💡✍️ADN #094: If You Could Have One Fan

If you could have one fan, who would it be?

What would they be interested in?

What causes would they support?

What would their musical influences be?

What would they do to show their support for your music?

These sound like simple questions, but going years without asking yourself any of them is easy.

Why?

Because when you’re getting started, you think you’d be happy with any audience that supports you.

I will tell you something that will save you a lot of time when it comes to audience…

The audience you want is a reflection of yourself.

If you are a queer liberal female from the South singing songs about your experiences, then you want to attract an audience that can relate to and supports the songs you sing and understands the reasons they exist.

The same is true if you are a blue-collar artist from a predominately red state with conservative values.

We all think we want everyone to be our fans, but if a day comes when the majority of your audience doesn’t align with your values, you will likely change your tune and potentially lose the drive you once had to be an artist.

When starting your ARTIST DEVELOPMENT journey, the best thing you can do is to ask yourself where your interests, passions, influences, and level of drive land.

When you answer these questions, narrating your story to your audience becomes exponentially easier.

Once you know your ideal audience (people who align with your beliefs), you have a playbook for interviews, social media posts, songwriting, stage banter, etc.

Artists who struggle to find an audience typically struggle to define their audience and their music’s purpose.

Artists who gain rabid followings typically clearly state who they are and aren’t.

If you are in the exploration phase of your ARTIST DEVELOPMENT or have been at it for a while but are struggling to identify an audience, take the time to examine your influences, beliefs, and quirks.

It’s okay if you aren’t the person you want to be yet.

The audience you are after can be aspirational, like your vision for yourself.

You just have to make sure that you hold up your end of the bargain by being honest with your audience:

You aren’t perfect, but you know who you want to become.

Artists willing to expose their view to the world are typically rewarded with audiences who view it similarly.

When this happens, you turn your reflection into the audience you imagined, and the audience sees themselves in you.

Quite the magic trick.

All you have to do is know who you are and be yourself.

See you next Sunday -

Neil