Successful Musician Podcast Episode 55
Interviewee: Ryan Waczek
Interviewer: Jason Tonioli
Jason Tonioli:
Welcome to the podcast. Today, my special guest is Ryan Waczek. He is a multi-talented musician that’s done some amazing songs out there. I know you’ve done a lot of sync placement. You’ve done TV stuff, film stuff. It’s fun to see some of the projects you’ve been able to do over your career. What intrigues me most is you are one of those rare musicians that is also a marketer brain. That does not happen all that often. You’ve got a whole team now that’s helping independent artists be successful with their playlists and just getting their music out there. I know you’ve done a lot of advertising stuff. You’ve got some great resources. I know I’ve dived into myself talking about Spotify ads, Facebook ads. There are a gazillion different types of ads. Everybody wants to take money from artists, obviously. I love that you’re just asking questions, what works, and then trying to share that with people. I commend you for that. Welcome to the show and I’m excited to chat with you more.
Ryan Waczek:
Thanks, Jason. Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to dive into all this nerdy stuff. I feel like I’m a marketing nerd with the marketing, but marketing is also super creative. At least that’s how my brain figures it all out as a musician, being a songwriter. Like you said, I went to school for classical music and did orchestration. I thought I was going to be a film composer and the next Hans Zimmer. That was my dream, to learn production and all that stuff.
Jason Tonioli:
I’ve been there.
Ryan Waczek:
Yeah, but with marketing, especially with social media and content in this new music business where content drives a lot of the attention, drives a lot of the traffic to our music, whether it’s paid ads, which is still content, or we always talk about the organic algorithm. That’s super creative, and it all comes back to the message that you want to share with your music. That’s very natural for us songwriters when we’re writing a song where we want to tell some story, we want to tell some truth about ourselves, or maybe something that’s hard to say but easier to sing, then that same muscle needs to come out with marketing, too, for musicians. That’s what’s been really fun for me, especially working with other artists and trying to figure out what is the vibe and the feel and the message that your music brand is trying to just really inspire others and be that voice for others, because a true fan is when they listen to your music and they understand something about themselves, right? And they see themselves in your songs. That’s really all it comes down to. A lot of musicians, I think, are afraid that it’s more complicated than that but it really is just nailing down, how do you want to impact people? Let’s figure out the best way to do that. That’s really what I love about marketing and of course, there’s the tech side to all of that. It makes it a little more complicated, but the tech can be overcome fairly easily. Yeah, that’s what I love. For sure.
Jason Tonioli:
I think this show is made up of a lot of people who are musicians that are listening. I think it’s always important to understand where somebody’s background is. You said you came up through that classical, you thought you’d be Hans Zimmer. Talk a little bit more about how growing up, did you intend to be a musician, and that was what the goal was? Just talk about that journey of when you were younger, so they can go back to where you came from.
Ryan Waczek:
Absolutely. Like many of us, and probably many listening, I grew up listening to my dad play music. He’s a music teacher. Growing up, watching him play, learning guitar in the home, singing, just growing up at church. That’s how I got my just musical exposure. Then growing up, eventually, you have to decide, what am I going to study? What am I going to choose as a degree in college? I chose music. I think that conversation was a little easier because my dad got his degree in music. He went on to be a music educator. I wanted to be in a band. I wanted to play rock and roll. The closest thing to just getting on the tour bus and just going for it was, let’s get a little more educated in music theory. I got my B. A. in Music Performance. I chose drums as my instrument, which is pretty legit, classical drums. I also did jazz emphasis to get a little bit of drum kit action in.
When I was getting my music degree, it was basically a music history with music theory degree, and then there’s a performance element. I was basically taking history classes, taking music theory classes on all the different eras. Once I graduated, I discovered, once I wanted to record my music, get it out there, how do I get people to listen? There’s a huge gap in the marketing element, in my music degree, at least. The more traditional academic degree didn’t teach me a single thing about business, didn’t teach me a single thing about marketing. I had no clue how to get my EP out there. I had no clue how to get my single in the hands of people, right?
