Growing Your Audience As An Independent Artist Ft. (Andrew Southworth) With (Alex Quin)
Episode Summary:
As independent artists, it's important to learn how to grow your audience in order to build a sustainable career. In this episode of The Hustle Inspires Hustle Podcast, host Alex Quin interviews artist Andrew Southworth on how to create and execute a plan to expand your reach as an independent artist. They discuss the importance of using platforms such as Youtube, Facebook, and Instagram to spread your reach and strategies for using NFTs to engage with your audience. If you’re an artist, you wouldn’t want to miss this!
Wisdom Nuggets:
1. Branch Out Around Things That Are Already Working
If you are growing your music career and want to find new ways to connect with your fans, look for things that are already working and try to branch out from there. For example, if you have a strong social media following on one platform, try using other platforms to reach even more people. Try to avoid going through uncharted territory and instead focus on areas that will help you multiply your efforts.
2. Be Consistent
One of the best pieces of advice for growing your audience is to be consistent with your content. When you are consistently putting out high-quality content, people will start to take notice and become more interested in following you
3. Embrace Latest Tech Innovations
NFTS, Virtual reality, and other new technologies offer great opportunities for artists to engage with their fans in new and exciting ways. By embracing these latest tech innovations, you can reach a wider audience and create more engaging content.
Podcast Outline:
Alex: (00:40) What's up y'all? I'm Alex Quinn. And we're back with another episode of the Hustle Inspires Hustle podcast. On today's episode, we have Andrew Southworth. What's up, Andrew?
Andrew : (00:51) Hey, how's it going, man?
Alex: (01:30) So you love all this stuff. You love music, you, you love marketing. Let's talk a little bit about what you do in your passions, man.
Andrew : (01:36) Yeah, so a lot of people know me from my YouTube channel, which is just my name Andrew Southworth, where I share essentially how I'm marketing my music and how I'm navigating the music industry as a music artist.
Andrew : (01:50) I got like 12,000 followers on Spotify and like 30,000 monthly listeners. I've, I've sold like hundreds of CDs, you know, so I'm like an active artist and nice on my YouTube channel.
Alex: (02:20) It's actually pretty dope, pretty rad that you're doing both. A lot of people don't take the time to understand, and you know, when people think about music, it's like, Oh, I hear a song, I see a music video done.
Alex: (03:03) People know you, not only for music, but also for marketing, so that you respect the fact that you're able to back that up.
Andrew : (03:48) What I actually do as a musician is post on social media every day, learn how to edit videos, learn blender to make graphic arts, learn how to use Facebook ads, learn how to use YouTube ads. You know, and that's kind of the reality that modern musicians have to deal with.
Alex: (04:19) How did this all start for you? Like, what did you always know you wanted to be an artist?
Andrew : (04:22) Yeah, I mean, at least since I was like 12 years old when I started learning how to play guitar, that was, that's kind of when the addiction started.
Alex: (06:32) Right. So who are, like, who are, who inspired you to, like, who are those people that inspired you to become a musician? Like what, what genre was it?
Andrew : (06:40) Well, originally, most of my music history was in like metal and specifically like progressive metal.
Alex: (07:58) Well, these days, everybody makes you see things online, they may look simple to do, but the whole back mechanism of how to do everything is pretty sophisticated. But you know, once you've built enough businesses, once you've had enough experience working on different types of projects, it's much easier to be able to create systems.
Alex: (08:54) When you grow businesses, it's good to to to grow in areas that, you know, are that directly or indirectly help your existing business. You know, some people go completely left field and start something else, which is totally fine, but I like to build legs around things I know already working to continue to create solutions for the people working with me or working for me.
Andrew : (09:13) Yeah. That's kind of what I've been trying to do. Like originally when I was doing the music marketing stuff eventually, but, well I already had a YouTube channel at that point. Like I, I was teaching screening lessons for years and I switched to music production tutorials
Alex: (12:36) There's this book, I don't know if you've read it, but I recently bought it on Amazon, I think I've mentioned it in a few episodes. It's called Music Marketing by, I think, Mike King; he’s pretty badass, man. There's a lot of great stuff in there.
