How To Build Owned Audiences For Artists & Why They Matter

I want to open up this article with a clear and direct statement: your artists should be building their own owned audience. What do I mean by this? 

As your artists develop and focus on making new music, creating related content, and growing their engagement across socials & DSPs, they should also make sure they are developing their own network of fans, listeners & followers - complete with 1st-party information they can use to access them. Why?

There are two main reasons from the artist POV:

Over-Reliance on DSPs & Social Media Platforms

1. When you rely on social media platforms and DSPs to be the middleman communicator between you and your fans, you never know when you might lose access to them. The platform owns the relationship between you and your fans and they can charge or penalize you to maintain that relationship depending on how much they believe it's worth to you. 

Competition for Attention

2. On any given social platform, you will always be competing for attention. As much as you believe in your artists, there are 10,000 other labels & managers that equally believe in their rosters. On TikTok, Instagram, Spotify, etc., you will need amazing content, a brilliant marketing strategy, & potentially ad-spend money to simply have your content re-introduced to your following. On the flipside, if you have a dedicated email server or text list, those messages will be delivered to your core fanbase, whenever you decide they should be. Plus, click-thru rates for texts & emails are MUCH higher than most of what you'll see on social media & DSP platforms. 

So, now that I've clarified why artists need to be growing this owned audience, the next logical question is: how do they do this?

Unfortunately, there is no magic answer or approach for how to do this. There are, however, a couple of guiding principles that make sense to follow. 

1. In order to convert a listener, follower, viewer, etc. into your owned audience - you need a strong offer!

• To clarify my earlier advice, the point here is not to abandon social media sites in favor of fan communities. Social media & DSPs are important channels for discovery & growth. The key is that you want to serve the audiences you have on those mediums, with compelling calls to action to join a 1st party-based fan community. This call to action can take a lot of different forms, for example: 

• "Join my fan list - link below - for a chance for free tickets to my next show!" 

• "Share your number with me for updates & unseen behind-the-scenes footage of my album recording process - link in bio"

• "Join my list in 15s to participate in my livestream where I decide the track order for my upcoming EP"

• There are a lot of different ways to add value for your fans and make your offer attractive so experiment with what works for you.

2. Meet your audience where they are! 

• When you think about how you want to build out your community of supporters, make sure the platform / medium that you use is as frictionless as possible for your specific fan community. So, for example, if your artist makes nostalgic American jazz music that really resonates with people in the 55 - 65 age range, maybe don't rely solely on a novel, online-only fan community site. That might be exactly the crowd that responds best to a simple email list. On the other hand, if your target audience is 18 - 25, tech-savvy & chronically online - think about platforms that allow you to customize how you can interact with your fans: livestreams, comments, raffles / giveaways, etc. 

3. There is no quick way to build community! 

• This will take time. Find an approach & stick to it. If you want to diversify tactics, do so, but don't abandon previous strategies.

• And remember, the people that sign up for these lists and download community apps are the heart of your fanbase. These are the people that you reach out to when you're putting on a show, contact when you have new merch to drop and even utilize if you want opinions on creative decisions.  

All in all, the message here is simple. Label & artist managers - help your artists build long-lasting and high value fans by investing in building out an owned audience.