 Since the coronavirus hit and live income has been crossed out for many musicians, I keep seeing more and more people asking about how to do Patreon right. Now while this channel is mostly about how to build from zero to 10,000 fans, if you do already have a somewhat established fan base and sub-devoted fans who may support you, I find Patreon to be one of the ways that with minimal financial investment, you can get some income going while doing very minimal effort that really helps bonding with fans. While Patreon has been around for around seven years, as become a way many creators create steady income, musicians are often clueless on how to do it effectively. So in this video, I want to talk about how you do Patreon effectively. Hi, I'm Jesse Kennan, a music marketing nerd and record producer, mixing and mastering engineer, and this is Museformation. So when you look at a list of the top creators in music on Patreon, you see a lot of people doing different things. But I want to talk about what people who see themselves as musicians first are doing that is effective so that you can think about what you can do yourself there. One of the most important things for every creator is to have a $1 tier in order to allow fans to support you even if they don't have much money. Some acts like Circus Survive use this as a $12 per year access to a fan discord chatroom, since this costs nothing to do but gives an incentive to the fan more than just leaving a tip and allows their community to grow while getting some income. The main level most people target to get fans to invest at is the $5 a month level, which will often give first access to tickets, merch sale codes, early access to new songs and music videos. Upward tiers on Patreon are usually $10 to $25 and they give access to everything from stems, playthroughs, and depending on what an audience may respond to, as well as putting the names of the patrons in the credits of videos or an album. Some people with more rabid fan bases charge $50 to $200 to do custom messages or songs for fans. While these high priced items can feel off-putting, I do think at this day and age where musicians are horribly compensated for their work, the idea of allowing your more financially endowed fans to give you a good payday for a little effort can be very helpful. Really though the key to what you should do on Patreon is to look at what fans want more of. The group spirit box saw that fans really responded to their live stream chats, so when COVID hit they started a Patreon and put those live stream chats behind the paywall of Patreon. Look at what your fans want from you and figure out how to structure them in tiers. Everyone is still figuring out how to make this work. The last thing I will leave you with is an inside look at one of the best patrons I've seen, which is for the artist Kevin Devine. So I did this music business podcast for a lot of years with the co-host was Zack Sarillo. We were one of the first music business tech discussion podcasts and definitely the only one in the punk indie sphere when we started in 2014. He's managed groups like Brand New, Knucklepuck, and now works with artists like Cave Town and Chloe Moriondo, and of course, Kevin Devine. We decided to do a reunion episode recently and talk like we used to talk. One of the things we discussed in this recent reunion episode was the Patreon he runs for Kevin Devine. So to round off this short episode, I'm going to play the details on that so you can learn some really good lessons on how to run an amazing musician Patreon. I'm curious you had Patreon on here, I'm curious what your thoughts are on that. I very briefly very refer until from January 1st of 2015 to the day we shut this podcast down. I originally had a Patreon. That's right, you did. And I liked the model back then. I found it interesting back then and I paid for a Patreon for a podcast that I'm a fan of. As do I. But we decided to launch a Patreon for Kevin Devine right after Coronavirus. We kind of waited a few weeks and launched it on April 1st, and it's been a shocking success. We have like just under 500 patrons that pay between probably an average of 12, $13 a month, I would guess. And it's been an incredible project. It's kind of been, I mean, I tell Whitney the day-to-day manager I work with, it's been the most valuable thing we will do for any artist we work with this year because Kevin relies on touring, he has a child, he has a family, he doesn't live with his parents. We had to replace vast majority of someone's income into with notice and it's really work and we treat it very seriously. We have full branding for it, that's right, customize it. A designer Matt I work with has handled and we have this calendar where we do like, you know, every, oh yeah, we should say Jesse is involved in this too actually. I mix and master them, so I know the calendar very well, so I have to make time for it when they come in. Yeah, the first week of every month, Kevin does cover that he makes in his home of another artist. The second week of every month, Kevin does a rendition of one of his catalog songs and they're kind of acoustic-ish with sprinkles that Kevin's been getting a lot better over the years of working with me and also working with Jesse of kind of like doing light, just called like production ultimately, right Jesse? What I would call it is he's becoming a Bedford producer. Kevin is a young Bedford pop artist. He's printing them up, they're really good. It's not like they're just acoustic versions that he like recorded and spits them out. They're really thought out, he puts a lot of time into them and so those are the first two weeks of every month. The third is like a video address in Q&A and the fourth is like an Instagram private live stream and then we're like offering merch discounts or vinyl or stuff like that. And I think, I mean, it's fascinating to me, I think we're, I don't think we're ever going to get rid of this. I think this is the new model for Kevin to find. You know, I think like in the future, when God willing there's