In the world of pop music, targeting your audience has always meant identifying who was likely to enjoy your songs, and then make it easy for those potential fans to familiarize themselves with your music, and then hopefully buy the record.
If you like starting songs by working with a chord progression, you need to read “Writing a Song From a Chord Progression.” It will give you the pros and cons of this songwriting method, and help you create songs that really work!
So if you are a country music singer-songwriter, you are going to write and record songs that focus on that genre, and then advertise in a way that makes it easy for country music fans to hear them. For example, you might advertise upcoming concerts and/or records in a country music magazine. You aren’t as likely to advertise in, let’s say, a classical music journal, hoping that some of those classical fans are also country fans.
These days, things are a little different than they were a few decades ago. You are likely to stream your songs on a service that makes it easy for everyone to hear your music, because it’s how streaming works. But then the targeting comes into play: you can create your own online content (blog, YouTube channel, Facebook page, etc.) that gives your fans the information they want, making it easy to build on your fan base.
So if you’re already doing those things, you’re doing most of what you can do to target your audience and to grow that base. But if you’re new to the music scene, how do you get started and make sure that you’re not leaving anything undone that should be done?
Here are some important ideas to consider:
- Follow other songwriters and musicians who have already built a healthy fan base. Find others who’ve been at this for a long time, and get some ideas from their own website and/or blog for things you can be doing to build your audience.
- Find other singer-songwriters who write in your chosen genre, and collaborate with them. In so doing, you can find people who already like the kind of music you do, and the resulting boost to your fan base will increase streams and clicks.
- Make sure your blog and website look professional. And don’t just include your thoughts on the music industry, or offer lyrics; include short videos of you doing interesting things, talking to other songwriters, even perhaps giving them a peek at your songwriting process. Fans love seeing this sort of thing.
- Interact with your fans. Give them ways to comment on your content, and reply as much as possible. Replying and otherwise engaging with fans is a good way to keep trolls at bay, and can keep your site looking current and relevant.
More than anything, you’ll go a long way to properly targeting your chosen audience if you make listening to new music a daily feature of your creative life. It will keep your own songs sounding current, and will give you ideas for how you can make your songs sound exactly like what people are wanting.
Written by Gary Ewer. Follow on Twitter.
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