How does one gain a following?

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How does one gain a following?

Postby KillerAmp » 08 Oct 2013 19:17

Hello fellow MLR users
I've been on and off with this forum (and my music in general) and I've always kinda had this question lingering in my mind
While i write my music for myself, I find it really driving when I get some feedback saying someone really enjoys a song, and I get such a rewarding feeling every time I gain a follower.

Basically I've been wondering how to gain a following of people who you think will enjoy your music.

I guess another question also in this realm is do you think my music is good enough to even deserve a following?

I'd love to hear others opinions on this!
(@Mods, excuse me for not really knowing where to post this, I've been a little lost around here since the whole "Phase 1" of the forum update thing happened)
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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby CitricAcid » 08 Oct 2013 20:35

While I hardly have a "following," I think I can try to offer a bit of advice. I think one of the easiest ways to get the beginnings of a following is to target an existing audience. The easiest example is bronies. Write some brony music, send it to EQD, they post it, and you get instant subs. (EQD's standards aren't THAT high. Really all you have to do is not suck.) If you know of any other audiences of people you can target, go for it.

The second thing I can suggest is try doing more than just music. If all you ever do is post music on youtube with still backgrounds, you're going to only gain viewers who have the attention span for that sort of thing. People on the internet behave as if they have ADHD (I know I do), so try to keep their attention any way you can. Try doing more multimedia things, collaborate with animators or filmmakers, find people who need music for their video projects, etc.

Also, real people beat internet people any day of the week. Do some live shows, shake some people's hands, had out a few CDs, trade contact info, network, etc. That will be much more valuable in the long run than youtube views.

And as for whether your music is good enough, that's really not important. You're probably not making music to please the audiophiles out there, you're making music for the public. And the public frequently gives their millions of views music that isn't that good. If you can find a piece of music that is popular that you think you can do better than, then you can probably gain a following over time.

And as you keep on making music for your initial audience, you'll keep getting better and better, hopefully attracting more people because of it.

EDIT: Oh and one other thing. ADVERTISE! If you make some music, post it EVERYWHERE. Social media, blogs, forums, chat rooms, anywhere where it's potentially relevant. The more people who hear it, the more chances that some of those people will share it with other people.
Last edited by CitricAcid on 15 Oct 2013 20:23, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby itroitnyah » 08 Oct 2013 20:40

Step 1: Make good music

Step 2: Promote it.

Promotion is the hardest part for music producers, because with such a large market of incredible music producers, a beginner will often get smothered by others. However, gaining a following is not something that is as hard as it seems, especially with the internet. First thing you can do is get involved. You'll all agree that I'm pretty well known around this forum, so that's the key behind it. Sign up for various forums and get involved in the conversations or give help and advice, as well as sharing your music. That alone will get people who know your name and are willing to assist you. If not for this, you would get nowhere. Second thing you can be doing is dropping your music by promotional websites. There's a dubstep.NET, house.NET, drumnbass.NET, thissongissick.com, thissongslaps.com, EDMTunes.com, and the list goes on. There are definitely multiple sites to get your music promoted on, regardless on genre. Third thing you can do is upload the song to multiple places for viewing and such. Soundcloud, bandcamp, youtube, last.fm, facebook and beatport are all places that you can use to upload your music for sharing and/or downloading, and while you don't need to sign up for all the hosting sites, having more than one that your music is being uploaded to will greatly increase your chances of getting views. Now, your music is good, but you shouldn't be too worried about earning a following just 100% yet. Just worry about creating your music well. From there, the followers will come to you. Of course, once you get up into the larger crowds following you around, getting more followers becomes easier and harder. Easier because your music will always get a lot of views and likes and shares. Harder because you're going to need to find new ways to promote yourself, and one of the ways will more than likely take a lot of time, money and energy. The way would be to do live performances. Either by DJing and large music festivals or hosting your own concerts (if you're that large).

Earning a larger following can get more complex than this of course, but this is pretty much showing the simplicity of it. It's not hard. Don't mistake long for hard.

