The 4 Steps to Strategically Market Your Music
The 4 Steps to Strategically Market Your Music
Why Going Viral Doesn't Matter Without A Strategy
I'm gonna trade this life for fortune and fame.
I'd even cut my hair and changed my name
'Cause we all just wanna be big rockstars
—Nickelback, 2005
There are libraries1 of books about how to strategically design your tech startup before first incorporating.
The people who get into startup culture—The Tech and Finance Bros—carefully2 consider the key metrics they’re looking for. They’ll design their business around them. Then they plan a rough map of how to get there.3
Musicians, on the other hand, are notorious for hyperfixating on the artistic aspects of their performances…often at the expense of their overall financial success.
It doesn’t matter how good you are at performing unless you’re:
Lucky
Good at Marketing
Both
But what happens if you combine the knowledge of both?
What if you combined the foundational principles of marketing & performance acumen?
In this post, an interview with an investment banker-turned-artist & record label John Michael VanSant (JM) shows how marketing fundamentals are vital to success in the music industry.
Music to My Ears: An Actual Marketing Strategy
“Stick it to the man”: A common refrain from musicians throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries.
From the Ramones to Rage Against The Machine, musicians have been either open skeptical or actively opposed to commercialization of their work.
…Bands had long taken pride in doing things themselves: writing their own music, recording their own albums, finding a label who appreciated and supported their vision, and booking their own tours.
Their musical life was their thing. They made it, uncompromised….
I’m no expert on the band experience, but having lived this as a listener, selling out put you in a bind
— Aaron Gilbreath, “Selling Out” from Alive in the Nineties
But times change. The stigma against ‘selling out’ faded going into the early 2000s. It turns out it’s hard to accept no help and still grow.
Bands eventually found that the flexibility and connections of capital investment often outweighed the additional structure they required.
Hoping that your performance would go viral isn’t a business plan4.
"Don't make "hope" your business plan. It's not enough to want it. You have to work it!"
—Mary Christensen
As JM has learned through years of musical (and business) experience, having a real marketing strategy is a key part of making it in music. He’s paired his personal artistic brand with the business steadiness of his record label—Rabbit Records.
Without any formal marketing training, JM has rediscovered the 4 Ps of marketing—and put his unique spin on them.
By analyzing the music industry strategically, JM is able to grow his reach without resorting to hacky performance marketing tactics.
His strategy revolves around a musical form of product-led marketing:
Start with the Product: The end customer’s feelings that his music produces are the core focus for JMs’ marketing strategy.
Decide on the Place: Once he’s developed the product, he designs and decides the physical place to further define the experience.
Promote Your Experience: With product and place solidified, he matches the experience so far with how it’s promoted—channels, formats, and tone.
Create Customer-Centered Pricing: Only with everything else defined, he then decides on what pricing strategy he will use—how can he make buying a ticket feel like a value-add experience?
Interestingly enough, JM’s self-developed marketing strategy aligns with other industry marketing approaches.
Sherwood Fellow’s5 industry-agnostic approach to long-term growth highlights similar potential pitfalls—for example, focusing on marketing tactics (e.g. social media posts) before building a strong core brand, product, and strategy.
In this post, we’ll dive into the first part—how JM thinks of his ‘product’ in the music industry.
1. Start with the Product
The Customer Is The Center
In discussing the 4 Ps of marketing with JM, it becomes evident how important the concept of 'product' is in the music industry.
JM's approach to his music shows how he treats the customer’s experience of the music as the product.
For him, music is not just a collection of sounds. It’s an an experience that intertwines with the listener's emotions and memories, aiming to offer something genuinely valuable and unique.
He developed this product approach over time after feeling like he was ‘streaming music into the void’ trying to make the next pop viral single.
It used to want to put out one folk single that's gonna break through and then it was like I wanted to make music that's so good [that it] would go viral.
I was trying to make music for everybody…I [wanted to] make music that's [meant for] every single playlist on Spotify. It's gonna be on every chart
Instead, you need to make music for your circle. And once your circle starts starts to like it, then it's going to grow.
Because it's targeted, it's personal, and even people that don't live here, they hear me singing about something personal in my life, and they're gonna relate it to themselves
This approach mirrors product strategy in marketing. In product strategy, differentiation and a unique value proposition are key to attracting and retaining customers.
In this case, trying to sell a commodity—wannabe viral pop—turns out to be really hard. It’s much harder than selling a product with a niche audience—a specific feeling for a targeted group you already know.
