Shares

By: Marcus Taylor

One thing that fascinates me about how bands develop is the ‘leaps’ where a band grows exponentially over a short period of time. Very few bands grow at an incremental rate their whole career – but what causes these leaps?

In practical terms, how can you double or triple the size of your fan base in a short period of time?

I urge you to not just read this post and go back to browsing Twitter. No one builds their fan base by clicking on links all day. You build your fan base by taking action – testing and learning what works, and eliminating what doesn’t. Try something new today.

 

1. Every single fan must (on average) generate at least one new fan

To double or triple the size of your fanbase you need every one of your current fans to (on average) introduce your music to one or two of their friends who will also take the same action. This is the most fundamental point to this blog post. The larger the number of new fans each fan introduces your music to, the quicker your fan base will grow.

 


An illustration of linear vs. exponential growth, where the X-axis represents time and the Y-axis represents the size of your fanbase.

 

2. Building video content & marketing on YouTube

Increasing the rate and quality of producing music videos – or video content – can be a powerful way of exponentially growing your fan base, because as the number of videos on your YouTube page cumulates, the results begin to compound.

This is how many ‘YouTube celebrities’ have made their fame – by producing good quality video content frequently until they hit a tipping point where they have so many videos that they’re getting 100,000s views every day.

You can use services like TubeMogul to distribute your videos to a larger network of video hosting sites, as well as use their pre-roll advertising options, which I’ve found to be very effective.

There are also music specific platforms for building loyalty with your fans via video or live streaming. My favourite of the bunch being Stageit.

 

3. Incentivizing your fans to share your music using FanDistro

There are few music marketing tools that help artists spread their music virally quite likeFanDistro. In a nutshell, FanDistro enables you to reward your fans with free downloads, t-shirts, and other merch when they get X of their friends on Facebook to download / share your music (called ‘distroing’). For example, I can set up a reward where my fans get a free t-shirt if they introduce my music to 20 of their friends who become new fans.

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