Why Everyone is Bad at Artist Development
(6 mins) And How to Discover an Artist Narrative
Artist development is a significant challenge for the music industry. Artists are critical to the future of recorded music and record labels, especially with the acceleration of AI and algorithms. In Billboard's recent R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players Edition, 28 of 49 individuals (57%) named artist development as the biggest issue facing the genre.
If you only have one minute, the core insight is summarized below:
"The most fundamental reason that even business people [artists, managers, and labels] underestimate the importance of sales [artist development] is the systematic effort to hide it at every level of every field in a world secretly driven by it." - Peter Thiel [Reed Matthews]
*The reality is that in 2024, artist development is hidden by more than just a systematic effort. Social algorithms do not surface it because it's traditionally not optimized for immediate attention or audience retention.
What Do Artists Actually Do?
Artists as Politicians
One of my strongest beliefs is that artists and labels rely on people who do not sell music to sell their music. This behavior perpetuates throughout the industry, and artists and professionals struggle to recognize their fundamental roles.
As Thiel explains, at every level and in every industry, sales are hidden. People who sell advertising are account executives; people who sell customers are business development; people who sell companies are investment bankers; and finally, people who sell themselves are politicians...
and artists.
The perceived romance around the title 'artist' hides us all from the reality that, inherently, artists must learn to sell themselves.
Imagine a politician running for president convincing themselves and their entire campaign team that they can achieve their goal without a social strategy, consistent content, and audience interactions.
Artists who want to build a legacy must do more than make great music. This is increasingly important as AI threatens to commoditize songs and in a world with infinite content and broadcast channels
How Do Artists Allocate Resources?
Fan Lifetime Value vs Fan Acquisition Cost
Actual artist development happens over years and includes multiple stages. Chartmetric, the most complete source for artist data, defines an artist's career in five stages: Developing, Mid-Level, Mainstream, Superstar, and Legendary.
Artists, but more realistically, songs, can occasionally skip stages with a viral moment. That said, artists in the advanced stages, even ones who have properly graduated into their stage, must leverage the same techniques used in early stages. Established artists no longer have the luxury of enduring mindshare. Look at the number of albums that flop from artists who believe their self-importance a little too much in a world flooded with competition for audience attention.
New artists can not afford to waste time or money. An unfamiliar audience will not convert for $80 concert tickets or $150 merchandise. Marquee marketing, which helps established artists advance stages and monetize an audience, is not responsible until the artist understands their narrative and how to target their audience. Unless a developing artist owns their means of production, their average audience lifetime value (CLV) will be much lower than their audience acquisition cost (CAC). The artist could risk the war of attrition to convert an unfamiliar audience over years, but they will likely run out of time, resources, and belief.
All artists can now leverage more affordable and quicker feedback loops to iterate and refine a narrative that resonates with their audience for either album releases or building a community. On average, producing a label-quality music video takes 4-6 weeks. In contrast, it takes 1-2 days to make truly high-quality social content. A unanimous truth in music is catalog compounds. That holds for social content, not just albums. The same goes for the knowledge an artist gains by releasing 25 social videos in the time needed to release one music video.
The initial feedback loop for developing artists and superstars should be as quick and frictionless as possible. Memes get millions of views because of their extremely short cycle times: people watch, feel something, and share with friends in seconds. No artist should skip this step. Superior sales and distribution can, by itself, create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation. At that point, marquee marketing moments have a great return on investment.
How to Build Artist Narrative
Like Acting, Artist Development Works Best When Hidden
Audiences increasingly reject manufactured artists and 'industry plants.' In an era of endless choice, it's harder for labels to force an artist onto people. How, then, do labels and professionals develop an artist with the full strength of their resources? Artists and labels must first discover a narrative that aligns with their audience. For example, youth culture is counter-culture mainly. It rejects the behavior of the previous generation. The perfectly staged Instagram aesthetic is tired; it feels inauthentic to Gen Z, who curate photo dumps, candid moments, and memes.
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Charli XCX and her team operated at an incredibly high-level to carefully curate Brat Summer, despite its deceptively low-fi appearance. Fred again.. planned his entire brand years ago, carefully curating a narrative of everyday moments, captured simply as selfies on a smartphone, that continue to define his artist brand.
Both are tremendous examples of artist development that hide in plain sight. They could identify their audiences and narratives through quick social loops* and leveraged superior distribution. At that point, their partners were able to use the full strength of their resources to create moments that took over global conversation.
Find, Don't Just Build, Your Audience
There are 5.35 billion internet users, over 2.4 billion active users on Instagram, and over 1 billion on TikTok. Artists do not need to invent new audiences that understand them. They already exist online; artists simply need to get in front of them.
Once an artist identifies their narrative through rapid feedback loops, it must begin to champion their identity. A great example is Dominic Fike, who was introduced to the industry as "Jack Johnson with face tattoos." It was such an easy and captivating story that it undoubtedly played a part in his $4M Columbia deal after just one EP. These stories help new people immediately understand and share with their friends. Artists become viral if their core narrative encourages fans to tell their friends.
With a narrative in hand, artists must now aggressively develop and place marquee marketing moments in front of new audiences. It’s not enough for the artist to share directly to their audience.
Develop your story, and then let the world tell it for you.
Conclusion:
Artists unknowingly sabotage their artist development because their peers are committed to misrepresenting and undervaluing their own artist development. Artists constantly wipe their social media profiles, share content exclusively through meme or fan pages, and/or fake their social and streaming numbers. Developing artists who try to recreate their strategies without considering all the hidden elements will inevitably fail.
Artists can not underestimate long-term planning in our short-term, immediate world.
"Look around. If you don't see any salespeople [any artist development], you're the salesperson." - Peter Thiel
Dedicated to every artist manager who had to live through Frank Ocean not having a social presence. (The fact he extensively shared his personal life on Tumblr is always omitted.)
This is my second essay on music strategy.
Next Release: 14 October 2024?
Thank you,
Reed
Chief Business Officer | Forward Studio
1 个月spicy! ??