Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Music Marketing Manifesto is a leading resource for today's DIY musicians, hosted by John Oszajca. John is a Music Marketing Expert, a Former Major Label Recording Artist, and one of the pioneers of Direct To Fan Marketing in the Music Industry.
You're listening to the music marketing manifesto podcast where you'll learn how you can use direct to fan marketing strategies to grow your fan base and generate income from your music with no record label, radio, airplay, touring, Alright. John O'Zaca here, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of the music marketing manifesto podcast. In today's episode, we're going to be discussing membership sites for musicians or or paid memberships, really, of all sorts for musicians. What do we mean by, that? What's a membership or what's a membership site?
John Oszajca:Effectively, we are talking about, password protecting premium content that you then charge your fans to have access to. We're gonna be talking about this, from a strategic approach, and then we're gonna be talking about it from a practical approach, you know, how to implement something like this and, of course, why you might want to in the first place. Before we get into that, I just kinda wanted to, talk a little bit more about AI and some developments that have happened in that space that relate to, musicians. This is something that, you know, I've been quite interested in. I've been talking about it in the podcast and in my private insider circle, coaching calls really for for more than a year now since the since ChatChiPT first hit the scene and the whole world, you know, caught this sort of AI fever or this AI arms race ultimately began.
John Oszajca:And, we've been I've been very busy with a lot of things and haven't released a podcast episode in a few months. And the last one was on AI, and it seems just so much is happening in that space that I think I think probably for the foreseeable future and these episodes, we'll probably need to do a little bit of catch up, just around that because it has such far reaching, what's the word I'm looking for, implications when it comes to just music and music marketing in general. Going forward, it's very clear that really everything is going to be affected by artificial intelligence and and really ultimately what's coming. So since the last episode, there have been a lot of developments. Some of the more significant ones are things, like very recently, the release of Claude 3, a new model that is outperforming chatgpt4 and a lot of different benchmarks and is just objectively speaking, really pretty impressive and pretty great for people who want to do creative writing, which is I know a lot of us, whether these are blog posts in our in our marketing or whether it's just getting assistance for all of the content we need to create from emails to, again, sort of blog posts or video scripts and, or or even creative projects like writing books and and things like that.
John Oszajca:That's been probably one of the big challenges around AI is just getting some getting an output that really doesn't feel cheesy, that feels authentic and is usable and replicates our own voice as much as possible. And Claude 3 from Anthropic, if you haven't tried it as of this recording, it's it's only a few days old. It does cost $20 a month to get access to OPUS, which is their premium model, which is I think when it comes to AI, if you're gonna do it, just pay the $20 and use the best there is because it's so it's always so much better. Same goes for ChechiPT with the paid plan versus the free plan, but it's it's it's looking pretty promising. There have been an enormous number of releases in the the AI music space.
John Oszajca:You know, I gotta I wanna stress anytime I talk about AI, especially here in the podcast, my personal interest is not around AI created music. I I really do believe that art needs to be sort of filtered through a sentient mind, and, you know, I don't know. We'll have to talk about it again when someone feels in or there's some consensus that AI has become sentient, but we're certainly not there now. And I just don't have any interest in artificially created songs, and I certainly don't think many of you as musicians will either. But I am very much interested in using AI to be more productive, and often that overlaps with music creation.
John Oszajca:There are many products out there. Kits dotai has been one that's been around for a while that can be used to now create models around various drum sounds or guitar sounds or even vocal sounds, and then you can throw in an input and transform that input, maybe a guitar sound that you make with your mouth or some drums that you tapped out with pencils, and then apply a model of John Bonham or something that you've legally licensed to actually use, and then and then your pencil taps sound like John Bonham, or your voice sounds like someone of a completely different gender, if you need some backup vocals, or your guitar tone suddenly sounds like your favorite guitarist. Or even more interesting are these implications around the fact that we can even go and take our own guitar tracks that are properly recorded. You know, go into a studio, lay down our vocals, lay down our guitars, lay down our drums, spend that money once, and then go in and record something in on our iPhones and then throw it through a model and suddenly we've got a kind of AI producer on hand. Lots of there's everything is still sort of influx in in developing the technologies there, but no one's done a a a perfect job of seamlessly putting it all together.
John Oszajca:But if you have a little know how and a little will, you can now do exactly what I just described, making it more possible for regular people without a lot of money to compete, which is really really interesting. And I think I think we're looking at a very interesting future where art is accessible to a lot more people, and I I I think there's a lot of questions around that for us as musicians. How do we feel about that? And I don't have the answers. I think there's a lot of cynicism around that because many of us feel we've worked for decades to build our skill set, and now someone can come in without putting in that time, without paying their dues in that sense, and create something that is just as competitive in many cases.
