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My weird way of turning music into money
I like Wayne’s thread. I didn’t want to stick this long post into it, so this is a one-off post that was inspired by him. I’m not sure that my experiences will be useful to anyone else, but doing the experiments has been a lot of fun for me.
Except for the actual music that I hear, I don’t know what people are doing within the music industry. I don’t even know what independent musicians are doing outside of the music industry. I’m just going to summarize what I’ve been doing.
The short version is that trial and error works with live music. That sums it up well. The long version requires a book, which I will mention again later. This post is a middle-length way to explain how I developed an experimental system.
During recent years I’ve tried a lot of experiments, along with my partner-in-crime. Our initial goal was to make $432,000 by averaging 300 people per show at $12 per ticket at 120 shows. All three parts of the equation seemed to be doable.
We not only wanted to make $432,000, we wanted to keep most of the money that we made, so we did everything from scratch with pretty much no outside help, except for having a lawyer and insurance.
By starting from scratch I partly mean that we lined up locations where live shows had never been done before, in places where it’s unlikely that anyone else had ever even considered the possibility. Once we had a few sites lined up the experiments started.
We didn’t know exactly what we were getting into when we got into it. Even though we put a lot of time into coming up with strategies, we didn’t spend much time predicting which strategies would work best.
In order to come up with experiments to try, I had already done a ton of advance research. I read hundreds of business books, which was a chore, but when a book had even one useful idea then it was well worth the time.
I studied magicians and comedians to learn their self-promotion tactics. They tend to be much better at it than musicians, for reasons that I can't even begin to understand or explain.
This will sound bizarre, and possibly illegal, but I studied con-men to see if any of their tricks could wind up being useful. It seemed to me that fooling people would be OK as long as we went ahead and gave them a good show.
One interesting research find was an 1840s outlaw from Bastrop, Texas who figured out a cool and sneaky way to sell-out the opera house in Bastrop for a concert. Wild-west Texans must have been a hoot.
Since I put our experiments together from a wide range of different sources I came up with some promotions that have probably never been tried before by anyone, anywhere. I frequently felt like a promotional pioneer.
To some extent it was a lot like a simple internet marketing technique. Those marketing folks will set up 5 or 10 experimental websites in order to see which particular strategy gets the most responses or sales.
Our approach couldn’t be anywhere near that concise, but we could use different towns as experimental guinea-pigs. We tried different promotions in different towns and measured results by the ticket sales.
It was a blast to try crazy stuff just to see what would happen. Reckless experimentation isn’t the most scientific approach, but it was a good enough way to figure out what we wanted to try next.
There were some disastrous shows with thoroughly befuddled small audiences. Most people in most places were kind. A few angry people in a few offended towns made us want to get out of town before we got shot. Every show seemed like a new adventure.
Failure had a perverse form of entertainment value, but it wasn’t what we were looking for, so we just dropped the failed experiments in order to go with the things that actually went well.
We rarely worried about why something did or didn’t work. It was mostly just simple good or bad reinforcement. I don’t think that we felt like we were turning into experts on anything. We did learn a lot of things, here and there, as we went.
We’ve figured out how to get good sites for free. There are ways for property owners to make money on the side if they feel like it, but some owners are happy to help us just for the sake of helping. I'm amazed by what we could get just by asking.
Our biggest development along the way has been in turning a lot of the promotional work over to locals who are willing to do it for free. They promote us much better than we could do it on our own.
Since we promote ourselves entirely through micro-targeting, we don't have to be widely known. The neighbors in our current town have no idea that we're musicians. Our kids tell their friends that we're house-flippers, which is actually true in a way..
We did have to think about the long-term future. Small-scale sporadic touring pays well since we're independent, but the shows could come to an end due to many reasons, so I wanted an exit-strategy. I also wanted to live in a bunch of new places.
We bought houses in places where houses are still cheap, in places that make good stops for interstate Airbnb travelers. We can live off the Airbnb income for now. Later on we can sell the houses, for what should be a good profit.
This is a long account, but the really long version of the live music experiments is in the book that I wrote about them. It’s now in limbo, and it isn’t likely to make much money anyway, but I’ve already had a few inquiries about the movie rights.
The movie contacts are connected to my mentor, who used to be my professor. He quit teaching when two of his books were turned into big-budget movies. He claims that the movie people love my book, even though I’m an outsider and a misfit.
Anyone here who has noticed me has probably noticed that I struggle with being me. The good news is that I really do feel OK. I still feel weird all of the time, and I still feel alone a lot of the time, but nobody’s perfect.
Emerson wrote on essay about something he called the law of compensation. One of his claims was that all problems include their own benefits. It's possible that I'm good at experimentation precisely because I'm abnormal.
Comments
All that study of marketing, and you didn't learn how to leave an Amazon link to your book?
Wow, sounds like fun and an adventure
So you made enough from shows to buy houses where you wanted to live and play music? Then when you move on, use the last house as an Airbnb?
Well played!
I would pay to see the movie :-)
The best hype is anti-hype
She's two steps ahead of me. I just want to buy your book Janie. Please don't make me beg.
this is rad
Cool story. Can't for the movie
You should self-publish the book and sell it via Amazon.
The best boring is anti-boring
You wrote...“By starting from scratch I partly mean that we lined up locations where live shows had never been done before, in places where it’s unlikely that anyone else had ever even considered the possibility. Once we had a few sites lined up the experiments started“
Great post. My big question is...can you give some details as to these unique locations?
Yeah, I was gonna ask about details of failed experiments/shows where they were nearly ran out of town, til I read the end about there being a book. Interesting post, would probably read the book.
Agreed!! Very clever!
Strange that there is no link to the book. Could this have been spam that accidently hit an interested target audience? Then again, no spam would be without a link to the product to be sold. Interesting story, and strange that there are no links.
You’ve given me a chilling version of the future where bots are this accurate and detailed when pinpointing interests.
Now that I re-read the OP, it’s saying a lot without really telling anything, like the first few chapters in a self-help book.
Agreed! Very interesting ideas though.
@Janie has been a member since 2014 though, so I think this thread is legit.
It is a movie, just close your eyes.
It is so real it doesn't really have to be.
Oh I agree. But you can definitely tell she/he has read a ton of business books like she said. Knows how to lure you in. I still wanna know about the fiasco failures; the con-men studying and potential of using those tactics interested me. If the book was available, I’d buy it right now.
We may be part of the con, but at least we’ve been informed of it in advance. And I think I agree “fooling people would be OK as long as we went ahead and gave them a good show”.
So let’s have it, where’s the show? ;-)
(Janie, I’m only poking fun at you because I’m jealous that you’ve clearly made off better than me with your music making exploits)
phase 1: Collect underpants
phase 3: Profit
The most interesting post on self promotion that I’ve heard in a long time. Funny how most folks won’t just try shit, too afraid of failure. It’s a brilliant approach, actually.