First, if your fans signed up for your mailing list, it’s because they want to hear from you. If you’re a big U2 fan, you’re psyched when you hear from Bono and The Edge. Your fans feel the same way about you, so don’t presume otherwise.

Second, it’s mission critical that you keep your fans engaged during you “quiet periods,” so that they’re mobilized and ready when you’ve got something important to announce. If you have a severe lapse in communication with your fans, don’t be surprised if they’ve moved on and lost interest when you’ve got something big to announce. It’s your job to keep them engaged!

So what to do? Here’s a recommended approach that is based upon the typical timeline for a musician…

Writing Songs
This is the time that’s typically most challenging. You’re not trying to sell new music, you’re not touring, you’re not even in the studio recording a new album. But this is a great time to let your fans into the songwriting process, an effort that will likely pay huge dividends down the road. How many times have you bought the latest album by an artist you like, only to discover that they’ve gone off on a radically different tangent, so much so that you don’t feel like you connect with their music anymore? It’s happened to me dozens of times, and I’ve got a solution to the problem. During this so-called “quiet” time, bring your fans into the loop. Tell them what you’re listening to on your iPod. Tell them what artists are influencing you during the songwriting process. Tell them what life events are influencing that songwriting process. And while you’re at it, offer them some great deals on your back-catalog music and merchandise.

In The Studio
So now you’re in the studio, and you’re putting together your next album. Like in the “writing songs” stage, you don’t yet have anything “new” to sell (album, tour, merchandise). But you’re engaged in a really unique experience – the recording of your songs for posterity – and your fans would really enjoy the opportunity to see inside the process. Taking your fans step by step through the recording of a song will enable them to gain a whole new appreciation for how much work goes into recording your album (and will likely give them some much-needed encouragement to support you to the fullest, by buying the high-quality version of the album, showing up at at least one show on the tour, and maybe even buying and regularly wearing one of your T-shirts). Each mailing, send along an updated version of one selected track from the album. Perhaps you start off by sending a “raw” version of the song, just you and a guitar or piano. In the next mailing, you send them a low-fi studio version, with limited instrumentation. And each mailing, you let them get closer and closer to the final “release” version of the track. Maybe you even give that track away to celebrate the release of your new record. By that point – I guarantee you – all fans who have been engaged by this series of emails will want to buy the album.

Album Release
Here’s where all that work starts to pay off. Your excellent email campaign has increased your subscriber base, and when your album’s released, all of a sudden you’ve got a slew of new fans who are mobilized and ready to support you and buy that album. They’ll spread the love at all the social networks (“liking” you at YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, etc.). And the sales will hopefully multiply as a result, particularly if you offer multiple price points to meet the needs of your fans/customers. Your album serves two great purposes, not only is it an opportunity for you to share your songs with your fans, but it’s also a great promotional tool for your forthcoming live shows…

On Tour
For the artist, touring can be a grind, particularly if you’re traveling on a shoestring budget and managing yourself. But to your fans, touring sounds like a real thrill, and sharing the experience via a thoughtful “tour diary” is one more way to keep your fans excited and engaged. Talk about the different places you visit while on tour, the sights you see, and share some funny anecdotes from your shows. Bring your fans into the touring experience – hopefully you’ve got plenty of positives to share – and give your fans some good reasons to come out and see an upcoming show.

Give It All Away?
It’s clear that DRM (Digital Rights Management, otherwise known as “Copy Protection”) didn’t work. Some experts would suggest that you should simply stop trying to sell your albums/MP3s. Instead, you should focus on using your recorded music as a tool to promote your live shows and merchandise. It’s an interesting concept, but I don’t think it works. The sale of recorded music remains an important component to your success, and taking away that potential revenue stream would only make it harder for you to succeed.

Pay What You Like?
This is an interesting concept, one that essentially allows your fans to pay what they can afford to for your recordings. You have to accept that some fans (perhaps many of them) will choose the “free” option, but it allows you (at the minimum) to collect an email address (and perhaps some other info) from each fan who downloads your music. Obviously, this model works best for artists like Radiohead, who have the reach and loyal following needed to turn a “pay what you like” release like In Rainbows into a huge success. But for smaller artists whose fans number in the hundreds, this model might not make it possible to recoup the cost of producing the album (much less make any money from its sales).

Stay The Course?
The existing model (presumably) exists for a reason, and if you can manage to collect $5-$10 from every fan who downloads your album (either directly from your website or one of the many digital online stores), you can carve out a living if you can build up a large enough fan base that’s willing to support you by paying the retail price for your music. This means, of course, that you’ll need to accept that many fans will instead choose the “free” route (downloading for free via a third-party file-sharing option) and that you won’t get the opportunity to connect with those fans and reach out to them on an ongoing basis (via an email newsletter, for example).

Band Letter Recommends…
I actually like a modified version of the “pay what you like” solution, where you offer the music for different prices depending upon the quality of the audio files. Here’s an example of how this would work:

• CD-Quality Audio (FLAC/lossless): $9.99
• High-Quality MP3 (320 kbps): $6.99
• Medium-Quality MP3 (192 kbps): $3.99
• Low-Quality MP3 (128 kbps): Free–>$1.99

For those super-loyal fans who care about quality (and want to support you), they’ll take the $9.99 or $6.99 option. And for the rest, offering lower-quality options at a lower price makes your music affordable to fans who are truly price/cost-sensitive. Is it a perfect solution? No, certainly not. But this option will enable you to achieve a favorable “average price” for all of the music that you sell. And realistically, the opportunity to grow you list – particularly if you give away the low-quality MP3 option for free – will enable you to gather the momentum needed to achieve far greater success with your next release.

1. They listened to your studio recording(s) and really liked what they heard.
2. They saw you perform live and really liked what they heard.
3. They think you’re interesting.
4. They think you’re hot.

In any of these cases, it should be quite easy for you to deliver. For the fans who liked your studio recording(s), your newsletter is an opportunity to invite them to attend an upcoming live performance. For the fans who liked the live performance, give them a free MP3 in the newsletter to pique their interest in purchasing one of your studio recordings. If they think you’re interesting and/or hot, keep on doing what you do and they’ll inevitably start looking into either buying your studio recordings or attending your shows.

In a nutshell, it’s all about building momentum and growing a fan base that’s mobilized to help you succeed. Take the time to engage your fans on a regular basis (ideally through both social media/networks and a regular email communication) so that they remain mobilized and so that their interest in you doesn’t fade. You want to succeed as a performer, and keeping your fans engaged is the most critical component to that success.

To this point, only my paid clients have benefited from that knowledge. But now, I’m making that information available to all musicians. Some of you might decide to start using my high-value service, many of you probably won’t. But either way, I hope you’ll find this website to be a very helpful resource.

The key to success for musicians today is to build strong relationships with their fans, and email is a very important component of that effort. Unlike social networks (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace), email is a direct one-to-one communication with your fans that doesn’t require the intervention of a third party. And that’s pretty critical, because while there’s no guarantee that Twitter/Facebook/MySpace will keep your fans engaged, with email you control directly whether your fans remain engaged and interested in you and your music.

This site will present you with a litany of great ideas for powering up your email newsletters. It will help you to better understand what CAN/SPAM compliance is all about, in plain English. It will point out great complementary resources to help you further your music career. And whenever I see a musician doing something truly innovative and/or revolutionary, I’ll be sure to share it with you.