John Oszajca:So I I think there's a lot of cynicism around that, understandably, I think. But does that mean the cynicism is right? Shouldn't we as artists want to live in a world where there are more people creating art? What is this future going to look like when everyone, if they want to be, is an artist? And what does the future look like when jobs and potentially even income are replaced decades down the line, and we are left to just spend our time doing what we feel like doing.
John Oszajca:Where what what does the world look like? Do we all become artists? Is creativity an innate human state? Is that the world we're evolving to, or evolving towards? Again, I don't know the answers to these things, but I think the writing is on the wall that the world is going to shift dramatically and it's going to have it's going to transform creativity, and that's gonna affect all of us.
John Oszajca:I don't I'm not a sky is falling kind of guy when it comes to AI. I'm very excited about it. Certainly, in the short term, it is increasing our productivity, making things possible for all of us that were never possible in the past. But I think I think as the conversation is now literally turning around, AGI, artificial general intelligence, and and and whether or not that already exists, This is there are literally lawsuits being thrown around as we speak about, claims being made that it already exists. As we enter that world, it is completely inevitable that things are gonna change dramatically, and they're going to affect all of our careers and our lives.
John Oszajca:And, there I don't know. It's, we're there's no live audience here, so I can't ask those questions. But I I pose those questions for all of us to think about. I know it's something that I've certainly been thinking about. And I think I think it's really interesting this, idea of how do we feel about more and more people being able to create art.
John Oszajca:And I'm not talking about push button AI song creation. I'm talking about genuine creativity, where the average person without decades of experience can make a song that is not only commercially, viable but just maybe more appealing to them because it's their creation and it's about their experiences. What kind of room does that leave for us? Certainly, I think in the very short term, and, again, those are those are sort of big picture questions that aren't going to really impact our lives for for some time. But in the short term, I think there we're already seeing revenue loss and job loss.
John Oszajca:I don't have hard numbers on this, but I I I I only know as a creator that I'm licensing less music for background music, you know, utility music, music that is not so much something we're listening to as a fan as much as we are paying money for because we need it as part of our our our jobs, our creative jobs. I'm licensing less music because there are literally fantastic music generators that can generate scores or stingers or or sound pads that I can use in these videos. So I think people that have been making musicians who have been making a living around creating that kind of sort of utility music, and again, there's certainly no disrespect intended in in that choice of words. I mean purely that it's created sort of to serve a purpose, whether that's playing in a commercial setting, a restaurant, a yoga studio, or whether that's being created to be licensed through the song libraries as something to support maybe a video or or whatnot. I think artists who are making their revenue, their their income based on that are in real trouble, even though right this moment they you've probably not experienced much in the way of a dramatic revenue loss, because those playlists are still being played, I I think in the relatively near future, a year, 2 years, 5 years, I'm not sure that that will sort of be gone.
John Oszajca:Those people that need to play that music in their yoga studio or create that track for their wedding video that they're editing will will push a button and not only create a song that is exactly what they need, but even create a playlist that is tailored to their their customer base if it's in a commercial setting. So that's something that I think musicians that make that kind of music need to really be thinking about pretty seriously in terms of shifting their their models, so that they are prepared for, I think, what's coming. I think artists who build their fan bases and sell to those fan bases are sitting best in that, are best prepared for the coming changes. And, again, that's what we focus on around here. I don't I don't think AI is poised in any way to sort of replace that.
John Oszajca:I think fan fans of music, fans of artists, I should say, are seeking more than just the song. Yes. The song and the music is a big part of it, but it's also lifestyle, it's also culture, it's also connection to individuals, and it's also a want of being part of a tribe. But, so I I think if that's what you do, I don't think the sky is falling on you right now, But if that's not what you do, then that might be something you want to think about developing, because I think that's what it may take. There's also, of course, probably one of the last places to be touched by AI and all that is inevitably coming, is live music, and that's, I think, where we may see more and more focus, sort of going from fans.
John Oszajca:And I think we already see that for reasons even beyond AI, just the disposableness of the Internet. Over the last decade or 2, there's there's a real want to have that authentic experience in a live setting, and I don't I don't know that there's ever a world where AI will be better at that, than than human beings are. So I think that's another area for serious musicians who want to make their life in music is making sure that they develop those skills. Because I think the Internet and pro tools and the ease of creating music has has pulled more of that out of people's business models. There's a lot more creative track.
