ONLINE CAREER DEVELOPMENT FOR MUSICIANS

This is a shorter version of the presentation given on February 7, 2023 at the Austrian Cultural Forum Warsaw, Poland.

This presentation is aimed at aspiring musicians, looking for ideas to build an independent business model and to develop their own personal brand.

This article is about how to build an artistic career and achieve financial stability regardless of any employers or number of performances you have. The uniqueness of our time is that artists do not obviously need intermediaries like influential agents, recruitment commissions, etc., in order to achieve success, esteem, and financial stability. It's all because you can present yourself online directly to your audience.

We are going to look at a few artists and their self-presentation strategies as examples, but it doesn’t mean that I am encouraging you to just imitate them. We are going to look not at what they are doing, but why it works. So we would understand what drives people, and find a way to use this knowledge in our own unique and genuine way.

WHY ONLINE PRESENSE IS IMPORTANT

Of course you may ask why THIS guy is going to teach us, he doesn't have a million of followers whatsoever? But this is exactly the message of this workshop: you don't need so many followers in order to be successful and have a stable satisfying income, you'd need only a few thousand of followers, but this has to be an engaging, motivated audience. So in fact, the quality of your audience may be more important than it's quantity.

Unfortunately, consciously or unconsciously, there is a common stereotype in some societies that an artist should only pursue his or her art, and that a career will somehow work itself out. As a result, we have a huge number of great artists who can barely make any money. My thesis is that in order to succeed, an Artist must not rely on being noticed and promoted by someone else, but must have the skills to attract their audience and monetize it themselves. This requires three things, which unfortunately are not usually taught in conservatories and art academies. First of all, it's the art of self-presentation, so that not only your own grandmother and dog want to follow you, but others as well. This is the skill you have to improve throughout your entire artistic life. The second is a skill of monetizing your audience, and last but not least, the courage to put a decent price on your product.

Of course, success rarely comes all at once. It took me almost two years to reach a level where even if I had no other sources of income, I could support myself sufficiently just through my social media activity and various forms of audience monetization.

So when you start it's perfectly normal to have three likes on your post, solely coming from your girlfriend and closest friends, who don’t care about your product, just hit like to support you, it's normal to have five views during your YouTube premiere, three of them yours from different devices. The most important thing here is to share with the world what you love, and in a way that makes you enjoy the process of sharing. Then you'll have enough stamina to do it long enough to feel the results. And results will inevitably come if you will be sincere in what you're doing, and consider people.

UNIQUE SELLING POINT

It's incredibly important to identify your so-called unique selling point (USP).

Nowadays, when we have such an overwhelming amount of content, when even 60-year old professors, who were for years telling us that “all this your internet is not a real art”, finally understand that the world is changing, and start posting memes and twerking in TikTok, the only chance to build your community and audience is to be “different”. USP - this is what makes you one-of-a-kind artist. What aspects of your personality, your performance or communication style, or the unique experiences you share can be turned into your personal brand? Think about successful artists and reflect on how you perceive them. You'll find that you have a label for each of them, even if only unconsciously. “Glenn Gould? Oh, that's the guy who plays all of Bach, most of the time staccato, and has a funny chair.”* Even though these labels or unique selling points don't describe the artist in all their complexity and are cliched thinking, because a live person is always deeper and richer than a label, this is how our brain works, and how the market works.

* (NB: common cliché described, not the opinion of the author).

For example, Denis Zhdanov is a guy who often plays piano in a dark room, and no one knows why, probably he's just greedy to pay his electricity bill, but apart of his stylistic expertise, he also knows a lot about piano playing efficiency strategies, so if I have a problem with technique or want to optimize my piano learning process, I better subscribe to his YouTube channel, even a better idea would be to buy a couple of his useful courses on Teachable, and of course I will make myself a huuuge favour, if I will be lucky to get a private lesson with him.

That's my USP. You have to define yours.

Exercise or game with fellow musicians:

Think about any great artist, about their appearance, behaviour, style of performance. Your task is to describe their uniqueness in one-two sentences, so that the other person who plays same instrument as yours would immediately guess the name of this artist.

Of course nowadays the amount of content on the Internet is huge. Therefore, unfortunately, it is very difficult to get millions of followers. But what is important to understand that in order to have a stable income you don't need millions of followers. It's enough to have a few thousand motivated followers who want to follow you and buy your product. And this is a realistic goal. First, we'll talk about how to attract people, how to build an engaging community, look at some strategies that successful bloggers use, we will also speak about YouTube algorithm, and then how to monetize your audience.

