 So a few weeks ago, I dropped my video that's a top line defining overview of how I see growing a fan base from zero fans to 10 thousands. And of the subjects I got into that peaked your years was the idea of a cheat code, meaning that there's certain promotion methods that do absolutely nothing in one genre, but in another genre, it is the entire game. And since that video, I've been flooded with messages to give people the cheat code for their genre. So since I'm not a con artist, what I like to do instead of keeping this information behind a paywall like some other YouTubers, I called my friends who are big managers or work at record labels, I asked them what they thought the cheat codes were and I pulled it all together with my experience. And well, you're about to watch what I found. So in this video, I'm going to explain a bunch of cheat codes in different music genres for blowing up your fan base. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to grow their fan base from zero to 10,000 fans. And this is Muse Formation. Okay, so I normally don't stoop to this level of saying something obvious, but after two years at this YouTube game, I can basically see the keyboard worriers or versions getting their fingers itchy, ready to type the comments that they tried something and it didn't work. So let me say this, what I did here is I talked to my friends who have broken tons of ours, not just one about what works regularly and in 2022, since they're all still working and doing relevant things, not some outdated method or something that worked one time as a fluke. I hit the people I know who are students of the game. I compiled their observations and put them against mine and wrote this script. Since I think when discussing something like this, focusing on the rules, not the exceptions is what's important. I wanted to get the cheat code that works consistently for ours to have good material. And this is important because I know some dork is going to be mad in the comments saying that they tried one of these methods, but here's the thing and it's the same thing I have with all these idiots who tell me how great Facebook ads are for building a fanbase. Measuring those techniques and whether they are successful or not is all about what you call success. For many people I know who say a technique didn't work like saying putting $2,000 into a radio campaign where they put all their eggs in that basket and when they're not bigger than Dua Lipa, they literally can't believe it because they think their song is the greatest thing on earth and then they have to go flow to every YouTube comment section saying that it's bullshit. Conversely, people tell me Facebook ads are working when they have 10,000 monthly listens on Spotify that they spend X amount of money on and if anyone I know who works and breaking artists got that little of a result, they'd be fired on the spot. Yet this keyboard warrior is bootlicking the money he gave to the worst boomer meme playground in the world. So I say all this to say this. If you know me in my videos, you know I work hard and vet them thoroughly through the industry and I get people to give me feedback and push back before I speak since I work hard to not be a fool online. While I would love to hear your experience, this video is from people who have had repeated results. Okay, on with the fun. This video is chapter so if you don't want to hear about a genre, feel free to skip ahead but I think learning from each one is actually important and let's be honest you have time. I know some of you have streamed someone unboxing a piece of gear before and you'll get a lot more insight watching this all the way through than any of the unboxing video you're going to watch and I actually discuss other genres in each section. So let's talk pop music first since it's the most popular genre of music and the most crowded genre because of that. And when we say pop music, what I mean by that since it's malleable is music that's trying to be in the top 40 charts. So let's talk about the cheat codes here. While it's not unheard of, what we are seeing unlike so many other genres is it's rare you hear a pop artist was made on building up the ranks through playlists or blogs as well if you buy a radio campaign for pop music and you don't already have a millions of monthly listeners you may as well set that money on fire since pop music is the most sought after radio real state is basically a corrupt bribery system and yes I know payola is illegal but as always corporations find the way to evade regulation and apparently you don't read the news as this is a story every day. So then what is the cheat code? Literally with few exceptions when you see the singers the producers and the writers who blow up in pop music it's because they work with tons of other songwriters producers or vocalists and eventually they get in an orbit of those who can open gates for them. I see absolutely demented comments in this channel about how this pop singer only got a record deal because they got in LA Reed's office and sang for them and it's like yeah dog that's the game a producer LA Reed respects said this person's good and because LA Reed trusts that producer he listened and saw they were talented that's how things work so yet again and I hate to sound like a broken record this is why doing the community work is so crucial and if you don't know what I mean by community work there's a link in the description to one of my most popular videos that people say is my most important video that you really should