After college, I took my music degree and applied to Starbucks. And that’s what I did. I was a barista at Starbucks, and I also just worked on the side doing video editing, which I just picked up on my own on YouTube because I already had the software for my music videos. I was like, let’s just find some jobs to edit. I edited at a surgery center, cutting up the footage of the surgeries and that’s what I was doing to make money because I couldn’t really connect my music degree with income, especially because if you go to a traditional university, you get a traditional music degree, really what they set you up for is to get your master’s and then your PhD in music, maybe musicology or ethnomusicology or something, become a professor or an author one day but I wanted to play, and I loved being in the studio, and I wanted more of that, just that hands-on music creation lifestyle.
Marketing was really the missing piece, and it wasn’t until… I was bouncing around from job to job. It wasn’t until I got this job at a shoe company where they were very new. It was an online e-commerce shoe company, and they needed help with all kinds of stuff because it was a small team. They needed help with their Squarespace website. They needed help with Instagram and their mailing list. This guy was a huge break for me. This guy was at my church. He was like, hey, you built a website for your music. We need a website for our company. We need your help. You’re hired. As I was there, doing a lot of the… It would be in the category of branding and social presence and online presence. As I dug in a little bit more working there, I got a marketing education, learned about SEO (search engine optimization), learned how to manage a mailing list, learned how to create automation sequences for new subscribers and how to nurture them, and eventually shared products and set up an e-commerce store.
All of the same things that musicians actually do. It’s just not in the context of leather shoes. It’s in the context of your music brand and the message that you’re trying to spread as a musician. There’s a surprising amount of overlap, especially with all the tech and so it was around that time I started my blog and my YouTube channel, which eventually became the Indie Music Academy and a lot of the videos that I make on the YouTube channel, you guys can check it out right now.
The Indie Music Academy is really dedicated towards demystifying all of the marketing that businesses need to do and as solo entrepreneurs. Musicians need to understand these business principles as well. It can be a little challenging and so my mission is just to simplify it, translate some of that marketing speak into something a little more friendly for us musicians. That’s what the website and the blog and the YouTube channel is all about.
Jason Tonioli:
Very cool. I think as you dive into that marketing world, my path, I think, is similar where I dropped out of music. Actually, it’s different because I dropped out of the music program on the second day of going to university. Then I walked over to the business building and switched to a marketing degree. I went and bought the orchestration book that I wanted to learn. I wanted to take a class on orchestration to be able to be the Hans Zimmer, I guess, the next Hans Zimmer, and started studying it on my own after I’d been told that I’d have to wait three years before I’d be ready to go and learn how to do orchestration music from somebody who I really, frankly, wasn’t all that blown away with in their skill set. I’m sure they knew a bunch, and I was a dumb kid, obviously, at the time but it’s interesting to look back and be like. That probably was one of the best decisions I ever made, is to walk over and learn marketing for my music because I know, and I love your take on this, if you’ve felt hundreds of independent musicians and people with your videos online.
Most of the time, I think these indie musicians have a lot of the same problems. You’re a perfect example of where somebody goes to school to learn drums, classical drums. Like, really? If you want to just step back and be like, okay, how is that going to turn into a career where you’re going to make money? Your comment about, I didn’t know how to do business. I didn’t know how to do the marketing. That’s great. You got a bachelor’s degree, but now what? I’m sure when you graduated, were you just, Great, I got a diploma, yay. Now what do I call myself, right? Is that where you were at, obviously?
Ryan Waczek:
That’s pretty much where I was at. A music degree is really what you make of it. It’s like you either take the time to practice or you don’t. You retain and you memorize the music theory, or you just study enough to pass the test, and it’s just all just out of your brain. Thankfully, I always naturally did pretty well in orchestration and music theory because I think it just naturally interests me. I knew that I needed to be a great composer, and it served me well. I still did film composing after graduating. I won a couple of Emmys. I’m nominated for another one this year and so all of that’s been really good. I feel like because I’ve retained it, but that It doesn’t replace the need for getting that gig or for getting the audience, the captive audience, if you want to release a single, if you want to record that album. The huge challenge is like, okay, you have the musical skills, but do you have the captive audience who’s going to consume that creation, that art that you’re making for them?