By observing my own profiles and the profiles of many other musicians, I have noticed that it's very difficult to grow an audience and succeed in today's world if you only post recordings of your performances online, that is, follow such an academic and conservative path. The problem is that there is so much content. Every piece in the standard musical repertoire has already been recorded 100 if not 1000 times. And new music is not easily promoted, because people on average are lazy to discover. That's why artists who want to build an engaging audience offer them something else. They build their presentation in such a way that their portrait is broader than just a playing mannequin. Today we're going to look at some examples of this kind of multifaceted self-presentation, which I hope will inspire some of you.

ORGANIC GROWTH

There's a term called organic growth, which is when people subscribe to you and start following you simply because you post content that interests them without you investing money in advertising. Each platform promotes this kind of organic growth differently. Facebook, for example, is not very supportive of it. This means that you can post content to Facebook regularly, but it will only be seen by a small fraction of your friends. It will hardly be seen by people who are not already subscribed to you. This is designed to keep you pouring money into advertising. In this presentation, though, I'll share with you the story of a musician who broke the system and learned how to make a lot of money in a fairly passive way through his Facebook music group.

I gave up on Facebook a long time ago because of these nuances, but here's some advice if you want to succeed on this platform: create content that people want to talk about and provoke your audience to comment. Comments are important on other platforms, but on Facebook, they're key. If you use FB, you may have noticed that Facebook often shows you posts by people you don't know just because someone you follow on Facebook commented on them. That's how I myself discovered several bloggers I've subscribed to. So create content that people want to discuss, share their opinions about, and find ways to get your audience talking, because there's no more effective Facebook marketing strategy than messing around in the comments.

The main problem with promoting yourself on social networks: regular content creation is necessary, but not everybody has a resource to go to Facebook first thing in the morning to make a post, then go to Instagram to put up a story, then make an interesting interactive reel, after this go to Ticktock and record yourself twerking merrily to some primitive music, finally record and upload video to YouTube, and you're like - oh, it's 11 PM already, what a useless day it was! So let's just say that ideally you should optimize your self-promotion so that you shine enough on all platforms, and at a certain point you might want to use some scheduling software for this like FPTraffic, but in fact if you don't have enough time and energy, you can concentrate on the format and the platform that suits you the best.

Instagram, too, promotes organic growth much less than it did a few years ago. Although, some of its tools do allow you to achieve organic growth. First and foremost are stories, if you have the resource to do them regularly, and reels.

But my main tool is YouTube. YouTube is a unique platform whose philosophy is organic growth. As soon as YouTube algorithm sees that your videos are really interesting for people, as soon as it understands which target audience it's interesting for, the platform starts to promote you by recommending your videos to people with similar interests. Besides, YouTube videos have no expiration date. Even a video uploaded 12 years ago can keep gaining views. By comparison, a Facebook post that's three days old probably won't be seen in a feed anymore. On Instagram, posts are lost in traffic after an average of twenty-four hours. So today I'm going to talk most about the specifics of YouTube, although many of the strategies are appropriate for other platforms, too.

TARGET AUDIENCE

In the beginning you need to understand who your target audience is, who may be interested in you. Most likely it will not be people who are on the same level as you or higher, such as your colleagues, classmates, your teachers. Because these people are busy with their careers, they will not have neither resource nor need to actively consume or promote your product. Your potential audience is likely to be people who are way behind you in their level, such as music lovers, amateurs, or aspiring musicians. This is very important to understand when choosing a self-presentation strategy. If you choose a topic that only experts are interested in, you need to be prepared for your popularity growth to be very slow or none at all.

I will illustrate this by comparing two channels, Ricardo Descalzo and Rousseau.

Descalzo: a brilliant quality of the content, brilliant performances. But his niche is very specific, not so many people are interested in the modern piano literature, and those who are interested (professionals) are mostly his competitors, and would not actively support him. I absolutely love his content, but I am not his target audience, because I have my own career to cherish.

Rousseau: has started doing “reactive visualizer” videos when they have started gain popularity - great momentum, using an uprising trend. From the Artistry perspective the quality of the content performed on an e-piano even by a professionally trained pianist is rather controversial, but colorful stripes and famous pieces attract wide audience.

It does not however mean that Descalzo is doomed. Even such a small audience can be monetized at 500-2,000 EUR a month, if a creator has built a small, but supportive audience, where at least 30-50 people from these 2000 are ready to buy his products, take lessons with him, invite him to perform at private events, donate on Patreon, or else.

But in my experience, this kind of niche needs a more creative approach in order to grow faster. Let's look at how Samuel Andreyev, a composer based in France, built his channel.

At first, 8 years ago he has been posting a few of his compositions. Moderate success, and only because YouTube was much emptier 8 years ago. I suspect, that today by just posting your own compositions you would rather get 100-300 views, not 2-4K views as he did then. Then, 6 years ago, he started blogging. He started making videos analysing compositions by famous composers, but mostly from the 20th and 21st centuries, that is, close to his own compositional style. Immediate improvement of engagement. Then he went even further and started interviewing famous living composers on his channel. And this is a great strategy, because in people’s minds this ambitious composer stands already somewhere close to these living legends, since they casually discuss some compositional topics together. Using big names as a bait, he attracts wide audiences, who then discover his own works. Thanks to this strategy his own works are getting a few times more views than they would get if he would be just posting his own compositions.

