Introduction

Hello and welcome to RaggStar! This free resource is for creatives that are committed to growing themselves as artists and entrepreneurs. We created this resource because we wish someone sat us down and shared this information with us when we first started our music careers. Being an independent artist can be equated to a small business owner starting their venture. There is no help, no capital backing, and no formal education that ever outlines the steps and processes that it takes for artists to succeed in the modern world. Our belief is that education can bridge the gap between the conglomerate of major labels that make up the music industry and the everyday aspiring artist who dreams of a vision bigger than themselves. The mission here is to to give you a knowledge base and step-by-step guides for building a successful music career in the 21st century. In a world where everyone is in it for themselves, we want to be the one resource that invests everything we have to offer back into you - The Artist.

Finding Your Sound & People

First things first, let us discuss the fundamentals. Behind every great artist is a great production team. The producer’s job is to help find their artists sound and hone in on that uniqueness. Your sound is your brand. Your particular sound will attract a particular fanbase. For example, Lil Baby came up in the Rap game as a street/trap rapper. His initial fanbase consisted of mainly young black people in the inner city of Atlanta. Then as he got bigger and bigger his fanbase slowly expanded to different demographics. Another good example is Peso Pluma, he is a hot new buzzing artist that has taken off in the last year. He ushered in a new genre coined Corridos Tumbados. This is a modern take on the “corridos” genre, which are Mexican narrative songs, or ballads, that often recount a heroic struggle. This style of music first became popular with the people of Guadalajara, a city in Western-Central Mexico. From there the fans carried over into the mainstream. Essentially, between these big names that you see today, they all have core fanbases. Fanbases that are going to stick with them through thick and thin. They will buy their merch, their concert tickets, and will always listen to their music no matter how experimental they get. All of the other fans may come and go in waves but these guys will stick with you till the end. These “core fanbases” are what we are going to teach you how to build.

Step #1 is finding your sound. This is going to be the most crucial and typically the hardest for artists just starting out. What you need to do in order to find your sound is record, record, RECORD! We cannot emphasize how important this is. We have worked with hundreds of artists over 4 years. We see a lot of them give up wayyy too fast because they can’t quite find the sound they are looking for, get frustrated, and then quit 🙁. On the other hand we see artists that may come back to us after 2+ years of recording without putting a single song out just to find the sound they feel comfortable with. In the recording world, we call this “finding your pocket” or finding your niche. You will need to continuously experiment with yourself in order to find out these key 5 characteristics about your artistry.

1. What type of beats do you record over?
2. What is the message you deliver in your songs?
3. What kind of cadence or “flow” do you use?
4. What genre of music do you fall under?
5. Who are you in your music? Who is the character you’re portraying?

The biggest issue I see with new artists when they first start recording is their confidence level. Now just like anything else, the skill of being a recording artist comes with time. Confidence is key when recording ANYTHING. You can’t hide from the mic. Your music is a portrayal of you. An embodiment of what you stand for. That is why so many listeners and fans feel like they know an artist through their music, even though they have never met them in real life. Because their confidence and message is so clear and concise they make the listener resonate with them. Feelings, emotions, and perspective are being translated through a 3-minute waveform. Finding your sound will be hard, but not impossible. Once you have it down and can replicate that sound from song to song, that is when you have lightning in a bottle.

Awesome! Time for Step #2. Now that we have your sound figured out, it’s time to learn about your audience. In the world of music analytics we like to call this your “target demographic”. So, how do we go about finding your audience? It is actually very simple. You put your music out and show it off to as many people as you can. The people that stick end up being your demographic. Now let’s dig into what a demographic actually is. I am not talking about white, brown, or black people here. I am talking about cultural demographics. Let me give you some examples: Think Erykah Badu. Who do you know that listens to her? Young spiritual women that burn sage everywhere they go, wear crystals as jewelry, and believe in horoscopes just a tad bit too much. No offense. “None taken”. Ok moving on who do you know that listens to Playboi Carti post 2020. Suburban highschool kids that smoke weed and max out their screen time on the internet. If you’re reading this btw, thanks for being here, we appreciate you. But that’s what I am getting at here. There are specific groups of people in our world that will gravitate to your music and you will attract them with your style and brand. Whoever those people may be to you, you need to find them. Once you find them you need to love them and cherish them because those people could end up paying your bills one day. Now let’s talk about how to find them.

The easiest way to start finding your audience is by rallying the people who are already around you. Odds are, you have friends with similar tastes and interests. This is natural human behavior. We gravitate towards like-minded people. So, you need to start exposing your art to those around you. Allow them to step into your world by being authentic and previewing your projects to your family and friend group. Depending on how introverted or extroverted you are, this could be anywhere from 5-50 people. This may sound like a small number, but do not get discouraged. Let me introduce you to the Law of Compounding. The Law of Compounding states that the maximum benefit and momentum comes the longer you are in or doing it, rear loaded nearer or at the end. In simple terms, the longer and more consistent you are in doing an activity, you will reap the maximum benefits possible. In this case, the longer you continue to get people to listen to your music and the longer you work on your craft, the bigger the benefits will be to you. More paid shows, more streams, more impact to your fans.