When it comes down to it, we’re talking about building a career in music or building a career as a songwriter. 13:04 There’s a difference between having a catalog and no fans versus having the fan base waiting for your catalog. In one scenario, you’re very rich in music, but very poor in finances if you don’t have the audience. Whereas if you flip it around and you understand a few things about audience building, and really, it only takes a couple of really solid pieces of content or a couple of really great marketing plans executed to grow your audience. Then you do have that captive group of fans who are ready to consume everything that you come out with.
What I’m describing really is like a chicken and egg situation where it’s like, what do you start working on first? Do you start working on the music but then have no one to release it to, which I think is what a lot of artists default to, right? But then how do I grow my audience without anything to show for it? The impossible answer is that you can’t really choose what to do first. You just have to dedicate some time to both, right? That’s why I always come back, hopefully convincing the listeners and viewers that you’re a creative person, and marketing is creative also. That same bone that’s inside of you to write music, to write lyrics, to tell some story. That’s the same bone inside of you that can create a marketing plan as well. It just takes a little bit of structure. It just takes a little bit of planning. Maybe you’ve never thought of a marketing plan before. 14:43 Maybe you’ve never spent 10 seconds thinking about it, but if you do just invest that time, trust me, it’s actually really fun. It’s the same muscle that’s already inside of you and I really believe that musicians can all become good enough marketers to at least honestly and authentically market themselves because you don’t have to think of some majestic marketing plan for some other brand that you don’t really care about. We’re not asking our musicians to become professional marketers in a professional scenario. You just need to care about your own brand enough to spend some time, spend some planning, and really do something that’s going to benefit you in the long run in a great way.
Jason Tonioli:
There’s some gold right there you just dropped. I can’t tell you how many musicians I know who have that half dozen songs or so that they created. They put their heart into it, and they put them out on Spotify. They’ve done a music video maybe of it, but they may or may not have a website. They may or may not be doing anything with social media, whether that’s Facebook, Instagram, all these other platforms. What advice or what mistakes do you see about these newer artists? They all want to be the artist that has the 100 plus songs out there and followers, but what mistakes do you see? What advice would you give those newbie artists that really have great stuff, but just haven’t… They need the kick in the butt to do something to get their name out there. What advice do you give to that person?
Ryan Waczek:
That’s a great question. I think the most common thing that I see, especially, and we’re not talking about a total beginner, we’re talking about someone who has released some music, who has been in the studio, they have maybe a handful of songs out, maybe five, six songs out, right? By that time, if you’re releasing song after song, your catalog is growing, but your fan base isn’t growing, something’s missing. Something to remember, if you’re listening to this, you write anything down, 17:04 you should be growing your fan base through the music creation process, not after. That’s a huge mistake. I’ve made this mistake, too. This really is just something to put a post note on your computer screen or just remind yourself that you should not compartmentalize your creation and then your promotion. It doesn’t work that way anymore, especially with social media. People want to see the process evolve. People care about the story as it’s happening. If you are making content or you’re trying to promote something that’s already over, it’s already ended, and you’re just ordering people, my music’s out. Listen to it. Or, hey, my CD is printed. Buy it. That’s really not the type of marketing that works. Arguably, it never works, but it definitely doesn’t work anymore because marketing is emotional, its story driven. As musicians, this is what it ultimately needs to look like.
18:11 If you are creating a song, share the process of you creating the song, leading up to ultimate launch and release and the party that you’re going to throw once you’ve accomplished this long thing that people have been following your journey through. That’s what marketing is nowadays and so it’s not, I’m going to be in my artistic cave working in logic or pro tools, and I’m going to all of a sudden have a perfect marketing plan once it’s done. It’s not compartmentalized like that. It’s all one fluid thing whereas you’re creating, the word that I like to use is, 18:51 as you’re creating the hooks for your song, think of the social media hooks that are going to describe what’s happening inside of you. How can you draw people into the story of you as an artistic person, but also the story of the song. That’s not something that you can afford to just do later. It needs to happen in real-time through the songwriting process, through the production process. Honestly, it makes the mystery of social media a lot less mysterious, because if you are just sharing your process, you’re never going to wonder, what do I post today? Or how do I tell the story of something that’s already over? Can I re edit my old studio footage into a social media post? All of those questions are way too complicated, hard, and probably take too much time when instead, just invite people into your songwriting room, whatever corner of your bedroom or the desk that you have your lyrics at, or wherever you have your microphone set up to record your guitar, your piano. Just invite people into that space and figuratively, invite people into that head space while you’re creating and have your content flow out of that. I think that’s the thing that’s missing from a lot of musicians today.