watch on how you build a community but the game in pop music really is building that community since while you should build an audience directly with fans pop music because it's the biggest audience by volume also only lets in those who come with a big audience because it's a buyer's market so what the cheat code to get around that is to do clubs and work with others since this is what gets you a break and that could come from work with someone on a popular song that blows up or getting in the room with someone who takes a liking to you when they see how talented you are but the key is is to start small with your collaborations and as you become more successful you get to get in the room with bigger people and you should be working it up by getting in the room with as many people as possible to enable that to happen and learning from the people you collaborate with okay but next is hip-hop and while you could argue it's the most popular mainstream genre and maybe even more flooded than pop music because I sure as hell wouldn't argue against that but despite that it has entirely different cheat codes. Many of the artists who break are discovered by producers who understand how to produce great beats and vocal performances and understand the flavor of what's happening in the genre today those producers in turn have the ears of A&R today and send them the best tracks they make but let's be honest about the game in hip-hop it's mostly about the vocalist performance so those producers in turn are the people who know how to coach someone and edit them to have a good performance so it goes hand in hand so when they find someone talented they are good at delivering a pipeline to the A&R that is consistent as well paying for radio promo or publicists is money set on fire aside from if you make music that's going to appeal to strictly backpack rap college kids or whatever we're calling the nerds who listen to positive hip-hop the market is too flooded to get through it a big way on radio but ironically this is a genre where some djs and taste makers still act as influencers who listen to the underground artists and if one picks you up you can see a massive launch in playlist pickups but if you're a self-produced artist and want to go the DIY route working playlists and small influencers are who the bigger djs and playlist curators watch and it's a pipeline that's worked for tons of artists as all the big curators of huge playlists are actually just watching smaller playlists and that is how you see some of these playlists djs and influencers pick people out of obscurity and how they rise up through the ranks and unlike the genre we're about to discuss touring before you've had an audience is probably the biggest waste of time of any genre so while waiting into metal hard rock and prog rock is a complicated world to wait into with so many micro genres having so many different rules there are some general rules that work across these genres like i'm positive some dude who smells like a sandwich he ate 10 days ago as it's still on his shirt will tell me how wrong i am in the cause but here's what me and my crew see here in this world today if you're an aspiring DIY artist having a publicist and doing all the things i tell you about consistent sustained promotion is crucial but i know a lot of you math breathers are like jesse what the hell a publicist got my premiere on metalboogereater.com and we only got 800 streams from the premiere cool bro here's the thing those 800 are the people in this scene who check out everyone in your micro genre who work at labels clubs and talk to other influential people all day but here's the facts this is still a genre that while it's increasingly online it's still the message boards of musician nerds who are talking about the sick playthrough or how brutal a mix is of a group that gets the first fans the publicist getting you a premiere on a blog gets you in front of the right ears of those people who will begin to tell everyone about you and more about why that's important in a second now unfortunately while this world is increasingly about online buzz playing the club's circuit touring is still a big deal as this is a scene based around a bunch of insufferable nerds telling each other what they know that the other one doesn't know so the cheat codes really are to engage an audience online and work with the publicist and take it on the road but how do you engage that audience truly this genre is one of those genres were spectacle is everything and what i mean by that is this is a world that is largely driven around conversations on forums and people talking about things and among friends telling a story of why this group is so sick and inception that story into a scene works in every genre but in metal i never cease to be amazed when there's a good gimmick or story of why an artist is exceptional it will turn heads attention to them and that artist will grow a fan base faster than everyone else and that's the cheat code but now let's get to the polar opposite world of that which is edm artists in the edm world actually come up tons of different ways but what i can tell you is that everyone in dance music bass spaces is so in on what i talked about recently on features collaborations and remixes are the number way these artists are growing even when my friends at indies and majors in this world sign artists earlier on in their journey they go all in on building them up by strategically building them up with these collaborations as it will grow their fan base faster than anything