Citric listed some other ways of getting audiences in real life, with the getting to know people and stuff.
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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby the4thImpulse » 08 Oct 2013 20:42

Time.



Wolfgang Gartner has said he sent his music to labels for seven years before being signed,
Deadmau5 got lucky in the underground scenes when he first started making cheap remixes and such.
Tiesto started as a DJ playing house and other similar genres for 6 hour sets in a small club before producing his own stuff.

Just look up artists on wikipedia and read the 'early career' sections. Each one is unique in their own way but many follow along the lines of: play a few gigs here and there, produce own music, get a record release, get a manager, small tours opening for headlining acts in clubs...
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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby Conduit » 08 Oct 2013 20:52

KillerAmp wrote:I guess another question also in this realm is do you think my music is good enough to even deserve a following?


That's really a question you have to ask yourself, although in the end it doesn't really matter much what you, or anyone in particular thinks about your music. If something gets popular it does, its not so much about deserving it.

I've been making music for around two years now and I have like 14(?) subs on YouTube. Do I think my music is deserving of having a bigger following then that? Of course, but my opinion doesn't matter since no amount of me believing will magically get me have more subs.

Subs don't really matter to much to me though, because I want to score films, and YouTube views won't help me nearly as much as a great portfolio. Because of that I've been putting more hours into my composition, and getting in touch will film makers then promoting myself. However if your end goal (past enjoying writing, and producing of course) is YouTube fame you would probably put more effort into being featured on promo pages and whatnot. Reddit is also a pretty good place to post your music.
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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby Mr. Bigglesworth » 08 Oct 2013 23:33

I've gotten most of my followers through time. I have about 92, which isn't exactly a 'following', but it mostly happened over time as I posted stuff.
I'm not here anymore, but if you want you can still just call me Mr. BigBagelBoggle!

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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby HMage » 12 Oct 2013 15:04

Be unique, be persistent, be on time.
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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby Evdog » 14 Oct 2013 23:51

@the4thImpulse (or anyone else that knows):

To build upon the original post, how would you go about getting gigs, both as an electronic musician, and an acoustic musician? Please explain the process, because I have little to no experience in doing this.

Also, do you need to play pop music in clubs or sing 80's pop ballads in a local pub to make it anywhere? I would prefer to perform my original works over doing covers/playing this week's Top 40's. Is that feasible, or is that just lofty and naive?
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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby itroitnyah » 15 Oct 2013 05:46

Do you know a club or anywhere near you that hosts DJs regularly? Good, just go and call in and ask about doing a show there. It sounds easy, but chances are it isn't. Just work on it, send in demos, go and watch DJs perform, etc.

I'm not sure about requirements to play music, I think that just as long as it's club music it can be played. You can play your own music provided it's good enough to play at a club, but don't be arrogant and play all your music because you think it's all amazing, haha.
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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby Ben » 15 Oct 2013 05:50

On the interwebz basically man its just putting yourself out there , no one really checks out songs when you go "Hey im a producer and its my dream to be big" yadayadayada , but a smart trick to use is when you ask if you can put your music in peoples indie games , or youtube videos or blogs or websites no one knows your a musician looking to get his name out there so you gotta contact some people and hope they give you a shot , also you have to ask yourself this question , Why do i want this following and whats this following really mean to me?
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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby Ben » 16 Oct 2013 10:41

Kyoga wrote:be original, be skilled at what you do, don't be a dick, play a damned instrument.
(being original is a very very very important one.)


Explain kanye west then lol
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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby Ben » 16 Oct 2013 10:47

Kyoga wrote:Ok. ok.
to become famous you could also whore yourself out to a label and be so bad that people promote you just by making fun of your genuine lack of skill or talent.

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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby v.lossity » 20 Oct 2013 10:34

You shouldn't focus on gaining a following. Focus on making the best music you've ever heard. If you aren't focusing on striving for your very best, then you wont get there.
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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby KillerAmp » 20 Oct 2013 23:39

v.lossity wrote:You shouldn't focus on gaining a following. Focus on making the best music you've ever heard. If you aren't focusing on striving for your very best, then you wont get there.