Jason Tonioli:
As you’re saying this, I’m just thinking, there’s so many things I need to do better myself. I feel like I’m getting a coaching session by myself right now.
Ryan Waczek:
This is not to make anyone feel bad. This is really to give permission to maybe just, yeah, just loosen up a bit because the content doesn’t need to be perfect and the best performing pieces of content that… I do these content studies, especially for the paid community members who are asking these questions. 20:52 They’re asking, how should I make content? How can I optimize my content? Optimize is the wrong word. It’s really authentic content that does well. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It could be loose. It can be just in your existing space. Honestly, I’m living this out right now. I just moved home. This is a temporary office. Literally, there’s nothing in this room other than a bunch of scrap wood and a fake tree. That’s it. It’s totally fake, right? I just needed to throw something up against the Zoom wall for my Zoom sessions. Just inviting people into the space and just rolling with an imperfect look, honestly, is going to do way better on social media than a perfectly lit music video with a producer. I mean, that has its place as well, mostly on YouTube, I’d say, where people consume long-form music videos but on Instagram, people just want to see you, and they want to be brought into your creative process and invited into something that you’re unfolding over time.
Jason Tonioli:
As you’re talking about that, my son was just watching Spider-Man in the other room, and it just made me think of all the Stan Lee type of superhero characters, and those characters are the ones that were way more popular than Superman and Batman. I know there’s been several… You can go find lots of YouTube videos talking about how The Marvel characters were relatable, but it was because they had character flaws and problems, and they were human, just all of us. I think a lot of times as an artist, you think, oh, I have to be this superhuman or Superman type of character that has no flaws. The reality is, if you are that Superman character that nobody could relate to, there’s a reason why that character didn’t perform and have near the audience that all of these characters with all kinds of issues and problems.
23:05 As a music artist, I think that’s really important to remember and be willing to just be vulnerable and share in that process. If you have a messy room, it’s okay. So does probably 99% of the people watching your videos that care, like, oh, you just gave them permission to have a messy room or a messy desk or to not know the answers to everything. That’s going to be much more relatable than oh, my gosh, this person just whips out a song like that.
Elton John, I think, is one of those really talented people that you can just give him lyrics and he just comes up with stuff and you’re just like, Man, that’s… In some ways, I feel like he’s like the Superman we all wish we could be, but none of us are and so it makes it less relatable. So someday we can all be that talented, right?
Ryan Waczek:
I mean, songwriting takes work and if you’re self-producing, gosh, that’s a lot of work but hiding all of that work, I think, is a mistake nowadays, especially because social media is going to be one of the main mechanisms for driving the traffic to your finished product. That’s true, whether you’re running paid ads or not, right? Whether you’re trying to catch the algorithm or you’re trying to optimize a campaign, it’s where you’re Spotify. It all comes down to the fact that there needs to be some content there on those social media platforms and so hiding your creative process, not bringing people into the problems, I can’t finish this second verse, or I can’t decide on the production. Here’s what I have so far. Honestly, as a content consumer myself, I love watching music content, and I think I love just seeing people’s DAWs and singing their half-finished songs. When they’re muting instruments and showing, I think I’ll keep this. This is what I have so far. That’s just so raw but authentic. As a songwriter myself, I really relate to that, but I see in the comments as well, just non-musicians, regular fans, they’re just eating that up because they’re seeing the true creative process and they just love seeing almost like behind the scenes, except it’s not in documentary format anymore, like what we used to watch growing up. Now it’s almost like you’re creating a really easy multi-part documentary just on social media without any production budget needed. You’re just doing it all with your cell phone in your own space. It’s really a revolution as far as how people are going to learn about you as a creative person, learn about your songs that you’re creating, the distribution. This is obviously not on Spotify or Apple Music, but the knowledge distribution of people learning that you exist, it’s so accessible now because of social media if you just share the process.
