What Musicians Can Learn About Community Building
I recently read a great book called “Get Together”, an insightful account of people and organizations who successfully built great communities. Stories vary from a runner’s club in New York to an educators’ learning camp to Mariah Carey’s fan club.
I picked up the book when I saw it featured in a newsletter by Hiut Denim, of all places (thanks to Carlo Villarica of ZeroThreeTwo for recommending this mailing list to me!) Reading through it, I realized how much of it is super useful for people in music and art in general.
The thing about art is that it’s not a commodity that people simply consume. Instead, it’s often a shared experience that naturally gets people to come together to celebrate beauty. I find this is especially true for music. While people definitely enjoy music as an individual experience, there’s no feeling quite like getting together and enjoying it with each other. It could be in a venue as big as an arena concert or as intimate as a jukebox in a bar that everyone can hear. It could even happen online, in forums and comment sections. People simply love sharing music they like.
There’s no question about it then. Building a strong community has become a critical part of any artist’s success.
“Get Together” explains in a neat little metaphor the 3 basic steps to building a great community — spark the flame, stoke the fire, and pass the torch. Here’s how I find these steps can be translated to you as a musician.
“Spark the flame”
Probably the most important part of building a community is simply starting it. But starting a community for the sake of having a community is probably not the way to go. A good purpose and a great idea of what you want to do with everyone — figuring out why you’re getting together, essentially — are very basic things you need to figure out first.
This is what differentiates a community from a website or social media page. A website or social media page is great for telling your story and keeping people updated on you. But a community needs to be about people sharing experiences and telling their stories.
As a musician, you probably have promotion of your music consistently at the back of your mind, but don’t start a community and make it just about you. Make it about getting people to interact. Make it about people sharing ideas and music (not necessarily your own) or exchanging advice and opinions. It’s often overlooked, but remember that setting rules is necessary to make sure the purpose of the community sticks (otherwise, it could just turn into a bulletin board no one really reads).
That first group activity, whether it’s an online event or a face-to-face get together, is very important as well. The first impression will likely last, and it’s how you get people to start really talking about you and sharing their experiences. Facebook has a lot of new tools you can start using to do this quickly in the comforts of your own home — hold a watch party and have everyone share music and concert videos they enjoy, or go live and invite everyone to watch you debut your new song and share their feedback.
“Stoke the fire”
The second phase of community building is about making sure the fire doesn’t burn out early.
Tell your community’s story to attract new people. Better yet, get others to tell your story for you. The story of “you” (how and why you started the community), of “us” (how people have benefited and how they participate), and of “now” (where you are at the moment and where you’re going to be headed) are essential to inspire participation.
Once the story is out there, cultivate an identity that strengthens your story. An identity could be a variety of things — a shared vocabulary and internal jokes, a design people wear, or a ritual that everyone happily participates in. Get your community involved and encourage creativity in representing your identity. I remember gigs where we would play corny 90’s dance music once the show wrapped up. It definitely was something memorable to laugh about for days after the event, and something people eventually started to look forward to.
Finally, learn from people who participate in your community. Find out what drives them. You may have your ideas about how to grow, but what people frequently do in your community and what engages them will always be more telling about what makes your community great. A mailing list is a great way to get in touch with your fans, but keep it two-directional through questions and surveys.
“Pass the torch”
When you start your community, you’re going to need to lead a large part of the discussion and engagement at first. Passing the torch, the next step, means developing new leaders for your community. Remember, the community you build is not just about you. You need people to drive the activity.
If you did the job right stoking the fire, it makes it that much easier to pass the torch. Once people have gotten involved in building your community’s story and your identity, they will be ready to take the reins when the opportunity or need arises.
Sustaining your community for the long haul is a matter of finding the people who have as much (or possibly even more) passion for your music as you do. It won’t be that easy to find them, but it will be worth it once you have them on board. They will be key to keep your community growing.
We recently revamped the IDCB Music Exchange, IDCB’s Facebook group where people can share music that they love, discuss topics and issues that affect the indie musician, promote their work, and simply connect with each other. Join in the discussion and meet people who enjoy indie music as much as you do. If you want to read more on building communities, I highly recommend reading “Get Together”. You can get this in physical or digital formats via Amazon.
Originally published at https://indie-cebu.com on October 22, 2019.
