{"id":983,"date":"2013-03-22T10:11:37","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T17:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/?p=983"},"modified":"2013-03-22T10:11:37","modified_gmt":"2013-03-22T17:11:37","slug":"finding-your-natural-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/finding-your-natural-audience\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Your Natural Audience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Songwriters, do you know\u00a0who your natural audience is<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

Your songs exist at a point within or outside the commercial mainstream. If they fall\u00a0in the mainstream<\/a>, they are similar to other songs, and are most likely to be embraced bya pop audience<\/strong>. If they hang out\u00a0on the fringes<\/a>, they are discernible from other songs, and are most likely to be noticed by\u00a0a niche audience<\/strong>. The pop audience is larger and more accepting, the niche audience smaller and more discriminating. Each has its pros and cons.<\/p>\n

Pop and niche artists are different animals:<\/p>\n

Pop<\/strong>: Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake, Kelly Clarkson, T-Pain, Gwen Stefani, Chris Brown.<\/p>\n

Niche<\/strong>: Nick Cave, Jonathan Richman, Polly Jean Harvey, Howe Gelb, Daniel Johnston, Robert Pollard.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re more likely to hear Taylor Swift at the shopping mall than you are\u00a0Howe Gelb<\/a>. Why? Swift sings of romantic disappointment and packages it for adolescent girls, who frequent malls in droves. Gelb sings about more arcane things, which are less relatable to shoppers. At the mall, Swift is going platinum while Gelb is going quietly. But Gelb, a rough-hewn, outsider songwriter in the Neil Young vein, is known to a certain audience, and has been known to that audience since before Swift was born.<\/p>\n

Each of these songwriters has enthusiastic fans. But their audiences are as different as Diet Coke and desert dust.<\/p>\n

\"identity<\/h3>\n

The Artist-Audience Mirror<\/h3>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be your mirror,<\/em><\/div>\n
reflect what you are,<\/em><\/div>\n
in case you don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/em><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
-The Velvet Underground<\/em><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n

An audience\u00a0responds\u00a0<\/strong>to a song when they\u00a0identify\u00a0<\/strong>with it. Something about the song \u2014 style, sound, point of view \u2014 resonates in them, rings a bell, causes them to remember and replay it. When an audience responds to your song, they are basicallymirroring<\/strong>\u00a0you, identifying you as\u00a0one of them<\/strong>. They are seeing things as you do, and valuing your song as you do.<\/p>\n

You are\u00a0giving voice to something the audience already feels and knows<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

And that can\u2019t be faked \u2014 you either reflect the audience or you don\u2019t. If you reflect the audience, your songs might, if you\u2019re lucky, play as background for some of their thoughts and dreams.<\/p>\n

It might look like it\u2019s just you in the mirror. But your natural audience is there, too.<\/p>\n

Connecting with Your Natural Audience<\/h3>\n

Artists sometimes try to\u00a0reach out to everyone<\/strong>\u00a0with their marketing. It makes sense at first \u2014 why limit yourself, after all, to engaging a particular group? Why not introduce yourself to sparkly tweens and college professors and stockbrokers and pizza delivery guys all at once? It\u2019s better to have \u201cmore balls in the drum,\u201d right?\u00a0Wrong<\/strong>. Your music career is\u00a0not the lottery<\/strong>. The less you focus on a particular segment of your audience, the less those people feel you\u2019re talking to them, and the less they identify with you and your music. \u00a0When you try to talk to everyone, you\u2019re actually\u00a0not speaking directly to anyone<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

To connect with your natural audience, set aside your preconceived notions and think for a moment about\u00a0who you are<\/a>. Ask yourself:\u00a0What do I write about? Who is interested in those things? Who are my favorite artists, and which artists do people think I sound like? Who listens to those artists?<\/em>\u00a0The answers to those questions will produce a surprisingly accurate sketch of your ideal fan.<\/p>\n

That person is living in your town, in the next town over, and on the web. Find them\u00a0and introduce yourself.\u00a0And then find their friends<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Via Music Think Tank<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Songwriters, do you know\u00a0who your natural audience is? Your songs exist at a point within or outside the commercial mainstream. If they fall\u00a0in the mainstream, they are similar to other songs, and are most likely to be embraced bya pop audience. If they hang out\u00a0on the fringes, they are discernible from other songs, and are most likely to be noticed by\u00a0a niche audience. The pop audience is larger and more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[223],"class_list":["post-983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-tips","tag-marketing-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=983"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":986,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions\/986"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}