Jason Tonioli:
Well, okay. I don’t usually ever go this direction, but I’ve got an example, I think that I can share. Actually, I’m going to point out several mistakes I’m probably making. I think it’ll be a really interesting conversation for people to listen to. I’d love for you to throw out any ideas, but actually last Friday, I had a concert in my studio. An hour and a half before the concert, I finished my newest book, essentially, with the first draft. It’s going to change, and there’ll be lots of edits, but I literally finished that, and I’m thinking, okay, I should have made some recording of like, Hey, guys, check this out. I just finished my book. Show the word document that shows, Here’s the numbers. I’ve got like 30-some songs listed on here with page numbers and celebrate that. There’s a piece of content as an example, but that same afternoon, my gal that helps me with my graphic design, right in time for the concert, she sent me 12 different covers for the new book as well. At the concert, I just printed it off and took it out with me, and then I just passed her out and said, hey, will you guys put a number on these and then vote? I’ve got 40 or so people or whatever that were disclosing to my little studio. They all voted on that, and I’m thinking, okay, I really need to post that out on Facebook and all the platforms and have people vote. I’ve done that in the past. Just a tip for other artists, when I’ve posted, Here’s the idea for the cover art, I may not use any of those 12. This is the first round, but that gets more engagement in the fact that now they feel like they’re a little bit engaged in that process.
As I’m just talking out loud, okay, I’ve got half a dozen songs that have been shared only with the Song of the Month members. I have this little VIP club where I’ll share songs with them Once a month. I send at least one song out. They’re the only ones that have seen this. Now I’m thinking, okay, I really should take and share a couple of songs from the book. When I go to the studio, I should record these songs, and I should talk about the song, get some clips, and just slowly drip it out leading up to the launch of the book and then the recorded album. All these content pieces are huge. Then once it launches, if you release a single or something, I know this is your expertise is playlists. I guess just so musicians can see that as an example process, not all of them are going to do a full book like I just did, but talk a little bit about what opportunities do you see… I’ve mentioned several of them, but I’m just curious because I think a real-life scenario like this is easier for somebody to think, oh, I can do that thing that Ryan talked about.
Ryan Waczek:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, just to start out, whenever we talk about content or posting on Instagram or whatever it is, it all comes down to generating traffic. Even if you’re performing in a venue, a live in-person concert, that’s physical traffic. People are actually showing up to see you, hopefully And so you can think of it either eyeballs on the screen or eyeballs on the stage. You want to make some use of that traffic in order to call to action, get your fans to do something in order to build a deeper relationship. Nurture would be the correct word for that, right. Traffic needs to be generated in some way and there are a few categories for doing this. The example of you posting all of the different cover arts is a great way to see if you can get organic traffic for free from the Instagram algorithm, right? Either pushing it out to your existing followers or there are also these discovery modes on almost every app. TikTok has the ForYou page, Instagram has the Discover page, and YouTube has the YouTube homepage. All of these are discovery algorithms that will push content out to brand new people.
All you need to do is have a great idea, a relevant idea, just like what you said. I’m going to post all of these options. Hopefully, the post gets a lot of good engagement. People are commenting, I love this one, I love this one, and they’re liking it and maybe sending it to their buddy like, which one do you like? So that’s an example of a successful post because it’s sending these engagement signals to the social media platform that people are doing well or are engaging well with this post. Show this to more people. Then that’s how you get more traffic. Traffic is good because we can use traffic to build our brand awareness, to promote the things that we want to promote. Honestly, if you’re asking people to choose which cover art do you like the best, what you’re doing is you’re soft promoting something that’s coming in the future, right? You don’t have to just have it all come down to one post. You should promote things in different ways, from different angles. If you want to use my words, I call them hooks, right? You can have a video hook. How am I going to approach maybe promoting the same thing but maybe 12 different ways over the next 12 weeks and think of different video hooks for doing that? Another word for hook is you can just think, what’s just a great idea that’s interesting? What’s going to stop the scroll? What’s going to happen in the first 2-3 seconds, actually invite someone or maybe be interesting enough where they’re curious to watch the whole video. That’s what I mean by hook, just some great video idea that can help you get some free traffic using the organic algorithm.