touring again, you'll only be able to get presale if you're part of the Patreon. Well, you know, we want to keep adding value, but I love it. I mean, it's really interesting if you have an artist that has a lot of meat on the bones. You know, I think it's really tough for bands to do it, because one, even if you make a lot of money, you're still splitting it up three to five ways, you know, and that's hard. But for like a kind of like solo singer or songwriter type artist, I think it's awesome, especially if you have like a longer career and treated by your seriously like this is Kevin's job now, you know, right now, like this is what makes sense for him to sink the most of his time into outside of making his next record that we're working on. But I found it really refreshing. It's been really like creative for me. And I really like it as a model. And I know some people like complain about the fees Patreon take, but I think they're very modest considering how much value without having much work. You know, the setup is so easy. It's crazy. But I mean, it is that thing that everybody complains about fees. But I mean, I think the biggest challenge with this, and you know, much like what we just discussed with YouTube is that artists have little imagination of how to do this. And like, you know, I've been seeing a few things like there's that artist, you know, spirit box. Yeah, I just looked at their Patreon that they started and they're doing some interesting things. And I think like, it is funny if this has brought out people finally learning how to do this a little bit better. But like, traditionally, there's a reason why like, while I think musicians have way more potential to have huge patriots, there's a reason podcasters are pretty much the top of it. Yeah. And that's a great model for that. Yeah. I mean, like, I think of what I pay for it, I'm sure what you pay for is I pay for that exclusive episode because I don't live without it. Bonus episode. Yeah. I should say I didn't talk about it before, but like I have this podcast coming out that I work on called killed by desk where we interview people who are no longer making their living from a band and they now have a day job about their day job and we talk to their coworkers. And it's very funny, but also informative. But we're doing that model along with a merch model because we have such amazing merch for it. And it works, but like there has been this thing that since musicians one, you know, their content speaks so much of them. You know, you put out a song that song most reverts part of your body of work. You can, a lot of people are very precious about that. And then to a lot of, for a lot of musicians, it doesn't give a lot of value to just shit out of remix or a thing like that for their fans. So it's been very hard to find what it is. But what you've done with Kevin really, really seems like it's been like an incredibly cool thing for his audience that I really like. Yeah. And it's invigorating. And his audience loves it. I mean, he's the type of artist that it fits so well for it too, right? Like it's very emotionally connected to you. You've probably grown up with him, right? Maybe you started listening to Kevin 16 and now you're 32 or something, right? Whatever. And it's like, and you probably have a little more money to spare, right? Because I mean, coronavirus not included because you're like a real human with a real dream. Yeah, it's really nice. And as a podcast listener, I really appreciate it too. I would pay for more of them. I pay for a couple like podcast memberships that aren't through Patreon. But there's always that you've talked about this a lot over time, but like, you know, it goes back to that like 1000 true fans thing, obviously, it's like, there's always some that are the extra fans. And I think for a long time before the last few years, people were kind of asking for extra money without really giving audience much in return, I think. But I think recently, that is more like younger people have become like the podcasters that are popular or the artists that are popular, like they have kind of changed up that model and are giving more what they would want. And yeah, I think it's a great model. If you're if you're willing to do it well, like the one thing with Kevin's to me, which is that like, we have to be so consistent, we have to have great branding, we need to be overly friendly. Every there's a discord for the Patreon and like every month I go in there, I go in there at the end of every month. And I'm like, how did we do this month? Anything we can do better? Anything you'd like to see, right? Like, I'm very important. I mean, it is Kevin's true income right now. You know, so it's like, we want to do the best job possible. And I am very interested in feedback and changing and adjusting all of it, you know, and it's a really awesome community. So it hasn't felt like terribly there. It's not like going and reading a Yelp review, you know? Yeah. And I think as with everything else, people will figure out that am I missing anything? Is there any other way you would have done this? I need to know your questions and what no one else is telling you since I want to answer them. So leave them in the comments, since I answer every comment in every post. I hope you liked this video and if you did, please like, subscribe, and get notified. And I'm going to be breaking down the concepts in this video along with how to promote your music and how to make songs you're happy with in the future. I have a Facebook group linked below that is only helpful information. No playlist or con artists, only artists having helpful discussions allowed. If you want to learn more about me, work on a record with me, or check out any of my books, podcasts, or anything else I do, go to jessecanon.com or at jessecanon.com on all the socials. One last thing, there's two playlists here. One is on how to grow your fan base from zero to 10,000 fans. And the other is on how you promote your music with Spotify. 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