatively modest fee.

Whatever tools, tactics and platforms an artist chooses to employ they should put together a schedule for all this marketing activity – and make sure they leave themselves plenty of time to do everything ahead of the actual release.

Though at the same time they should also be ready to respond and adapt their plans if new opportunities suddenly pop up.

#04: Digital marketing is all about trial and error – so use the data!

At its core, music marketing is predominantly digital marketing, and digital marketing requires good content and good use of fan data.

Once an artist is releasing music, publishing content and interacting with fans on social media, spending money with social and digital ad platforms, regularly gigging and selling merch, a plethora data is available telling us more about the artist’s fans.

This data can help the artist to grow the fanbase and to develop their artist business more generally. To that end, it’s important that the artist has access to as much of this fan data as possible. Some data is easier to access than others.

The Music Managers Forum publishes a Fan Data Guide, originally produced in partnership with CMU, which identifies ten different categories of fan data.

Email and mobile data. So, the email addresses and/or mobile numbers of fans who have opted-in to receive information by email or through text message or via platforms like WhatsApp. And once the artist starts sending messages to fans, there is additional data about how the fan interacts with the content.

Website data. Information about what pages people have visited on an artist’s website, where those people are based, what devices and browsers they use, and so on. This data might come from the platform being used to power a website or via services like Google Analytics.

Social data. This is any data provided by a social media platform about how many people see and interact with a post, and other general information about the people following an artist on any one platform.

Streaming data. All the data provided by the streaming services, both directly via their artist portals, and usually via each artist’s label or distributor as well. This includes what tracks were streamed when and where, plus things like what playlists tracks appear on.

Ticketing data. Information on who bought tickets to what shows. With mobile ticketing, there may be additional information available too, such as when fans arrived at the venue.

Direct-to-fan data. Information about what fans bought what products from a direct-to-fan store, such as via a platform like Bandcamp.

Advertising data. This is the data provided by any digital advertising platforms, which are often also social media. Generally once an artist starts using the paid-for advertising tools of a social media platform, they will get better data back about who is interacting with their content and posts.

Smart link data. Smart link tools exist to make promoting new releases online easier by providing a single short link for each release, which takes fans to a page of buttons via which they can access the music on all the different streaming services. This is good for fan communications, but also provides some extra data about how fans are interacting with the music.

Affiliate link data. Some digital platforms allow other people or companies to become affiliates. Each affiliate is then given some code to add to any links they share to content or products on those platforms. If a fan clicks through and buys something, the affiliate gets a small commission. But they also often get some data about how the fan interacted with the platform.

Re-targeting data. Some digital platforms provide advertisers with code that they can use on their website, emails and other online activity. If people access a web page or click on a link that has been connected to this code while logged into that digital platform, said platform tracks that user activity. This can then be used by the artist to target future advertising, so that messages are only shown to people who have interacted with the artist’s music or content before.

The MMF Fan Data Guide provides more information on how to access and utilise these different kinds of fan data and is available to MMF members.

#05: There are various different ways we can use fan data

How an artist uses fan data will depend on the kind of data and what the artist is doing at any one time. But there are four key ways the data can be valuable in helping the artist understand and grow their fanbase.

The data provides various kinds of insight that should inform all fanbase building activity and especially marketing campaigns for new releases.

Profile the fanbase. The data tells the artist general information about their fans, including where they are based, what devices and platforms they use, what kind of content they are interact with, what playlists they subscribe to, etc.

This can help the artist decide what kind of marketing content to create, and which platforms and influencers to target, especially when time and budget is tight and the artist needs to decide where to focus their efforts.

Test campaign effectiveness. The data tells the artist and their business partners whether any one bit of marketing activity worked.

So for example, you post a short video to Instagram promoting a smart link to a new track. Did anyone see or interact with the video? Did anyone click on the smart link? Did anyone stream the music?

The data can answer these questions. And when the data tells the artist and their team that fans didn’t see or interact with the content, or click on the links or stream the music, that provides marketing insight.

The artist needs to change something the next time they post – maybe the kind of content, the call to action, the platform used, the day of the week or time of day – and see if the next post has more success.

By asking these questions and checking the data on a regular basis, the artist and their team can learn about what works best when engaging with fans, and use that information to inform future marketing activity.

Target messaging. Some data allows artists and their business partners to target specific communications and marketing.

So, with digital advertising, the artist and their team decide who to prioritise when pushing content out based on the kinds of people who have responded most positively in the past.

Or, using the re-targeting tools provided by social media, they push new content specifically to people who have interacted with past content.

Profile the fan. Some data allows the artist to better understand the interests of individual fans, usually by name or at least email address.

Email data and direct-to-fan data is particularly powerful in this domain. It means fan communication can be targeted according to a fan’s specific interests, so different fans receive different versions of that communication.