Another composer, Frederick Viner, went down a similar path. He alternates between recordings of his music and informative videos on interesting topics, with a brilliant usage of subtle humour and memes as well. This is also how he builds his reputation, because some of comments I read about him illustrates how our psychology works: "Viner? Oh yeah, that's the composer who makes cool analysis videos, he's great", and one doesn't notice how he already thinks to himself that this is actually a good composer, even though they haven't listened to a single piece of him yet. So that's another trick - make people like you, and they will like your work even before they had chance to get familiar with it!

Also, bloggers often collaborate to broaden the audience. So, for example, we agreed with Frederick that I would record his new pieces and promote them on my channel, and he would mention my channel in some of his videos in return.

Another brilliant example: Heart of the Keys. This young artist is not afraid to show her weaknesses, and people love her for that. Most of professionally trained artists would treat this type of self-presentation in a rather snob way. But Annique Göttler has found a truly effective out-of-the-box approach, demonstrating a brilliant understanding of her target audience psychology:
a lot of music lovers live in a love-hate relation with music. On the one hand they love it, attend concerts, listen to recordings, play instruments themselves, but on the other hand they struggle to reach a decent level which would satisfy them. And since most of the artists publish only perfect results, it creates an illusion that it is easy for them to play so well. “He is so talented, and I seriously suck” - they think, often not even knowing that it’s not about talent that much, but about hard work 5 hours a day since age of 5 with no days-off whatsoever. But when they see that even a professionally trained artist needs time and effort to master a difficult piece, they feel so much better, thus emotionally engaging with this content creator.

A good quality helps, but it is secondary to content. Don’t wait until you will gather all the equipment of the Netflix + Deutsche Grammophon level! And yet I, for example, invest a great amount of time and money in an equipment and skills how to use it. I decided that I was going to target an international audience with my blog, so I have an English-language channel. I spoke English not bad, but even with a stronger accent and much more mistakes. So the first 20 videos I wrote out a text word for word and rehearsed it with Elina, my wife, who speaks much closer to the level of a native speaker. I also took some lessons with an American teacher, who is an expert in getting rid of accents. I didn’t reach a native-speaking level, and you probably will find some mistakes in this article, but at least I don’t hate myself for my English anymore. I also decided to learn piano tuning so my instrument would sound decent in my videos, and invested a lot of time to learn video editing software. But again, that's secondary. If my goal was just fast growth and not the quality of my content and my audience, I could make worse quality content, but I would make more use of the psychological tricks and clickbait. But my primarily goal is not gaining a huge following of random people seeking for fast entertainment and/or magic pills. This is why I don’t do popular videos such as “Three magic chords to sound like a pro”, or else. My goal is to build a maybe smaller, but a truly engaging and passionate community of piano lovers, people who know that a real progress comes at a price of a long-term effort. If a person seeks for a magic pill to spend just 3 minutes, gaining an illusion of a progress, what are the chances they would be ready to spend money and time to become my permanent clients, and not bore me to death? We simply don’t need each other.

Another brilliant strategy is: promoting others. This is how my friend, Francesco Comito has build a very successful Facebook group, which brings him quite a solid fairly passive income (not many people know, but Facebook also has a Partner Program, similarly to YouTube, where you can earn from ads on your videos). Francesco decided to promote not himself, but everyone else. He offered all musicians he could get to to submit their recordings to be featured in his group, what artists loved, because we all love when someone features us. He also made an enormous amount of streams, interviews, and online concerts, promoting literally everyone he could, and posts popular copyright-free videos by famous artists. The point is straightforward: each featured artist has brought their own audience, inviting people to the group.

ALGORITHM

I’ve seen many artists complaining about YouTube algorithm, that YouTube hides their content, steals their views, etc. The sad truth which these people are not ready to accept, is that YT algorithm is incredibly clever and OBJECTIVE, it may be compared to Karma indeed 😅

It’s not about algorithm - it’s about people. They are simply not interested in you and your content. The first painful step on the way to success - to be mature enough to accept that nobody ever needs you, and from this bottom point start seeking a solution how to change it. How to make people like you, need you, thank you, in other words care.

Keeping an eye on your YouTube analytics page might give you an idea why your channel doesn’t grow, and what exactly you have to fix in order to improve your performance.

Here are the most important, essential metrics, but keep in mind that these metrics is a translation of people’s behavior when they come across your videos.

How often your video gets clicked on: Click through Rate.