Now, all of these principles, they also carry over to something called direct advertising. This is where we pay for the traffic. This is not using the organic algorithm anymore, but on Instagram and on Facebook, all these platforms, they have their ads option, their paid advertising. That’s another option, too, where you take that same video or a similar piece of content that has a great idea, a great video hook, the first two seconds of the video is engaging enough where they’re curious to watch the whole thing but instead of just relying on the organic algorithm to show it on the Discover page or the YouTube homepage or whatever it is, you just pay for the impression. It’s a little more reliable. Not all of us have budgets, but if you have budgets, that could be a great thing to do.
Then another category, all of this is for traffic, once again, if you mentioned playlisting. That’s in the category of influencer marketing, where someone out there has a playlist, someone out there has an audience that’s already captive. A playlist audience would be an example. If you get on that playlist, you’re borrowing their audience and you’re getting their traffic for your song. If you get on a Spotify playlist, that traffic is going to turn into streams because that type of traffic, instead of a view, it would be viewed on YouTube or on Instagram, but on Spotify, it’s going to be a listen, a stream. Playlisting is a really great use of influencer marketing that translates into people learning about your music, listening to your music. Another great part of it, too, is that your song is going to be placed next to other songs so you’re going to have that brand lift from being next to other artists. For example, I got my song in a playlist that had Selena Gomez right next to my name. It’s just maybe more subconscious than anything else, but that’s going to subtly influence the listener in a really cool way where your song is next to an A-lister, right? If the playlist is good and there’s a big asterisk there because there’s all these very terrible playlisting options. There are bot playlists, which I’m not sure if your listeners have heard of bots, but those are fake streams where a computer is just running up the numbers. No one is actually listening to your song. You don’t want to do that because not only will Spotify potentially take down your music and ban your account, take away streams, take away followers. All of that is bad. You want to make sure you’re doing legitimate marketing, which is why we help artists find legitimate curators. Even beyond that, we like to only use the top 1% of playlists on the entire Spotify platform. So, it really depends on who you work with as far as playlisting quality. I’d want to just make sure I’m clear. Not all playlists are playlists you want to get on. But a really great playlist with great artists, with real traffic, because remember, computers running up the numbers isn’t real traffic. We’re after the real thing. All that being said, Spotify Playlist is a great example of influencer marketing to get that traffic on your songs.
Jason Tonioli:
One of the things that we were talking about earlier, I know we’re running out of time here, but I love how you focused on each of these artists. They’re all these different things distracting us, and it’s overwhelming all the marketing and the softwares and the techno babble stuff that’s out there to confuse everybody. I love that you said, Look, there’s some key things that if the independent artist will just focus on these handful of things, building a list is going to be on that, probably the most important. It can be traffic you own versus traffic you’re paying Facebook or Spotify or whoever else for. I love how you just said, look, keep it simple. If you can focus on the simple things that matter, then you can grow into… Maybe eventually you can have a need for 10 different softwares to do all these but a lot of times I feel like, and I see this happen with myself, where you get all these softwares that they think is going to solve all your problems and the reality is you get a whole bunch of softwares and you never implement any of them, even 10% of what they’re capable of.
Ryan Waczek:
Tell me about it, Jason.
Jason Tonioli:
I was laughing the other day. One of my friends, there’s a group called AppSumo for anybody who really wants to nerd out on techno stuff. I think I bought like 80 different softwares on this appsumo tool of all these new and upcoming softwares and it’s just like, holy cow. The reality is I’ve probably used four or five of them, and I’ve been happy with what I’ve done but it’s one of those where I think it’s very easy to get excited with a shiny, call it shiny object syndrome, where you think this one thing is going to save all your world. Then the next thing you know, you’ve chased the squirrel down the hole, and you got distracted from the thing that actually mattered if you would have just stayed on the path.
