In today’s digital world, anyone can find your music and decide to become a fan. However, it goes both ways - there is also a lot of music that gets published every day on the internet. According to Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, there are more than 60,000 new tracks that get published every day on Spotify.Even before your music distribution, your main concern should be how to cut through the noise as an upcoming artist. The answer is simple yet complicated - targeting the right audience for your music. A simple upload button would not help to reach the right audience but a proper marketing strategy would. Here are the steps to target your potential loyal fan. Build your identity If a business has a unique selling point, an artist would have a musical identity. Besides great music, people opt-in to become your fan because they align their values with your musical identity. With thousands of artists in the market, the thing that differentiates you is your musical identity. Think of how Ariana Grande is famous for her soft voice and feminine aesthetic, musical identity is something that translates through how you physically present yourself and your musical genre.An artist’s musical identity plays one of the most important roles in targeting the right audience for your music. People rarely care what you’re doing, they care about why you’re doing it. Your story and musical identity will answer that question and set you apart from other artists in the industry.To pinpoint what is your musical identity, notice the pattern of your music and see what kind of emotions it brings to the listeners. In a way, music is a language itself that you use to communicate with your audience. Thus, by recognizing your message’s pattern, you’re in step one of building your identity. To learn more, check out our article on building your identity. Understand your audience After establishing your musical identity, it’s time to understand who you’re targeting. In a marketing campaign, it is always important to know your user persona - a semi-fictional character based on your ideal customer.For an artist, by identifying your target audience, you will have a better idea of who you will be talking to which increases your chance of converting them into a fan. We will have an article that covers how to build a musical user persona, sign up for our newsletter to get the first access to the article.Some of the key factors to define a persona:Music audience demographics(age, gender, and income)Geographic locationListening habitsFashion styleMusic genreMusic styleHobbyValue Target your audienceThe key to targeting audiences is to do it consistently and align them with your musical identity. With that in mind, you create a coherent branding that appeals to your audience. There are different types of approaches to target your audience. Here are some of the most common ones:Live performanceThere are usually two types of fans: the one who pays to support you and the one who supports you through social media engagement. The demographics of audiences that go to concerts are the ones that would pay to support you as they were willing to pay to go to concerts in the first place.To sustain your artist’s life span, you should focus on and target the first type of fan as they strengthen your musical career through financial support - this could mean buying your live show ticket, buying your album, streaming your songs, etc.Thus, there is no better way to convert a stranger into your loyal fan than by listening to your music in live performance. By doing live performances, you both get paid and promote your music to a wider audience which is more likely to become a fan if they like your music.Social mediaThere is no denial of the massive impact of social media on our daily lives, including your musical career. Social media platforms open a way for you to interact with your fans and visually solidify your musical identity. To efficiently target your audience, you should research which platforms they are most active on and create content they’re most likely to engage with. Many artists begin their musical careers by being active on social media and engaging with their fans.Moreover, social media is a great way to promote your songs to a group of audiences that already take an interest in you and your music. However, the effort to “get there” is in your hands. In contrast to the idea of getting “blown up” randomly on social media, most artists successfully target and acquire fans through social media by doing it consistently and being relevant to their audience’s interests. To learn more about this matter, you can check our article on how to promote music on social media.Media presenceMost of the time, your potential fan doesn’t randomly stumble on your social media accounts. A way to be present for them to find you is through doing press coverage. Even though this is a traditional way to get media attention, it is still effective as people consume media on a daily basis. As the way people consume media gets more modern, there are many types of different ways to get a media presence which depends on where your target audience locate the most.Some examples we can give you are song placement on your local radio station or Spotify playlist, an interview with a university magazine, etc. Nevertheless, you need an electronic press kit to do outreach for this type of press coverage. Check out our guide on building your electronic press kit.Music promotionSimilar to media presence, you want to gain visibility to target your audience. The simplest way to do this is to do music promotion. To learn more, read our extensive guide on music promotion.Music promotion can take many different forms and using social media is also one. Even though promoting yourself through social media is organic and free, building your social media presence can take a lot of time and effort. As a result, many artists have been using a mix of paid social ads and organic use of social media.By paying for social ads, you’re able to reach a wider audience that is prone to convert into your fan. There are many services that are designed for artists to promote themselves such as Spotify for Artists, Facebook Ads, Youtube Ads, and many more. However, delegating the budget and effort among these social ads can take time and music marketing knowledge. Moreover, the process of setting up an ad account for each platform can be tiring and complicated to keep track of all of them.At Base for Music, we simplify the process of running social ads for musicians. Thus, to accelerate your musical career and target your audience, you can use Base for Music to amplify your reach and build your fan base.
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