For example, 5% Click Through Rate means, that among a hundred of people who came across your video in YouTube five have actually clicked on it. You need a catchy title and picture to improve it. The first thing people see is a thumbnail. It is recommended to make them manually using any visual editor, if you are afraid of Photoshop and other serious programs, there are for example many online services, such as canva.com, where you can create a thumbnail for free using their templates. It is desirable that the thumbnails would be in a similar style, so they would be recognizable as your own style. Check out this useful video on this topic.

SELF-PRESENTATION

Self-presentation is not about a perfect image, but about development. No matter how much you panted over your first video, a year later you will look at it and be horrified at how bad and silly it was. I can’t watch any of my blog videos I made more than a year ago, I feel ashamed for every of them. I think I have improved so much this year, and a year later - same shh…thing. But that's no reason to be afraid to start. You will never be perfect, but you aim at people, for whom you are already good enough.

A few words about types of self-presentation. We rarely think about it, but in fact we can deliberately build our presentation with an emphasis on a certain style of presentation, choosing the main message we convey.

This is not an officially approved classification, but just my humble attempt to show the variety of ways to interact with your audiences. Your task is to treat critically, and expand this classification, so that you could find the way, which suits you best, and better understand strategies of other successful artists.

Narcissus - by using this term I don’t imply psychological definitions such as Narcissistic Disorder, or anything judgemental. By lacking a better word, I only mean artists who accent their self-presentation on their own splendidness. In fact, I believe, that artists who are over-confident have a huge advantage over self-critical personalities. This strategy requires a deep irrational belief in yourself and an iron, genuine self-confidence. There is no way to fake it, people will immediately feel your doubts. For example, this strategy wouldn’t work for me, because I constantly bounce between self-confidence and self-irony. The downside is, that artists who choose this way are more vigorously criticized by other experts, and experience more snob attitude from their peers.

Lecturer - suitable for people with the ability to popularize topics, like Andreev or Viner, whose channels were analyzed before. Especially a skill of explaining difficult things in simple words and bits of humor on the way helps tremendously. An extra musical example for inspiration: Neil deGrasse Tyson. I love his talks, because even though I am a dumbpot in Physics, he is able to fall me in love with his subject without boiling my brains.

Entertainer - one of the brightest examples: two set violin. First, you attract a huge following by making fun on the topics from your niche, then you can sell any of your products to the loyal audience.

Exchange of experience. Skill share. This is rather my approach.

Life story - storytelling talent. Being comfortable with letting your public if not to the bedroom, at least to your living room. Good example: Tiffany Poon. Similarly to narcissistic type of self-presentation such artists experience more critique and snob attitude from their colleagues, but it doesn’t matter, because the target audience of Tiffany is not them.

The more milti-sided will be your portrait, the easier it will be for you to grow, because each type of presentation attracts different people. On the other side, each type requires a certain type of personality, so the task of an artist to “know thyself” truly, and choose as a main strategy what is most natural for them.

Because whatever you do, most important that it would feel genuine.

MONETIZING YOUR AUDIENCE

YOUTUBE PARTNER PROGRAM

You can apply for it when reaching 1000 subscribers and 4000 view hours per year. But the income from such programs is very small comparing to other available options.

For example, you can encourage your audiences to donate.

Donates require an emotional connection. You must inspire, delight, entertain, and amuse. As more emotional connection you will have with your audience, as higher rate of supporters you will have.

Paypal.me is a great way to leave a one-time donation. This feature from PayPal allows a person to make a quick payment in two clicks. It’s much more effective and secure to include a paypal.me link in the video description than an email registered on your PayPal.

Alternatives to patreon.com, if you don’t like it for some reason : ko-fi.com, buymeacoffee.com, and many others.

Selling courses online - teachable.com, Udemi.com, and many more.

The advantages of selling courses: it may turn into almost a passive income. If you mention your courses in your YouTube videos, then YouTube regularly does advertising for you by suggesting the video where you mention your product. It’s important to mention any of your products or services during the first two minutes of a YouTube video.

Additionally - advertising in Instagram. I make reels with my playing, advertising relevant courses in a reel by adding text over my video.

Other services :

fiverr.com - offer what you are ready to do, set up your price.

Stageit.com - online not-recorded live concerts with a pre-paid virtual entry.

One of the most effective ways to monetize audiences: online sessions, personal services.

Many musicians are still reluctant to teach online. But it simply has too many advantages.

We live in an era where everyone has the tools to build an audience without depending on the intermediaries like agencies that used to control the market in the past. But at the same time, the main challenge today is the excessive abundance of content, and the psychology of the masses, which has to be considered. In order to increase your chances of success using social media, you need not only to strive for high quality, but also to take into account the psychology of the wide audience, using a creative approach in self-presentation, thinking out of the box, and be genuine in your choice of self-presentation strategy.