Here is some simple math. Let’s say you get 30 people to stream your song 10 times each - that would be 300 streams. Sounds pretty doable right? Now let’s say that those 30 people each recommended your song to 1 other person. Now you have 60 listeners streaming your song 10 times. Now you have 600 streams. And guess what, you did not have to do a lick of work for the last 300 streams. Now let’s add time into the equation. Repeat what we did but with only 10 people per day for a whole year. You now have 3,650 listeners each streaming your song at the least 5-10 times for the lifespan of each listener. Now you have over 35,000 streams on ONE SONG. And this is at the least. At bare minimum. This could very well multiply by 10x by your fans sharing it with their friends and so forth. And listeners could easily reach up to 50-100 plays during their lifespan if they enjoy your music, which they will, because you are an awesome artist 🙂. Now disclaimer, this does take time and consistent effort. But just like anything else in life, nothing worth having ever comes easy. The longer you stay consistent, the sweeter the fruits of your labor will be.

Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.

Albert Einstein

Show Up and Show Out

The theme of this section is exposure, exposure, exposure. If you couldn’t tell, this is Step #3 The pandemic is over! You need to get outside and showcase your artistry. Why is this a big deal you ask? Performing live and in front of a real crowd will bring you more connections and fans faster than anything else, with the exception of going viral on the internet. But we’ll talk about going viral in another article. Why going to open mics and showcases is pertinent for your fanbase growth is because you can show your real personality and make genuine connections with other artists and their fanbases. Music is an emotional relationship. Humans have cathartic responses to music. If you can make the crowd feel your music, you have won them over! They are bound to check out your music if you do the proper follow-up methods that we will lay out. The key is to get in front of as many people as possible. This will require a little bit of grit and hustle. Remember, being an artist and building your fanbase is just like a business owner building their clientele. Both parties need to expose their talents and value that they bring to the consumer or listener. You never know who is in the crowd while you are performing. The owner of the venue could have ties to music executives, someone in the crowd may become your biggest fan that day. You never know what will happen until you get out there and network. This is going to be scary and nerve-racking at first, but going back to the Law of Compounding, this will get way easier and even more beneficial over time. We need to embrace failure - which is the best teacher you could ever ask for. The faster we get out there and fail, the closer we are to winning and getting our desired result.

Follow-Up Religiously

Now let’s talk about following-up. Step #4: After you have a great performance and rock the show, you need to interact with the audience and other artists in the program. Compliment other artists, ask about how your performance was to get feedback. You will be surprised how open people will get if you just make the first move in approaching them. Once you are conversing with people from the audience, this convo needs to lead into getting their contact information. After the night ends, you should have a good amount of new contacts in your phone. This will vary depending on the size of the program but you should easily be able to get 5-10 contacts per show. In order to organize all of your new contacts to make the process of following up seamless. I recommend an app like Notion(it’s free) to customize your CRM(Customer Resource Manager). Here is a link to a good template: Click Here to Download your CRM Template.

Within the following days, you will need to follow-up with the new contacts they made. Let them know about any other shows you have, any new music coming out, or even make plans for a collaboration. This is how further your relationship with your network and create relationships in this industry. Is this a tedious process? Yes it can be, but there are ways to automate this process once you start growing your network. The key focus here is to keep contact with your network, so that you will always be top of mind for them. Whether you are dropping something new or you just want to share something you have learned, you have a large network of contacts to talk to and inform about what’s going on in your life. And in todays world, everyone is interested in people that are doing cool things. That is why Youtube vloggers are so popular. They display their flashy lifestyle and their viewers tune into watch it for entertainment. If you are anything like me, you’ll think it is weird, which it is. But in order to to achieve and remain successful we must all adapt to modern times. Modern problems call for modern solutions. And being able to have a list of useful contacts that you could call upon at anytime is invaluable. Once you start getting shows, brand deals, and promotions, you can just let your list of contacts know about it and they will support you.

Typically you will see about a 40-60% conversion of your contacts if you are consistent with keeping up with them. So lets say you have a show this Saturday and you need to bring a crowd. For every 1000 contacts you have, around 400-600 people may show up(barring that it is free and they live close by). If you are asking them to buy something or spend money, the conversion rate will go down to 10-20%. But this is completely normal. That is why you have to always be expanding your contact list. Now even if you do have a paid show and you call upon your 1000 contacts, at only a 10% conversion rate, 100 people buying tickets at let’s say a $20 entry fee just generated $2000 for you, just like magic! Now imagine if your list has 10,000 contacts! Now we are talking real money being generated from your list.

Rinse and Repeat

These 4 steps detailed in this article are all you need to start growing your fanbase. All you have to do is put your head down and do the work, stay humble, and never give up. We want to let you all know right now that this is not a get rich quick scheme. You will not be an overnight success. This could take years and years of work without reward. It is easy to get carried away with the delusions of social media and the “overnight successes” that you see on those platforms. But here’s the thing. There is no such thing as an overight success. What you see on social media are the highlight reels of people’s lives. No one ever shows the time in their life when they are broke, out of shape, and depressed. This takes takes years of consistency. Some of y’all may read this and have exponential growth within the year. For some, it may take 2+ years. The point is, it doesn’t matter. As long as you are doing the input required for your desired output, you are going to get there. These 4 steps that we have outlined are not sexy. This is not a content scheme to blow your IG followers up in 30 days. This is the boring, tedious, mundane work that no one else wants to do. Fall in love with the work and the results will come easier than anything else you could imagine. There has been a power shift in the music industry within the last 5 years. The major labels no longer can provide the same value that they used to do. With the emergence of TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and IG Reels. The power is back in the voice of the artist. You can build your audience and generate massive revenue on your own using the 4 steps outlined above. We wish you the best on you journey and we will continue to provide all we can to get you over the mountain top