I totally agree with you, and that's what I've been and will continue to be doing, It's that the feeling when someone follows you (that isnt a bot) is so great, because it makes me feel like what I'm doing really is getting closer and closer to the best music I've heard. I don't want to sound like a fame-whore or anything, but I also think I might be worth more than the number of 50 followers.

Basically for now i'm just working on my craft, but its more that when I get to the point where I feel like the music I am creating is good enough to show off, I want to know how to do it, yknow? But yes, I like to think that the 2-5 hours I put in daily working on my music are going to lead me to striving for my goal. Don't shoot for the stars, shoot past them, that kinda thing.
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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby v.lossity » 21 Oct 2013 07:38

I gotcha. It is a good feeling when you get a new follower. Try submitting your work to EqD or trying out for some remix contests.
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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby Fimbulin » 21 Oct 2013 10:34

Connections. Who do you know. As far as this fandom and popularity in it, bronies felt "connected" to people like Glaze and Mumble right at first because ponies were new and these guys wrote some amazing music. It wasn't weird for them to make pony music and so they gained a following of people that wanted to like ponies and not be weird. People felt connected. Now, ponies aren't a new internet fad anymore. People feel less connected because the initial interest factor is gone. For this fandom it requires friendship with "the greats". If you want to be popular for popularity's sake or to have a following then make some fan music for pop-culture movies and video games. If you want a career in music, then you have to know people or be so creative that you become an internet fad yourself.
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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby KillerAmp » 21 Oct 2013 22:29

v.lossity wrote:I gotcha. It is a good feeling when you get a new follower. Try submitting your work to EqD or trying out for some remix contests.

First full song i made got featured on EQD, it was cool but in the end really just ended in a lot of downloads, not really many listens nor followers haha. it was an honor though :)

Fimbulin wrote:Connections.

Yeah. It's a shame that there really isn't too much of a way to find connections in this fandom anymore, since the whole music scene for it is kinda dying out
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Re: How does one gain a following?

Postby ClaviSound » 22 Oct 2013 13:18

KillerAmp wrote:Yeah. It's a shame that there really isn't too much of a way to find connections in this fandom anymore, since the whole music scene for it is kinda dying out

k, I'm going to have to stop you right there, because this is untrue. There are plenty of ways to find connections. To this day some friends of mine are like "oh yeah I know PrinceWhateverer we talk a lot" and I'm like "wat you never told me this before." A lot of connections are made through people who already have those connections.

That's not to say you should make friends with people only because someone big likes them or whatever, but just make friends in general. On top of that, there are equally if not more talented musicians who don't get nearly as much love, so try to find those people as well. Don't feel like the only way forwards is selling out and trying to get a free ride.

The music scene for the fandom is not dying at all. It's just in a state of semi-hibernation because it's been so long since canon started up again. Sure, some people are moving past ponies to other pursuits, but that doesn't mean people aren't making music in general. I honestly dislike the attitude of "a few people left the scene so that means pony music is over" because it's false, straight up. There's gonna be pony music until the show's long gone.

Anyway, there is a good feeling in having a song get reach - that I understand - but don't feel like you have to "make it" here. This fandom is a training ground, a place where people (at most) practice their art and see if it's worth pursuing beyond technicolor horses. If it's something they feel they're able to do professionally, then all the power to them, but being a big name in the pony fandom isn't all it's cracked up to be. Ponies are only as staying as MLP:FiM, but good friends last far longer than a TV show. It's up to you which path you want to focus on.

So, yeah. Chill out and just do what you do, it'll save you lots of time and stress. Everyone's felt what you were feeling to some extent (or at least I have and I know several people who have expressed similar wishes), so you aren't alone. Spread yourself around, advertise without being in-your-face about it, ask friend musicians for possible collaborations. As they say, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and a network begins with one connection, no matter who.
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