Ryan Leslie on how to make money in the music industry now (how to connect with fans)

Tuism

I thought this was an interesting read, cos he takes "connect with your fans" to a completely different level - fuck social media, focus on putting his email and phone number public.

That sounds mad hat, potentially a lie, but it seems to work for him...

https://medium.com/culture-clash/how-to-make-money-in-music-now-a5bed2bafa97

Q: Let’s jump right in. How do you do business in 2013?

A: As crazy as it might sound, I run my entire business off of my iPhone, meaning that my audience can reach me directly by e-mail, text, and phone. I believe that that level of direct interaction is far more valuable than interaction on what I consider to be passive social-media channels like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Q: If you were to advise someone about how to get value out of Twitter or how to monetize Twitter for that person and his or her career, would you tell them to stop tweeting?

A: I would tell her to pursue a deeper connection with her followers by taking advantage of the ability to message them directly. That’s what I would say. And at that point, the conversion rate becomes greater. As opposed to one blanket tweet going out and reaching 1 percent of your base, you have a fifty-fifty chance of actually reaching every single person you directly message. Inside of that direct message, you should have a call to action that says, “Here’s how you can support me” or “here’s how you can engage me.”

And that's just a part of what he says, and apparently, he's successful. What he does makes me feel like stuff that's anti-intuitive to what I know - DMing people, trying to connect 1-on-1 with hundreds, thousands, millions... Sounds nuts. Or not real.

What do you think??

dammit

As opposed to one blanket tweet going out and reaching 1 percent of your base

That would be bad practice :P

I would think that it's actually quite unprofessional to have your fans invade your life - your mobile phone is an incredibly personal device and people should respect your privacy and your life as separate from what you do for money.

hanli

your mobile phone is an incredibly personal device and people should respect your privacy and your life as separate from what you do for money

I wish I could get my students and applicants to understand this :(

Tuism

To a certain degree I would LOVE my life and work to be intertwined and be as one. There was an article on how, for example, Picasso, Einstein and the likes (definitely not the mean but very much outliers of course) had lives wher you could not distinguish between their "life" and their "work". It was all one glorious continuum of activity. That article spoke about how Sagmeister (big famous designer) wrote about how one's job, career and calling are different things, and then what if they were actually all one thing.

But anyway that's not exactly on topic - It's interesting to me that this guy's method of marketing himself involves putting his personal details online, and he's obviously "made it" like that, and I was wondering if anyone here had experience/thoughts on that beyond the obvious "omg that's mad" :)

Elyaradine

I've started to feel as if, in something like the current marketplace where the struggle is to be seen, the important thing is to be different, especially as a startup. If everyone else is focusing heavily on one aspect of marketing, then identifying what they aren't doing, especially something that is genuinely missing that people may want, and doing that well, even if you're not getting anywhere close to big companies' numbers, might well be enough to keep you afloat.

In this dude's case, it could be the idea of personal contact, and being able to talk to a real person, rather than some text on a screen condensed to 160 characters.