Ryan Waczek:
Absolutely. This really brings the conversation down to what kind of website are you going to run? What Instagram are you going to run? There’s a fundamental difference between building a portfolio versus building something that actually engages and draws the fan in and has a purpose, takes them on a journey, to use the cliché word. Basically, you have either a static brand or an active brand and that’s the name of the platform that we launched. It’s called Activebrand.io. It’s the platform that you run your website, your email list, your storefront. You guys can check it out. The point is that no matter what software you use, if you’re creating just a portfolio where it’s all your songs, all your images, and if there’s nothing for people to chew into or to upgrade their experience beyond what they’re already getting on social media, then you’re really missing out on a huge opportunity, to like what you said, Jason, to own your audience, right? There’s a difference between having a thousand or 10,000 Instagram followers and then having a thousand or 10,000 email list subscribers, right?
Jason Tonioli:
Who actually opened your emails is the other piece that you got to layer on top of that, too, right?
Ryan Waczek:
Exactly. Who actually opened your emails, right? And here’s the main difference, because a follower on Instagram, the number is there and it feels good, but they might not get fed any of your posts. Whereas if you send an email to an email subscriber, first of all, they’re a lot more purposeful in their relationship, right? They decided to subscribe. They went through a few steps. It’s more than just a button click. They shared their contact information with you. You’ve created a connection and they’ve also, if they’re still a subscriber, they’ve decided not to unsubscribe because a subscriber can just hit that unsubscribe button at any time, which is not a bad thing. It’s just the natural refinement of your audience. The people who like you stay. If it’s not for them, they leave.
Unsubscribes are not a bad thing at all. If you have a subscriber, you know for a fact that once you hit send, that email is landing in their inbox. Even if they don’t open it, actually, Jason, I think it’s still a win. If they see your name in their inbox, and maybe they’re busy today, maybe they have 100,000 unread emails, and that’s just their style. Look, there’s another one that I’ll skip. There’s at least 100 % guaranteed brand awareness with emails. Then if they do decide to open, then you’re sharing your message. All you have to do is just write an email just like you’re writing an email to a friend. It does not have to have fancy images. You don’t have to use templates. All of my emails are just plain text. I just make sure it’s a font size that’s good, nice and big for a 16, 17, or 18-size font. Then if you want to throw an image in there, go for it. But it’s got to be easy to read. I just use it like a plain email, just text only. If you can just write an email like you’re emailing a friend, that’s really who your fans want to be to you. They want to hear from you. In a real way, not just banners, buy merch, here’s the latest video. It’s like, okay, that has its place.
Maybe if you’re already signed to a record label and you have hundreds of thousands of fans, and you’re okay with lower engagement. But if you’re an independent artist and every fan counts for you right now, if you’re trying to grow your Patreon membership, for example, or if you’re trying to do a run of vinyl prints, and you need to sell 100 because the minimum order is 100, then you should be leading with storytelling, and you should be showing your authentic self and not just relying on Mailchimp templates and images and just a picture of the T-shirt. That’s not the way. A story is what sells and the same thing that you would do on social media, I would just do in written form with your email list.
Jason Tonioli:
One of the things I think that artists in general miss out on, because they never get around to doing it, is there’s that, I don’t call it the dating phase. Let’s say you got a new listener, a new fan. If they just jump into the middle of your story and you just have random stuff as you go, that’s one thing. I think it’s important for artists to step back and say, you know what? If we’re on a first date, there’s the conversation about, here’s a little bit about me, and here’s how I got started in music. There’s some of those onboarding, is what they often call it in the business world, of how do you onboard somebody new so that you bring them up to speed so that now they understand the things that you might be sending that matter today. I think, especially if you want to scale and get bigger, that’s something that I think you can map out, even on a take a bar napkin and just map out and say, Okay, I wish if they could just get these six emails from me and maybe a couple of text messages, or maybe there’s two videos where you’re going to be a little bit more vulnerable and share your story. Maybe not everybody’s going to watch that video, but if you could get somebody to watch that video, they’re going to like you a whole lot more now because you’re a real human being to them. I think automating some things like that as an artist are huge to be successful. Just thinking through it, I think, is important as an artist to understand how you tell your story.
