Join the movement

Join the movement!

Join the movement!

Friend Fatigue

728x90 V1 (no image)

Join the movement!

Must Read

Ari Herstand
Ari Herstand
Ari Herstand is a Los Angeles based musician, the founder and CEO of Ari’s Take and the author of How to Make It in the New Music Business.
Share this:

You won’t have fans at your earliest shows; you’ll have friends supporting you. This is crucial for your early shows. You need to show the clubs that you can get a crowd out. The clubs don’t care if the 50 people you bring out all live on your dorm floor or if they’re long time fans and own your entire discography. 50 tickets is 50 tickets.

+50 Is The Magic Number

The trick is to move from a friend-based crowd to a fan-based crowd. This is a slow process and you most likely won’t have a definitive moment where this transition happens. One day, you’ll look out and realize you don’t recognize the majority of the people in the room. That’s when you’ve achieved the next level.

There’s no easy way to get here. Because you want to get people out to every show, you’ll want to bombard your friends with show invites. You have to be smart about which shows you tell people to come to and make sure you space out your important local shows. You can’t expect your friends to come to every show especially if you’re playing multiple times a month.

Each show should be unique. If you’re playing a club on campus then invite just your friends who go to the college or live near by. If you’re playing a club downtown then invite those you know typically head downtown. If you’re playing a club where you need to prove to the booker that you can bring a crowd then invite everyone and push this hard.

+Shows Sell, Events Sell Out

It’s tempting to invite everyone you know to every show, but this will burn out your friends and eventually none of them will come to any show.

Facebook isn’t everything. If you haven’t noticed yet, Facebook events are not the best at gathering accurate numbers of who is coming or not. This is especially true with concerts. Don’t invite every friend to every show. I learned this the hard way. I used to invite every single Facebook friend to every single show I had anywhere in the country. I thought “well even if they don’t live anywhere near this place they may have friends that do and they can tell them about it.” This is a nice thought and may work sometimes, but if you are in the stage where you really rely on friends coming out to shows, rally everyone up around one show every two months or so. It’s better to have 75 friends at one show than 10 different friends at 10 shows.
+It Doesn’t Take A Web Genius

+How I Got 250 To My Debut CD Release

If your friends enjoy seeing you they’ll happily come out more often and will go to your website or Facebook page and find out when you’re playing next and show up even if you don’t personally invite them. However, if you invite them to every single show they’ll most likely never come out because they will get annoyed with all the requests or they’ll think that because you play so often they’ll just catch the next one.

+Shows sell, events sell out

About The Author

Ari Herstand
Ari Herstand
Ari Herstand is a Los Angeles based musician, the founder and CEO of Ari’s Take and the author of How to Make It in the New Music Business.

Join the movement!

Previous article
Next article
Ari's Take Academy
Advertisement
Tunecore_2024_300x600

Podcast

Mixing SZA, Engineering Bob Dylan, Collaborating with Rick Rubin

This week, Ari is joined by grammy nominated engineer and producer Dana Nielsen, to discuss his career journey, collaborating with award winning artists, and making it as a mix engineer.
Advertisement
300X600 V2 (no image)

Related Posts