Substack for musicians
Hi!
My name’s Louis, and I’m a musician.
My brother is also a musician. And my brother-in-law.
And what we all have in common is that we’re pretty pissed off at the way that our music and fans depend completely on the whims of Spotify and Instagram’s algorithms.
Spotify followers are nice. Instagram followers are even cooler. But here’s the thing.
You don’t own that audience.
That’s just not cool. So what we at Record Supply think is that you have to go with email.
There’s nothing wrong with driving listens and followers on Spotify, and followers on Instagram, but please, please make it part of your strategy to get the email addresses of your fans. Because otherwise you’ll never be able to talk to them, invite them to your gigs, ask them to support you in a hundred different ways.
And the good news is that we have a way to do that:
Your biggest fans are going to absolutely love getting their hands on your music before it hits Spotify. So...use that!
Don’t release straight to Spotify. Do a prerelease via Record Supply, and then ask people to give their email addresses in exchange for listening early.
If they say no, fine. They can wait until it’s out on Spotify. They aren’t that into you anyway. That’s OK.
But if they say yes, that’s amazing! You can now talk to that fan whenever you want.
But don’t stop there. Even once the song is released, write the story behind the song and put it on Record Supply, for subscribers only. Keep getting people on your mailing list. That’s the way forward.