Welcome to the fourth part of our popular guest series, where we ask industry pros, artists and others with valuable perspectives to share their responses to your top of mind questions. Note, we’ve already lined up several new guest authors waiting to provide you with great insights and ideas – so subscribe to our blog to stay informed!
This Week’s Guests:
Steve Beck (OnlineRock), Marc Allan (Red Light Management), Marcus Taylor (The Musician’s Guide to World Domination)
What we asked:
As an industry pro, how do you tell if an artist has a loyal/engaged fan base (ie. metrics, indicators, behaviors, etc.)?
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Steven Beck
Steven Beck founded OnlineRock, an interactive music community providing tools and services for musicians, in 1999. He has traveled to Sierra Leone, Montenegro and Zambia with the US State Department to talk to musicians about the industry. As time permits, Beck records with Julie Cornett under the band name Needle.
I tend to look at the interaction of fans on artist’s social networking sites. Facebook and Twitter seem to have a built-in screening process but MySpace has become a numbers game. I still use it as an online one-sheet but I don’t gauge the popularity of an artist by the quantity of friends but rather the quality of comments.
If an artist has nothing but solicitations from other people in their comment section, I feel that the fans, as well as the artist aren’t taking their music or image seriously. These comments deter others from posting legitimate messages and, if press or industry is looking at your site, can lead to a negative impression.
Marc Allan
Marc Allan recently joined the Red Light Management team after running MOVE Management for the past seven years where he worked with a diverse array of rock and jazz acts, ranging from the New Orleans sounds of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band to the psychedelic world of Apollo Sunshine. Prior to starting MOVE, Marc was the GM at Ropeadope Records.
As helpful as the analytics tools such as bandmetrics or google analytics are, it still comes down to the engagement between the band and their fans in a performance setting. That is always the first sign whether a band is connecting with it’s base. All of the twitter followers in the world don’t mean a thing if the songs aren’t there first.
You can feel the engagement of the fanbase in moments when an artist takes the stage. The joyousness of the fans around you is contagious. You are swept up in the excitement. Then it is time to see how that is registering on a wider scale. If the band can engage the fans on the stage, the online engagement can follow … but it still begins with what takes place on the stage…after all, at the end of the day, we are talking about music.
Marcus Taylor
Marcus Taylor is a UK music marketer and author of The Musician’s Guide to World Domination. Prior to this Marcus managed the Independent record label Starharbour Records.
When measuring fan engagement I tend to prefer qualitative metrics such as how proactive the fans are in spreading the word about your music more than the quantitative metrics like Myspace views and plays, although both metrics have value when in combination, the latter is much easily influenced without a ‘real’ loyal fan base so it can sometimes be a misleading metric. Social mention tools and online artist profiles can be a great way of getting an idea about an artist’s online influence but when it comes to offline it’s a case of watching how receptive and reactive the fans are to what the artist is trying to get them to do.
As always we look forward to hearing from our readers! Share your ideas with us.
If you missed any of the other three parts of our guest series check them out:
Should You Treat Loyal Fans Different Than Casual Fans?
What should artists write about to fans when they don’t have a new album/tour to promote?
Building a Fan Base: The Most Common Mistakes Artists Make