John Oszajca:3 days later, it's up on Spotify, and you're playing social media and algorithmic tricks to drive those numbers up. But I think that's going I don't think that's that viable now for most. I think I think that it's gonna become even less viable in the future because of AI. And I think that, again, authenticity, live music, and really creating connections with fans and focusing on selling, which leads into our bigger conversation here today with membership sites, but leading into selling over just streaming is just going to increasingly be more and more important. One other final sort of thing just to kind of talk about, I guess, because I think it's interesting and although it doesn't immediately perhaps dawn on people as being relevant to music is the release of it's not the release, the announcement, I should say, of Sura, the the the much talked about.
John Oszajca:I think everyone listening to this or watching this has has heard about Soora by now because it really made waves, out there in terms of mainstream media, not just within the AI space, but this, of course, is OpenAI's video generator that is creating just mind blowingly impressive videos up to a minute long that are for the most part, not completely. They've posted some bad examples as well, but for the most part, void of all of that weird AI morphing, that that we've all become accustomed to over the last year as AI video generators were released. So we're doing something different, and that is that, and I'm speaking very much sort of in layman's terms here in part because, you know, I'd I'd only understand these things so well. I'm not a data scientist. I don't know really, you know, the nuts and bolts of of how every aspect of this is working.
John Oszajca:And also because I think, you know, just to make it simpler to kinda digest, What my understanding, what seems to be happening with Soarer that that makes it so significant is that it's not just it's not just trained on images and then predicting. It's not what what what an image should look like as it carves noise into images, like more like Midjourney and some of the other, image generators out there, or or more like how they tend to work. Instead, it has a bit of, as I understand it, a world model. It's a it's a completely different kind of model that more closely understands physics. So instead of saying, well, if you want a picture, or if you want a video of a dog playing in the snow, which is one of SORA's examples, it's it's not just predicting which pixels should go where, it's predicting how snow should behave and a puppy's fur should behave in a certain kind of environment based on certain scale.
John Oszajca:And that's kind of mind blowing because as we have language models already able to do such an incredible job of of communicating and solving problems and expressing everything from from emotions to logic to solutions. Now we have models that understand how the world kind of, for lack of a better word, around them behaves when you combine effectively the 2, especially when you put it into something like robotics, which is very much being worked on, you have, or so it would seem, all the components for, if not literally sentient, at least for all in intents and purposes, an entity that acts and behaves like a sentient being, and that opens up all kinds of other philosophical conversations about what is sentience and and all of that. My personal feeling as as the world is talking about AGI, this first major benchmark in the advancement of artificial intelligence, is that functionally we we may already be there, in the sense that not not certainly not chatgpt or Claude, these are not this is not AGI, but algorithmically speaking, it might be all that is required for AGI when you add memory and a world model to the language model and the necessary compute to make everything work together, you we may already have artificial general intelligence at or at least, again, the this the what's the word I'm looking for?
John Oszajca:The science necessary to achieve AGI behind the scenes. And there's certainly many rumors swirling and have been for for months now about about perhaps OpenAI already achieving that. Claude 3 and Anthropic are trying to sort of imply that they've created it with some of their language. It's it's mostly being dismissed. Elon Musk is currently suing OpenAI claiming that they have achieved it and trying to force their hand in court to acknowledge, where they're at so that they can force certain changes with Microsoft, which would then release it again, to the public or make the technology more available to the public.
John Oszajca:So it's it's an incredibly interesting time, but but what I was all ultimately sort of getting at is my personal suspicion, and I and I don't know, I could easily easily be wrong here, is that we may have already achieved it and it may be one of those things that in a few years time the world is is kind of going, oh, we achieved this 3 years ago. I think we're all expecting this moment, almost like a spaceship coming down and hovering over the White House, where it is announced that AGI is here. And I think it I think while the effects in the of AGI will be so profound, the arrival of AGI may not be quite so obvious, and I think there's a decent chance it's already occurred. And it's just not the big moment that we all expected. It's a subtler it's a subtler moment where we realize it's a it's not exactly sentient.
John Oszajca:So it's more of a algorithmic potential than anything else, at least, again, initially until it starts to embody or in in until it starts to be used in conjunction with these other components. So such as having memory, such as having more compute, such as being installed in a robot that can engage with the physical world around it. But perhaps the components already exist. Perhaps some of these companies behind the scenes have realized that, are realizing that, and are already using it experimentally in some of these ways. I don't know, but it's fun to think about, and it's a really, really, really interesting time.
