In this video Wendy Day explains how music can be treated as a product that moves through a classic adoption curve and how artists should align their marketing to each stage. She outlines the five adopter categories—Innovators (2.5%), Early Adopters (13.5%), Early Majority (34%), Late Majority (34%), and Laggards (16%)—and describes the behaviors and expectations of each group. Day then shifts to fan segmentation, defining three fan tiers: Casual fans (low engagement), Engaged fans (regular listeners, occasional buyers, social media interaction), and Super‑fans/Rabid fans (deep knowledge, high spending, personal connection). She stresses the importance of converting fans up the ladder (Casual → Engaged → Super‑fan) and of nurturing Super‑fans with personalized outreach (birthdays, VIP experiences). The talk also covers revenue streams—touring, merchandise, and music sales—and uses independent artist Tech N9e as a case study, noting his roughly equal split of income across those three streams. Day concludes with strategic advice: work a release through its full life‑cycle, don’t abandon a project after the Innovators, and repeat the cycle for each new release to continually grow the fan base and income.
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Hi guys, welcome back. I want to talk about marketing, um, and it's so crucial for you to build a fan base of people that like your music. Um, when I was getting my MBA in marketing um, I rode my dinosaur to get to school. Um, there was a philosophy that is still very relevant today, and I see it with all of the artists that I work with, but I also see it in marketing my own products like my book, um, the lists that I have, the contact lists for record labels and music supervisors. Um, so I, I see it in terms of any product, and your music is a product, right? As an artist, you're a brand, and your music is the product. And there are like 5 stages of, of a product, of a product's life, right? And you can kind of, you can kind of look at it like a, a bell curve almost. Um, The people who will gravitate towards you first, your music first, are the innovators. They're usually about 2.5% of the population that are going to embrace your music. Um, they are the people that always know who the hottest artist is, who the next up-and-coming, um, artist is. They're always the first ones on board, and they're always the first ones to jump ship. Once you start to get a little bit of popularity amongst other people, um, they're no longer interested in you because you're not the new hot thing anymore. Um, and a lot of them even complain that you sold out, even though your career hasn't even gotten off the ground yet. Um, the next phase is, or the next stage, is the early adopters. And they're usually about 13.5% of the marketplace of your followers. And the early adopters are the ones who come in right behind the innovators. They're still, they're still people that like to be on the cutting edge. They understand, um, new advances in tech. They're always the folks that have the first phone, first gadget, the first everything. Um, and they come in behind the innovators. They're very social compared to innovators that usually aren't very social. The early adopters are very social, and they tend to spread the word about you and your music to their friends. So we really like the early adopters. And then right behind them are the early majority, and they're about 34%. And the great thing about the early majority is they're also social and they're also leaders within their circles. And because they have a lot of people around them and they're known to be tastemakers, they bring a lot of people into your product, into discovering you. Um, most of the playlists that exist on streaming services are considered early majority. They're the people that get there and bring the rest of the fans with them, um, until your, your product, your project peaks. And then once your project starts to go down and decline in sales and streams, that's when the late majority arrives. And they're like another 34% of the population. And that's not a bad thing because you're still earning income, you're still making money, you're still doing shows. You're still doing all of the things that you need to be doing in terms of profiting from the music that you've already put out. So it's not like you're doing any extra work. They're just the people that are a little bit late to the party. And then the last group of people, which are about 16%, are called the laggards, and they're the people that are very late to the party. Um, they're the ones that sort of discover you after you've already kind of run your course. And again, that's 16%, so it's a pretty good size of the population. Um, they're not social, they don't usually interact well with others, but they are always kind of late to the party. And just because somebody is a laggard in one area doesn't mean that they're not an innovator in another area. It's just, it's a matter of how important music is to them. Somebody might be an innovator in games or in fashion or in travel, but they might be a laggard in music because it's just not relevant to them. It's not a passion for them. In terms of your fans and you know, speaking about passion, in terms of your fans, you're gonna have— this is my own philosophy, this isn't something that I learned in school, this is something that I kind of picked up in my years of experience in the music industry, and the fans seem to group into 3 different categories. And of course, there's all levels in between these 3 different categories, But I see the fans as either a casual fan, an engaged fan, or a super fan. And I sometimes call them rabid fans. But what they are is a casual fan is somebody that could kind of take or leave you. They like your music, it's okay. If they happen to see you pass by in their social media stream, they may click on something that you have or they may not. They're just sort of, you know, they know who you are, they're aware of you. And, you know, they kind of like you. You might have a song or two that they really like a lot, and they'll put into their playlists on their streaming services, or, or maybe they'll buy, um, your music if they're into downloading. If they happen to be at a club and you're performing, they'll certainly stay there and listen. If they're in the area, they might even come by and, um, and buy a ticket, but they're not going to go out of their way for you. You're just sort of there for them. And that doesn't mean that all artists are like that for them. They may have an artist that they really love, like maybe they love Kendrick Lamar and they're a rabid Kendrick Lamar fan, but they just happen to be a casual fan for you. You know, you're good, you're okay, but they're not super excited. The next level of fan is an engaged fan. That is somebody that really likes you. They know all the words to your songs. They buy your music when it comes out. They may not buy