else and if you don't know what i mean head to the description and watch my video on this but as i'm sure you guessed there's more to it than this edm is a weird world when it comes to live music since the real big trick unlike any other genre is to try to build a live presence at a particular night in a city and maybe a handful of venues at most and then eventually with presence in your community you get offers to take your show on the road but running out and touring blindly is a full-on suckers game as it's trying to pay for radio or video promotion when you aren't already established as it is a way too crowded genre and radio airplay is not where this community lives instead what works is working your consistent sustained promotion working playlists and constantly keeping an eye on your community inviting others to do collaborations features and remixes and expanding your audience through them and as your numbers grow you can get connected to bigger and bigger artists and grow through that as well as placements on bigger playlists and hopefully invites to DJ bigger and bigger nights the last two genres are kind of the wild cards of this all so in the world of indie punk DIY music yet again different micro genres can be totally different but like metal the publicity you get covered on websites that are the right people to listen to and touring is the ingredient that really helps you spread the big difference in this genre is that for some parts of it radio promotion could be huge as this is what's still played on college campuses and can be a small investment that gets a big return on investment and the same goes for video promotion but yet again what i really see working here more than any other genre since collaborations are less common is doing your community work and finding the artists who are like you and aspiring and teaming up the trade shows and put it on each other on each other's shows artist playlists and interact with each other online the people who follow this genre are the early adopters who lift artist they love up and they are watching with hawk's eyes every single band in their community and can find bands with 200 monthly listeners and once everybody's talking about them there are 2 000 monthly fast and then 10 000 soon after but this comes from keeping these kids talking and reminded to build a relationship with you and that comes from consistent sustained promotion the last type of band i want to talk about is what i call live music based bands these are the ones who usually appeal to musicians or college-age musician nerds they're unlikely to put up huge numbers on streaming but their fans would never miss a show since they want to see them play live let's call these the jam bands the artists playing the loops or the really sick musician collectives who are the more musically agile among us who really have a command on their instrument while online forms are really where the word is spread about them going hard on playlists for the micro genres they exist and won't be as effective as usual so instead the key is to do franchise expansion type takeovers of your local area where you continually focus on cities with lots of college-age kids and concentrate on playing them regularly and doing diligent flyering for those events as what you want to do is one city at a time and create the illusion that everyone should know who you are in that city by having your name everywhere putting up all those flyers stickers and playing regularly is what gets you there and you can inception your way into having kids think that they have to know who you are by being talked about all the time around a college campus this is what happens when you market to the kids who are most bored you know the ones who are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to school and they'll look you up at that age and when they're most susceptible and try to know who you are because they're at the biggest peak of trying to fit in in their life and they'll never miss your show because it'll be the event around their social life but the mistake so many of these bands do is rushing out and touring the whole country and playing to 18 people a night instead of slowly expanding from city to city and trying to build up slowly locally with weekend jaunts until you have to tour to reach all the city as your buzz starts to build but here's the cheat code for all of these genres all the things I talked about can help you build up with the work you do every day with consistent sustained promotion appealing to algorithms and working on building your community gets fans to notice you and in your fan base there's countless people who will tell other people about you and in turn grow your fan base if you're doing something exceptional it's going to spread if you do that work so while you can pursue those cheat codes if you do the work I always talk about on this channel and people really find your music to be some of the best in the genre all is going to work out cheat code or not the real cheat code is to pursue your genres cheat codes while also talking to fans directly and getting that work done as when you do both at once that is what actually really fuels growth also if you'd like me to make videos where I go longer on each of these drivers drop a request in the comments okay that's it on this channel this is the type of stuff we discuss so if you're interested in that you should definitely like subscribe and most of all get notified so you don't miss crucial videos I post for helping you level up building a fan base