 Ever since I released my video on why Facebook ads are the biggest lie sold to musicians by the con artists looking to profit off of them, I've been asked, But what in the hell works? What gives, man? I'm trying to board my Spotify in 2021. And while I did a quick explanation in the video about how to build a fanbase the right way, I clearly wasn't explicit enough. Since in the comments it was like Karenfest 2020 with how many people were trying to speak to the manager. And that's my bad. Since I tried to not make YouTube videos on music marketing strategy that Rylaville Television shows in length. So in this video, I'm going to tell you exactly how to build a fanbase without buying Facebook ads. I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to grow their fanbase from 0 to 10,000 fans. And this is Muse Formation. So before we get started with the fun, it should go without saying that you're probably going to enjoy this video a lot more if you've watched my video on why Facebook ads are the biggest lie sold to musicians. And if you haven't watched that video, I highly suggest you do. It's linked now or in the description. And while some people got really mad about that video, a lot of others found it to be exactly what they're experiencing. And whether that applies to you or not, we're going to talk about how to build a fanbase without giving your money to this questionably human creature we refer to as Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, my dude looks less like a human than when ET dressed up in that wig. Now so everyone can listen to this video without getting angry. I don't actually care if you buy Facebook ads for your music. If that makes you happy, great. But what makes me happy is sharing my truth. And my truth is I find for nearly every artist spending their budget on music production, music videos, photos, and other creative promotions. That's what works far more effectively than burning that budget on Facebook ads. My experience with this comes from my work for well over a decade. I've watched help and documented how artists actually blow up. And for those of you who don't know my background, I worked for years onboarding artists after they joined one of the major labels and would hear their stories and their stories all correspond to what I'm going to lay out here. As well, I wrote the book that is taught in a dozen universities on how to build a fanbase and have managed and produced and marketed tons of successful groups, which I should mention the 2021 version of that book is in fine stores everywhere. Cha-ching. When I'm talking about this, I am not speaking as someone who did this once and has a technique and made a YouTube video. I'm speaking as a person who's been studying it for two decades with the biggest artists in music and their way up the ladder. I should also say this video is a table of contents since I have videos that expand on every single one of the points I'm about to make. At the end of this video, one of the suggested playlists will be called How to Build a Fanbase Without Facebook Ads. If you want to learn more on any of the subjects that I'm going to talk about, click that or the link in the description to access that playlist. Anyway, enough about me. Let's talk about what you need to do. The first thing we have to do is acknowledge that this is going to most likely take at least nine to 18 months and it won't happen with just releasing one banger. And if in the past, you've given up because you got depressed when you post that you're banger and it doesn't become as big as driver's license and now you're as sad as she is in that song. I will tell you straight up, you're being unrealistic and you need to realize for 99.99999999% of artists, this takes time of putting work in each day. So what does that work look like? First, the most effective way you grow a fanbase is to appeal to the algorithms as well as people's attention span with consistent sustained promotion. This means recording a bunch of music and making videos and having them on hand so you're months ahead and releasing music in a calculated way just like your favorite artists do and actually have a plan of how you keep people's attention for all those months instead of posting for two weeks and disappearing for two months like everyone else. So I implore you to release a song every six to eight weeks and to promote it by first releasing a single screen video as well as an audio stream on Spotify, Apple Music, etc. Then two weeks later, a lyric video or a visualizer. Then two weeks after that, a music video and then if the song is doing better than your previous material, make an alternate version that recontextualizes it so you can keep promoting it. This is because this appeals to the way algorithms work and yes, suddenly you need to make robots happy to help your music and that's the breaks. And I look forward to a bad science fiction movie on this subject any day now. So what this does is twofold. It makes both Spotify and YouTube's algorithms happy, but it also appeals to the way people's attention spans work. This is important since Spotify offers the number one chance you have for your music to see explosive growth if their editorial or algorithmic playlists work well for you. And YouTube is the second biggest music discovery vehicle and offers similar opportunities. And let's remember what makes YouTube happy is consistent videos which also means posting stories behind the scenes videos and ones about your personality since that's what its algorithm wants. And if you play ball, they will help blow you up. If you want to learn more about this, my release strategy is in the video linked on the screen now or in the description below goes into depth on this if you want more information. Now you may have heard me or most of the other people who do music education talk about how to build a fan base who have actually done it say instead of spending money on ads, you should be spending it on quote unquote creative, which in the business really means music videos photos to tell stories around or clever marketing campaigns. The common wisdom in the business among labels and marketers is that you generally will spend 50 to 80% of your budget on that. I should note that this budget is for promotions not actually recording the song, which is budgeted totally separately. And this is because what all of us see is that putting the money to good content and then doing outreach on it is what works. And if you're wondering what outreach is, it's sometimes ads, but more often than not publicity and marketing, but I will get into that a little later. But there's a handful of mutual benefits to this technique. And then when you are releasing all this content, it gives you eventful items to post about get shared and continues to increase the chances you will get attention from someone who will open a gate for you and expose you to a larger audience. This is important since it keeps you constantly on the mind of fans and they remember to talk to their friends, which grows your fan base, as well as appealing to the Spotify and YouTube algorithms. And remember, the people who stay on top of mind and look like they are making moves or who people think of for opportunities like playlists, concerts, and other partnerships. This is why investing in content instead of Facebook ads is crucial since every bit of money you're