it, you know, the day that it comes out, but they'll buy it when it comes out. Um, if they can find somebody to go with them to one of your shows, they'll go to one of your shows, um, and they'll enjoy it. You know, money may be an issue. If the ticket's too expensive, they may not go to your show, but more than likely they will. They'll find a way to get there. Um, they may buy a t-shirt while they're there, more as a souvenir, like to remember the experience. Um, and they like you. They're a fan. There's somebody that is going to follow your career and stick with you from when they discover you until the end. They may even go back and discover some of your older music. Like, let's say they, they find you on your third mixtape, right, your third release. They may go back and listen to one and two to, to get as much, um, information about you as they can. They definitely follow you on social media. They're going to interact with you. They may even go to your social media to find out what's new in your life. They might check out your website to see what your tour dates are. And then the most extreme kind of fan, and of course all of our goal in achieving this kind of fan, is the superfan, the rabid fan. This is the person that knows every lyric to every song you've ever written. They've watched every video you've ever put up. They've watched all your content. They know where you live. They know the name of your dog. They know that if you have kids, they know who your kids are, they know your kids' names, they know what your hobbies are. Um, these are the people that are going to come to your show even if they have to spend the rent money to do it. They're going to come to your show probably in the next city over or anything that might be within a 2-hour driving radius. They're going to you're an experience for them. They're going to be part of your movement. If you sell, um, for your shows, if you sell VIP tickets, these are the folks that are going to buy your VIP tickets. They're going to come to this, to the, to the sound check. They're going to buy your merchandise. Every time you put out a new t-shirt, they're more than likely going to buy it. They've probably bought it online and are wearing it to the show. If you're selling new merchandise at the show they're going to buy the merchandise at the show. These are the people that are really into you, like you, you are within their top 3 to 5 acts that they follow. They just, you know, they live and die for you. The real extreme ones might even, um, get groupied out and follow you around the country. All that to say that when you're building your career, you want to know which are your rabid fans, which are your engaged fans, and who your casual fans are. Because your goal is to always turn a casual fan into an engaged fan, and then turn an engaged fan into a super fan. And then with the super fans, you want to do stuff that keeps them coming back to you. They're the ones that ride or die for you. And you want to make sure that you offer them the most perks possible. And they're the people that, if there aren't, you know, hundreds of thousands of them, they're the people that you want to reach out to. You want to send them personal messages. Um, I've seen artists keep lists of birthdays and anniversaries and send out texts, from a secondary phone to their rabid fans so that the fans get all excited and know that the artist that they love so dearly is thinking about them. They're the people that you want to keep coming back because that's where you're going to make your money, is from the engaged fan and the super fan, the rabid fan. In terms of the stages of your product, which are those, 5 stages that we talked about, the, the bell curve, when I started this video. Um, it's just, it's important for you to know the different stages of your product. Um, a lot of mistakes that newer artists make is they don't work their project long enough. They'll just put out a record, they'll work it for a couple of weeks, and then to them it's old and they want to move on. Well, at that point in time, you've only reached the innovators, which is like 2.5% of your potential followers. So if you quit too early, you're never going to be able to really build a huge following, like a cult following. Um, you know, we all look at Tech N9ne in the music industry, who's an independent artist, um, and he's very talented. But the great thing about Tech is that he's really got, um, some, some serious super fans and serious engaged fans, and he's able to make, you know, an incredible amount of money. I think, I think the last figure I saw on Forbes was, um, he and Travis's partner had made $30 million between the two of them, and they do that through touring through merchandise and through sales. And Travis once explained to me that their income is a third, a third, and a third, meaning a third of the income comes from touring because Tech is always out on the road. A third of the income comes from merchandise, and they're selling it both online at strangemusic.com— this is not a commercial— and at their shows. And then the last third of the money comes from music sales. They're not big fans of streaming. They prefer, um, they prefer the download sales because it's just more profitable for them as a label. On my side, I like the streaming sales. I don't care if somebody downloads. My goal is to build a career and an income for my clients So I'm more focused on anything that will make them money at the early stages of their career. I don't care how they do it, whether it's downloads, whether it's streaming, you know, whether it's touring, merchandise. I don't care how they make money as long as they're making money. So, um, your focus will switch a little bit as you go further in your career. But I just wanted to break down those principles of marketing so that you could have a better understanding when you're entering the music business and when you're relatively new in the music business, that you want to work a product through its entire lifetime, through all the stages of the product. That doesn't mean that you can't put out new music until the laggards come along. I don't think you'd want to wait that long, but you would— you definitely want to work something long enough to embrace the late majority, the people that are a little bit late to the party And then as you put out another project after the late majority has embraced, um, you kind of start that cycle all over again where the innovators come in and discover the new project, then the early adopters, um, etc., etc. And remember, your goal is to build super fans and engaged fans and to turn all of your fans, like, sort of bring them through that cycle, right? You want to convert a casual fan into an engaged fan. You want to convert an engaged fan into a super fan, a rabid fan. Okay guys, thanks for tuning in again to this little burst of knowledge, and I look forward to seeing you again soon. Take care guys, bye!