Alex: (14:07) How can an artist, how, how can a music artist market their song or album today, specifically from your experience online, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, YouTube ads, what's currently working for artists?
Andrew : (14:19) Yeah, a lot of that will depend on what their current situation is and what their budget is. But, like, just as a general answer, what I've seen worked best and what works best for me and what I've seen work best for others is, well, it's kind of goal-dependent.
Andrew : (14:33) If you want to grow your streams on Spotify, Apple Music, et cetera, then use Facebook conversion ads where you send people to a landing page.
Alex: (19:47) Hey, I just wanted to jump in real quick to tell you about how to train yourself in organization, balancing your priorities, developing successful habits, and, most importantly, having a better mindset. I'm giving free access to resources and materials on business management and self-development. Go to hustle inspires hustle.com/app to get access.
Alex: (21:12) So let me ask you something. Let's say I'm an artist right now; I could only advertise on one social media platform. Where would you send me, where would you direct me if it was you? Like if it was your project that you're leading?
Andrew : (21:23) It would be Facebook ads.
Andrew : (21:49) When you're trying to send people to another platform, I found Google ads and YouTube ads aren't nearly as good as Facebook ads.
Alex: (25:25) I believe the success of any NFT campaign is the culture and the follow-up. A lot of these artists are just, you know, doing cash grabs, and these NFTs should have utility, right?
Andrew : (26:50) That's a really good point. And that's something I've thought of too, where, where the, NFT like the technology's really cool, you know, you can, you can do a lot of stuff with it.
Alex: (28:43) And I just, you know, see a day, one day maybe potentially you go into your Oculus, right? And you walk, you're walking down this metaverse where everybody has land or whatever, they're out building, right? And you can just, you just choose to, to buy skin to see how, how it is that you're gonna look maybe during di same walk that you're having and people are seeing you wear a certain outfit in the ambiance.
Alex: (30:21) The entertainment industry has grown in so many directions. There was a small pause during all that time, but now you're seeing concerts, tickets, cost, triple, quadruple, five times what they cost before for the same exact thing. Which is a lot allowing for a lot more development.
Alex: (31:57) I just recently interviewed Russ, and he was talking all about that. It was a really dope interview just to see, you know, how far he's grown being an independent artist and following that business model
Andrew : (34:05) Before the times of digital advertising, it's like if you wanted to get the word out about your independent music product, like what are you gonna do? Buy a television ad or radio ad, it's gonna cost you like five grand, 10 grand, like higher, higher a publicist or whatever.
Andrew : (34:21) As an independent artist, even with 300 bucks a month, like you can actually grow your audience, you know, which is kind, it's a great time to be an artist.
Andrew : (34:49) You can, a lot of people I know, and even for a lot of my music when I was starting off with this, I would plan for like a, I would be dropping a song every month or two, and I'd give your song like a $300 budget.
Alex: (35:50) If you could use Facebook and Instagram to focus on one streaming platform, would that be Spotify?
Andrew : (36:06) Yeah, definitely. Cuz Spotify has the best, well, one has the biggest user base by like a long shot, but two, it has the most discoverability tools built into it.
Alex: (37:10) Are you using YouTube shorts for any of your existing campaigns or existing marketing efforts for music artists?
Alex: (38:53) Andrew. Listen, we've come to the end of our episode, but I would love to have you back soon. This has been one of my favorite conversations. I, I love your experience, I love everything that you're working on, man.
Alex: (39:09) Thank you guys so much for supporting the podcast. We're going on year three. We have a ton of you guys listening in over a hundred countries right now. Very excited about that. Thank you so much guys, for supporting us.
Power Quotes:
Alex: (09:06) I like to build legs around things I know already working to continue to create solutions for the people working with me or working for me.
Alex: (25:25) I believe the success of any NFT campaign is the culture and the follow-up. A lot of these artists are just, you know, doing cash grabs, and these NFTs should have utility,
Andrew: (34:05) Before the times of digital advertising, it's like if you wanted to get the word out about your independent music product….. It could cost up to 10 Grand. As an independent artist today, even with 300 bucks a month, you can actually grow your audience.
Resources Mentioned:
Hustle Inspires Hustle Instagram
Hustle Inspires Hustle website
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