spending on Facebook ads can be put into making the content more effective that can get more people to notice you and see that you're someone they should be paying attention to. And while I've diverged off topic a bit, I want you to remember the other key here is keeping Spotify happy is one of the things that takes the least amount of effort that can give you the biggest opportunities for spending barely any time on. And if you want to know every single thing you should do to promote yourself on Spotify, I have a playlist that tells you it all in under an hour, which is linked on the screen now or in the description below. And the same goes for YouTube. There's a whole playlist down in that description where I detail all this thoroughly so you can do all of it right. The second part of this is defining and reaching out to your community. Now one of my videos that people say is one of my most important videos on how to find community is linked on the screen now or in the description below. But the short of it is that you need to identify other artists who sound similar to you both with very few fans, a few thousand fans, and absolutely humongous artists. This is because we will use them to target and find the influential fans, message boards, blogs, and playlists that write about your flavor of music. And this is how you find the smaller movers and shakers in your community who influence the bigger people who are watching this. And let me just say this, the biggest mistake people who think Facebook ads are so great make is they see these big engagement numbers from Facebook ads and get wowed but then realize those never turn to lasting listeners. Whereas when you invest in community and do the right things of getting that community's eye, the numbers are more sustainable as you're reaching the most passionate fans of a genre and that's exactly the reason I find the community stuff so important as it gets you to the right people. As I said in my video where I talked about why I hate Facebook ads, is Facebook ads bring you to the worst music listeners possible. The people who click ads are not the passionate music listeners or the movers and the shakers in your particular scene. When you're on the message boards, the discord chats, the Facebook groups, the subreddits around your microgenre, you're getting eyes from the people who are the most passionate in the genre and will boost your initial listening numbers but also the people who talk to others about this music and spread the word about it. Straight up. All fans are not created equal and this technique it gets you to do exactly the right ones. Especially if you have very few fans at first and need to find those first few who aren't your family and friends, this is crucial as the people you will meet in the community finding stage are the ones who will boost you up as you can find the most enthusiastic people towards your microgenre. If you've been stumped on how to get some fire under your early promotions, this is the work you need to be doing. So once you've found this community you belong in, you will start to discover artists that can help your promotions and as I describe in my Spotify artist playlist promotion video, you can put these artists on these playlists and tag them on social media and begin to get intertwined with them on social media and within the algorithms as you create a web that connects you to them and their followers within the algorithm. You can also do what I describe in my Instagram promotion videos and go live with the artists you meet through your community and play each other's music for each other's followers and get to know each other. You can also collaborate with these artists on songs as that teaches the algorithm you're intertwined with the other artists like nothing else can and gives you an easy roadmap to your music to get discovered as the artist you work with do well. I know a lot of you like real world examples and one for this community thing is this article about the artist Polini and how he built his audience this way is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. So now we need to talk about stories and why they are so important. So at the heart of the debate of whether you should spend your budget on Facebook ads or not is often left out of the discussion on whether or not they are effective or not. Now I have made my argument about that before but I will offer an irrefutable argument here. Telling effective stories on social media costs no money pretty much and is one of the most effective ways to make your music and presence spread as well as bonding you to your fans. I have a whole playlist if you want to become a master at this down in the description but I find this is what really makes real fans not the passive unengaged ones everyone complains about that Facebook ads bring you. The fact is when people say that social media doesn't work for them nearly every time I can point to that they are talking at people instead of telling stories to bond with them. So get learned on that by clicking on this playlist. So lastly I mentioned before that you're often going to put 50 to 80 percent of your budget into creative but where does the rest of it go? Well more often than not that's publicity and marketing since obviously you need to get people to see great content and release an algorithms don't always pick up everything but no matter who the artist is I would always spend money on a good publicist over Facebook ads since as I talked about before they get you in front of the right eyes and in community instead of the worst fans possible which Facebook ads bring you to. I really do find that oftentimes people spend the money on Facebook ads even though they know a publicist would be better but they have no idea where to start with that and it's way easier to just click the button on Facebook but this is a complicated subject and I have a video linked below if you want to learn more about hiring a publicist and how it can be done effectively. So here's the actionable things you do to build a fan base without Facebook ads. Build content every day to stay on top of mind and continue to get attention and appeal the algorithm since they give you huge opportunities like they've never been known before in music. Build community send out messages to the people on message boards you're participating on reach out to other artists for collaborations and talk and become friends. Put artists in your community on playlists and tag them and invite them to do an Instagram live or a twitch and go live talk about music and introduce each other to each other's audience. Tell stories around your music that literally is the difference in social media working or not working. Okay so I hope this is a little more clear and if you're like damn bro you just really breeze by that point really fast. The playlist coming up on the screen right now on how to build a fan base without Facebook ads has videos that explode every single one of the ideas I talked about here and I highly recommend you watch that and let me say this loud and clear. Smash that notify and subscribe button like it's mic the situation with some grenades on spring break dawg. As well if something isn't clear feel free to comment. I love talking about this stuff. Now click this playlist and more or head to the description and click on one of those playlists. Thanks for watching.