Why fanbases need to be networks, rather than channels

The foundations of the music business lie in an age of channels. Many current success models still focus on channels, despite living in an age of networks. Due to this mode of operation, a renewed demand for channels has created a landscape of influential gatekeepers over the past decade. But you can still opt to play the network game instead.

The channel landscape

Two clear examples of the new emergence of a channel landscape are Spotify and SoundCloud. Both of them started as platforms that were centered around the user and their networks. Spotify let its users build playlists and those were the playlists it served through its search and other features (actually, for a long time playlist discovery was handled by third-parties like Playlists.net, at the time called ShareMyPlaylists, now part of Warner Music). Over time, playlist brands emerged and Spotify started investing heavily into its own editorial brands – even prioritizing them over ‘user generated’ playlists.

SoundCloud started as a collaboration platform that quickly turned into a music-based social network – in some ways not very different from Twitter, which at one point considered buying SoundCloud and ended up investing $70 million. The main page was its stream, where you can see what people who you follow are uploading. Nowadays, the main page has featured playlists, personalized recommendations, charts, and themed playlists for studying, partying, sleeping, relaxing, etc.

Editorial playlists are channels. Both platforms went from social-first to channel-first and so did the much of the rest of the landscape.

Linearity

Channels are linear. You broadcast down them. You distribute through them one-directionally. In the CD days, if things start travelling in 2 directions in a distribution channel it meant there’s a big problem.

This linearity is what shaped modern music culture as it has emerged in the age of the recording and post-WW2 consumerism. It went hand in hand with the economies of scale that many also unknowingly sign up for when doing music, despite alternative ways being possible.

Non-linearity

We now live in the age of networks. This has been the most profound shift since the internet. Not streaming and not piracy, which are both just symptoms of what happens when something can be turned into data that can then travel without friction through networks.

It has created virality, internet memes, and an overabundance of ‘content’ since creating something and making it available for all to see is easier than ever. That’s true for your track, but also the 59,999 other tracks uploaded to Spotify every day. This problem has meant that platforms like the aforementioned have invested heavily in recommendation algorithms in order to ensure relevance to their users. That creates channels and in the case of certain big social media platforms, it means that people have to pay to actually reach audiences that already follow them.

The landscape also means you can branch off. You don’t need to do interviews in magazines in order to talk to your fans. You can set up your own groups on messaging apps, you can do newsletters, set up forums or Discord communities, etc. It can feel like a handful of companies are setting the rules, but you don’t have to play ball.

Non-linearity in fan communities

Whether you’re an artist, label or startup, how you structure your relation with your fan or user base determines the type of game you will be playing. For contrast, the below graphic looks at traditional linearity in artist-to-fan and fan-to-fan communication and compares it with a ‘network model’. The network model means that as an artist, instead of broadcasting down, you’re placing yourself inside your community of fans.

A community means multidirectional conversations. These conversations exist inside fan clubs, but that information would then have to be moved back up. If, instead of that, you’re participating in the fan community, you have access to more (qualitative) data and insights… with the added bonus that it gives you and others a sense of belonging.

Getting people to pay for something that’s abundantly available is a hard business. The better you understand the fans of your music, the more manageable that challenge becomes… and it will also help you develop completely novel ideas.

5 ideas for fan conversations

Basic rule of thumb: the more you interact with the people who like your music, the better you’ll understand them, which significantly impacts your odds of running a successful business. It also brings up one of the most underestimated challenges in music:

How do you get someone who likes your music to hear you again? They may have heard you on the radio or a playlist somewhere… now how do you make sure they keep listening to you over time?

Below are a few ideas that can help with fan retention and help build your understanding of your listeners in order to unlock new ideas to fold into things like Patreon memberships, crowdfunding perks, limited merch, or whatever you conceive.

• The chatroom: “just set up a Discord” is thrown around a lot, but the relatively simple concept of creating an environment where fans can interact comes with real challenges. There’s a cold start problem meaning people join empty channels, only to disappear because the community feels dead (which then turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy). There can be abuse, where people spam channels or are not respectful of others. How you plan around these issues and the way you decide to architect your community determines what types of conversations and interactions you enable.
• The weekly hangout: if you have a limited number of engaged fans, perhaps reach out to them individually and set up a weekly hangout where you all chat about life & music. Over time, bonds will form and people will feel more invested in the success of the reason why they’re connected: your music.
• The monthly 1-on-1: set up a monthly, individual call with various fans, one on one. Check in on each other. You’ll not just get a snapshot of who people are, but you’ll get status updates, hear how they’re progressing on certain projects… and they’ll hear the same from you. This is one of the Patreon perks I offer to 1:1 supporters and although I expected it to be mostly consultancy calls, I’ve actually gotten a lot of value out of it by learning about new domains.
• The ‘user interview’: user interviews are something I learned doing in various product roles at digital music services. Whenever you’re exploring a certain challenge, for example a new merch line, you reach out to a bunch of your fans directly and hold an interview with them (that you prepare well beforehand). In this situation, things you might want to find out are how they see themselves, how they express themselves through objects or clothing, how much they spend, how they decide to purchase items, etc. These are 1-on-1 calls and you can find plenty of great resources about this by learning more about a domain called ‘user research’.
• The co-creation: you can also kick off a project where you co-create something with fans. For example, you could aim to create an audiovisual map and have fans populate parts of this map, based on their location. Working together on something helps you to understand people in new ways, it will let you see how people express themselves, and in what ways they like to be creative themselves.

Besides building a sense of community and connection, it’s important to always consider what you want to learn from these interactions. I could think of dozens of additional ideas for interaction, but what’s most important is that you understand the challenges before you and start thinking what type of insights will help you address those challenges. In some cases, the challenge might actually be to speak to fans so you can get more clarity on what goals to set.

The choice is yours

Not everything has to be in the hands of a few platforms. You can choose to interact directly with fans and you can do it today by DMing some people who recently liked your posts. Break out of the channel paradigm and see what you can build through network. It’s not one or the other: you can play both games. Just don’t be fooled by the dominance of channels. In the words of Black Sheep: the choice is yours.