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These first few months at Play2Fund have been extremely enlightening. Musicians are true entrepreneurs. They develop a product, they figure out how to execute a marketing campaign, they deal with lawyers, with cash flow, with investments, they create an audience, etc. Isn’t that more or less what an entrepreneur does?

The COVID era has caught many entrepreneurs unprepared. Artists are not the exception. When I say unprepared, I mean that they haven’t created a fluent relationship with their audience. They’re not ready to sell tickets for a virtual concert, or open an online workshop about songwriting, or offer remote recording sessions.

However, there’re other artists that already paved that road. They’re selling tickets for concerts happening at their own home, they’re teaching online, they’re doing payed posts on Instagram for companies interested in their audience. What have they done and what can other artists learn from them?

They crafted a strong and updated mailing list. For years, every time they’ve a concert, they put out a form where people can subscribe. They gathered hundreds of emails over the years of people that are already familiar with their music. They usually have a pop up in their website where you can subscribe. They’re constantly updating this form, and they’re careful not to spam their fans.

We’ve also seen that artists with successful campaigns at Play2Fund usually raise at around 20% of the goal before sharing it on social media. They call one on one their most loyal fans and ask them to join the campaign. When they share the campaign with the bigger audience, they already raised some money. As a fan/donor, it’s not very appealing to donate to something that has raised $0.

Another thing that I find very interesting is that the amount of followers is not equal to the money they raise. We’ve had artists with +100k followers that couldn’t reach the goal, and artists with a few thousand followers that were able to surpass the goal even before the concert started. It’s not about how many followers you have but how you connect with them.

Congratulations to all the artists keeping music alive, and if you can support any of these campaigns, please consider that. A world without music, wouldn’t make sense.

Nacho González Nappa

Co-Founder