The Building Block Effect
JM runs both his own artist roadmap and a record label for other artists.
He thinks of his record label as an "investment bank for artists." JM emphasizes the role of the label in treating artists as products that need investment—not as resources to extract, but rather something to nurture.
He’s creating reusable musical ‘building blocks’ so that strategies that work can be repeated and improved—a practice that has worked for Tesla and SpaceX
JM’s perspective aligns with product management in traditional marketing. There the goal is not only to launch a product but to grow and adapt it to meet the evolving needs and preferences of the market.
His music has changed over time as he has figured out what resonates with his audience. And now he can use those practices to guide other artists, repeatably.
2. Decide on the Place
JM's approach to selecting venues for his performances fills the the role of 'place' in the marketing mix.
His choice of venues and the emphasis on creating a specific ambiance directly speaks to the importance of ‘place’ in enhancing the overall experience of his music—working in tandem with the effort he’d put into the ‘product’ development earlier.
This strategy isn’t just about where the music is played. It’s also about aligning the venue with the artist's brand identity and the audience's expectations. It wouldn’t make any sense to play a chill lofi concert in a meatpacking factory—but a punk concert might go nicely there
The venue becomes an extension of the product, adding to the narrative and experience that JM aims to deliver.
His selection and use of venues mirror the marketing principle that 'place' is not merely a physical location—it’s a platform through which products (in this case, musical experiences) are presented to the target audience in the most effective manner.
Just as a luxury brand might select high-end boutiques in affluent neighborhoods to reinforce its brand image, JM selects venues that reinforce the intimate, high-quality nature of his performances. The venue selection ensures that his music is experienced in a context that reflects its value and his artistic vision.
“Selecting the right venue is about finding the perfect backdrop that complements and elevates the experience,” JM states. Small business owners can draw parallels in the careful selection of business locations or event venues that reflect and reinforce their brand identity.
3. Promote Your Experience
JM’s promotional strategy exemplifies a balanced integration of traditional and digital marketing techniques.
While leveraging social media platforms for broader reach—but not relying too heavily on the ‘easy’ channel6—he places a strong emphasis on direct, personal engagement through physical flyers and face-to-face interactions.
"I don't find [social media] to be the most effective for actually…converting into into ticket sales.
I have found the most effective [channel for conversions is] in person.
‘Hey, I'm JM. Here's what we're doing. If you don't already know me, and here's a flyer”
This blend of digital and traditional methods highlights the effectiveness of a multi-channel approach in building brand awareness and fostering community.
“The most successful marketing strategies are those that create real, tangible connections. It’s about making an impression that sticks—for me usually with a flyer or a personal conversation,” JM says.
This approach illustrates the power of personal touch in a well-rounded promotion strategy.
4. Create Customer-Centered Pricing
JM chooses intimate settings that match the event's intended size to the feeling of the music.
By controlling the size and type of venue, he effectively manages the accessibility of his music, creating a sense of exclusivity and scarcity that can enhance demand.
JM approaches pricing while balancing the feeling of fair value exchange and scarcity to create compelling offers.
I do use scarcity as the way to determine my pricing.
The goal is to get to the point where people are like: “oh, ****, we gotta get the tickets before they run out.”
This perspective highlights the importance of value-based pricing strategies for small businesses seeking to differentiate themselves in competitive markets.
Conclusion
JM’s journey through the music industry provides a rich source of inspiration for aspiring ‘creators’—even though he hates the terms ‘content’ and ‘creator’.
He shows that creativity isn’t stifled by strategy—the strategy is needed for sustained growth.
JM flipped the script on ‘selling out’.
He’s using tried-and-true marketing strategies to stay artistically genuine without throwing away the chance for growth.
JM's story is a lesson for anyone who wants to turn their passion into a career.
By thinking carefully about what you're offering, where you're offering it, how you tell people about it, and what you charge, you can make your dream a success. Whether you're in music or any other business, these ideas can help you grow in a smart way.
Embracing these core principles can ensure that you have long-term, stable growth.
Usually
Generally these metrics are VC-oriented rather than pure business-oriented, but they’re considered regardless
It’s not a plan unless you have a strategy to take full advantage of the virality *before* you go viral
A friend’s marketing consulting company
I say ‘easy’ because using social media can be a trap where things that feel useful are just playing into the social media company engagement algorithms