Anybody listening, I would just say, look at what you’re sending out today to those new audience members and realistically, look at that 30 to 60, maybe even 90 days of your dating phase of that new fan and then roll them into the current fan group. I think I’ve learned that’s been much more successful for me than if I just try to have them assume that they’ve got 10 years of history behind the people that have been with me forever and understand all of the little quirks and things that we’ve gone through.
Ryan Waczek:
Absolutely. Yeah. No, I mean, the technology is so accessible that… I mean, it’s so affordable. It’s really improved. It’s drag and drop most of the time. If you’re using a website that doesn’t have these features, maybe you’re still on an old GoDaddy that you built eight years ago or whatever it is. It might really be worth the consideration to graduate to a more formidable marketing tool because all you have to do is just set it up once. Every new fan that comes through, if you have a great purposeful homepage, that’s not just a portfolio, but it actually has an offer, even if it’s a free offer, an offer to upgrade. Just put this in your mind. This is what you’re getting right now on social media. Once you become a subscriber, this is what I have for you here. It’s really the paradigm that you just need to figure out, how’s that going to be portrayed in my brand? What’s my version of that? How can I upgrade my fans? Once you do that, set up a couple of automations like you said, Jason. It’s set up once, and now you have an engine for your fans to automatically get nurtured and then can eat far more easily and share everything that you’re doing with them.
Jason Tonioli:
I know you’ve got some really great free resources. You mentioned to me, if people want to go check out where some of these free resources you’ve got or want to engage more with you, where do they go. I’m happy to share. If people want to reach out to me, I’m happy to give some ideas. There are some great coaches out there. I know our team will help a handful of people, but where should they go to learn more about what you’re doing?
Ryan Waczek:
Absolutely, yeah. So firstly, free is always great. If you want to watch the free workshop, you’ll learn about all of my theories on marketing, what I feel like is important, what I’ve seen work over and over again, just head over to indiemusicacademy.com/workshop, and you’ll get that. That’s always a great thing to dive into first. It’s absolutely free, zero commitment. Then there’s a ton of stuff that we do. Like you mentioned, we have a great management team here at the Indie Music Academy for any artist that just needs manpower, needs help with their marketing, who needs help getting on playlists, or they want to start running social media ads. You can learn about all of that by heading over to indiemusicacademy.com. There’s a tab on the website that talks about all of our music promotion help that we offer for artists. Then lastly, obviously, we are an academy and so if you need help collecting music royalties, if you need help setting up your meta business manager to market yourself, or you just need to learn how to communicate with your fans better, like how we teach in our music selling through storytelling course, there’s a whole bunch of great resources that are 30-day challenges, video lessons and series on a bunch of really important topics for any artist who’s really looking to take control of the future of their music career, not leaving it up to chance, not just staying in the artistic cave and checking a song out of the cave every once in a while, but no one’s there to listen.
It does take a little bit of intentionality. Like I said at the beginning, if only musicians would just understand that marketing can be creative, too, and you can do the same exact time as your songwriting. It really doesn’t require that much more effort. I think that a lot of artists will be pleased with just how many more eyeballs they can get on their music if they just learn a little bit about traffic generation and the options that we have at our fingertips in this, really a renaissance for musicians. There’s lots of affordable tech. It’s easier than ever to get your music out there. All of that is available at indiemusicacademy.com.
Jason Tonioli:
Awesome. I think you’re spot on. It’s really this new day where indie artists can be very, very successful. Never before have we had so many tools. I appreciate you taking time to share. You’ve shared some real… Hopefully, it’s just made people think a little bit differently and realize they can do it and just be willing to open their mind to the marketing. Thank you for all you’re doing to help artists. Keep it up. I appreciate you.
Ryan Waczek:
Oh, yeah. Thanks so much for having me, Jason. I appreciate you, too.
Hey, it is Jason here and I hope you have gotten a lot of value out of this episode. Be sure to check out our show notes to learn more about our guest for today and if you’d like to support our podcast, there’s a few things that you could do to help us grow.
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