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Last Week's Recap (Part 1/4)

Last week, we covered the one technique most musicians skip, which keeps them stuck with under a thousand followers. Community research is what separates the artists who actually build fan bases from those trapped in algorithmic jail at 300 views.

We discussed how this helps you escape the prison where all your posts receive the same amount of views. The algorithm only sees you connected to cousin Anthony's hockey jersey videos instead of the 25 smaller artists whose fans would actually like your music.

The key insight is that algorithms can only see the connections users make. When you collaborate with artists in your niche, you get on their artist pages and hit the release radar of their existing fans, the best real estate in music marketing history.

We covered Coco Mocoe's principle: "The more niche you go, the more you grow." Artists who blow up understand their community well enough to know who to target and what hashtags connect them to their people.

Now for Part 2:

Why Community Work Beats Paid Advertising

There's another reason I find community work to be some of the most important work you'll do - it gets you to the right people. As I've said a million times, I absolutely hate Facebook ads, and much of it is because they don't bring you the best fans to build a fan base: the fans actively consume a genre daily and tell everyone else what to listen to. It also often pollutes your algorithm by giving you connections to musicians you have little in common with who also run Facebook ads, instead of the musicians Spotify sees you connected to and the other artists who are starting to grow in your genre. This gives you the best algorithm possible that will build your fanbase for you for free for years to come, and isn't dependent on when you stop running ads.

The Algorithm Quality Difference

One thing the people who doubt me often discount is that not all algorithmic connections are created equal.

I'm sorry, but I've been doing this long enough to know that if you do what I talk about here, you create a much healthier algorithm to grow than the polluted cesspool ads bring. It keeps becoming more true that if you associate with others and show an algorithm that you're similar to someone through genuine interactions and collaboration, where there's a common bond since you researched that you're similar to them, and then that person's audience vibes with you, the algorithm will build your audience for you for free while you do other things… like create music.

Finding Early Adopters

But there's one more hidden part of why I really think this is important, and it's a hard pill to swallow: Most of you aren't making exceptional music yet, at least.

But the nerds in your community really love your genre of music and are addicted to it and need a fix all the time. Frankly, they're willing to accept stuff that's a little more rough around the edges with potential. So when you find your community, they're the most likely early fans. This is why you need to find the small artists who make music similar to you, who have some traction, since their fans are likely to be the same ones who will welcome you into their regular music listening playlists.

Meet Forgiving Fans

But there's more. When your head is in your community, you see what others are doing that's good and learn relevant things about what you're doing and how you can improve. One of the things you often see is that musicians who blow up are always known for watching the artists they play with. They're studying.

Part of how you grow is meeting fans who will forgive you when you have potential but it isn't quite realized yet, and learning from those who are doing similar things to you, seeing the details that make them good. The musicians you love and their team understand the dynamics of their scene, genre, or community. They're students of it that are obsessed with it, which is why you see your favorite artists acutely aware of everyone around them. This gives them that distinct advantage over everyone else.

Real Example:

But don't take it from me. Here's Iglooghost, who's one of the most influential producers making music today. I think one of the sickest producers in the game, explaining how he got signed as an unknown artist with no fanbase, who's just making sick music with no following. And yet he got signed to Flying Lotus's Brainfeeder label,

Community Spreadsheet

The work starts with a simple spreadsheet. I've created one for my fictitious hyperpop band Incel Hypebeast to show you exactly how this process works. You can grab a copy here.

Find Artists Your Size

Your job is to write down every artist who's similar to you musically. I don't care if they have 100 monthly listeners—that's actually helpful if you only have a few hundred listeners yourself. If they have 100,000, even better. And if they have 10 million, cool. But keep this list mostly of artists who are similar to your size or a little bit bigger.

If you have 100 monthly listeners, this list should only have maybe 10 artists with 10 million or more listeners and 90 artists with thousands to tens of thousands of monthly listeners.

Here's why: we're going to understand every part of your community: from the artists to their mix engineers, video directors, lawyers, and booking agents. You need to know where the fans of those artists hang out and how to find the people who work with those artists, since they're more likely to work with you too.

Filling Out Your Target List

Let's build this list of artists - or what I call targets. These will also become your microgenre names, which we'll fill in under the "terms" tab. You need to figure out what your microgenre or community is first. I made a whole video on that process, so watch it if you're not clear on your microgenre.

Start by putting acts from your microgenre on the list. Find these by going down a breadcrumb trail: click on the Spotify profiles of similar artists to you and dig into their "Fans Also Like" section.

Every Noise at Once is also a helpful website. Look up your favorite artists and check the tags under their names, which are often good microgenres and hashtags you can put in your spreadsheet and test on TikTok and Instagram.

Use this to be a detective. Click on those genre names to get the artists in them, then investigate whether they should be on your sheet. Go to their Spotify page and check their "Fans Also Like" section if they’re a good match.

If you already have a “fans also like” on your profile, that's a great place to start.

The “Discovered On” Playlist Shortcut

Here's a time saver: as you find those artists, scroll down their Spotify page to see what playlists they're on. Put those playlists in the spreadsheet tab I created for them. We'll scour these later to find more targets where your community lives

Building Your Database

All these sections are great leads for filling out your spreadsheet. This becomes a place to continually come back to since playlists and "Fans Also Like" lists change all the time. Your community research is never really finished.

A lot of you are probably asking "How big should this list be?" We'll dive into that and more next week in part 3.

[To Be Continued…]

Stay tuned for next week's part 3/4 of the Finding Your Community series. Thanks for reading.