John Oszajca:If you're kind of behind the curve on all this AI stuff and you'd like to learn more, I have re released the Musicians AI Toolkit. It is no longer a live workshop, but the, all of the lessons and the recordings of the live workshops are all now made available, inside that members area. You can check that out by just going to music marketing manifesto.com, and from the products and services tab, you can now find the Musician's AI toolkit. Check it out, it's there for you should you want to up your game when it comes to artificial intelligence and use it, learn how to use it more specifically to ultimately market your music. That's really what where it focuses, using it to create marketing copy, using it to create music videos, using it to create images that you can use in your ads and in your your blog posts and all that other content, create t shirt designs and album covers and analyze your data to find exploited opportunities and everything else.
John Oszajca:So you can learn more about it, there. Just again head over to musicmarketingmanifesto.com and click on products and services and look for the Musician's AI toolkit, should you be interested. Alright. So that's just kind of just some, I don't know, me getting up on my soapbox a little bit and talking about AI. I hope you find it interesting.
John Oszajca:I certainly do, and I'm gonna continue to kinda just report on it and keep you guys generally abreast, of some of the major developments. This is something we do also regularly in our monthly coaching calls if, if you'd like to take part in those. Again, just head on over to music marketing manifesto. Com, and from that same drop down, you can find the insider circle, my private mastermind, where we get together once a week, have live coaching calls, and I talk about this stuff extensively as well as answer questions and give you music marketing advice, and then I release monthly training modules as well filled with helpful tips and strategies that will make you a better marketer for your music. Alright, so let's talk about membership sites.
John Oszajca:So what is a membership site? So I I you know I think I can't get out, I can't get unstuck from calling it a membership site which is really just something that us marketers have been saying for 10 or 15 years, but it's not really about a membership site anymore. So I need to stop saying that. It's about a membership. And we're all familiar with services like Patreon and they are effectively membership.
John Oszajca:So this is not particularly new. This has been around this concept of charging people for access to premium content. It has been around for quite a while. I remember covering the launch of Patreon. It's got to be now 12 years ago or something here on the podcast when they were brand new, and they've certainly taken the world by storm.
John Oszajca:And a lot of creators have embraced this model, I think, for really good reasons. It works really well especially when people are creating content that is hard to monetize such as YouTube channels, And while there are many many music creators on Patreon, it has been less widely embraced in the music space. Again, it's it's pretty widely embraced, but less widely embraced in something like youtubers, who it'd be abnormal for them not to have a patreon campaign, because it's such a good way to monetize, especially when you're growing and you have a fan base, but you're not quite big enough to pull in those those, sponsors. And it seems to fit so perfectly with music where we're in exactly the same place, especially if you're embracing streaming strategies and you're making such a small amount of money, but you may have a reasonable fan base. A few thousand people can that care about you and your music can generate you a lot of revenue each year.
John Oszajca:But a few 1,000 streams or even just a few thousand people streaming your music regularly isn't going to generate you much revenue at all. And I one of the things I talk about a lot around Music Marketing Manifesto and my courses and products and in my coaching calls and all, you know, what what one of the principles that is paramount to everything I've been teaching all these years is the need for musicians to embrace a sales model to actually be selling. Streaming is great. Streaming is fine. I'm not an anti streaming guy.
John Oszajca:But if I take 2 groups of musicians, you know, let's take 2 groups of a 100 musicians, just to be random, and I teach a hundred of them how to go and get more streams, and I teach a hundred of them how to go and build a email list and sell to that list. And I tell each one of them to try to make $5,000, far more of them are gonna make that $5,000 with a sales model. You need in reality a lot more than, for most of you, more than a1000000 streams to hit that number. But the the minimum number of streams of all your streams were high quality streams and first world markets, you know, you might make $5 with around a 1000000 streams. Again, for most of you, it'd probably be more like a1000000 and a half.
John Oszajca:And many artists are just never gonna hit those numbers. Many good artists are never gonna hit those numbers. Some will, but many will won't, certainly with any amount of repeatability and within a short amount of time. Whereas an artist who has embraced a streaming model and, say, selling even an album at $15 a pop, only needs to sell 350 copies. And there's no artist out there.
John Oszajca:Even the worst artists out there can sell 350 copies. When you add a funnel to that or even a couple of funnels, so, you know, you're you've got an upsell and a downsell, You've got maybe a follow-up promotion for a membership site. Maybe you're doing house concerts later in the year. If you add some additional profit points to that, you may need to only attract a 100, a 150 customers depending on what your follow-up promotions look like to make the same amount of money. And truthfully, everyone can do that.
John Oszajca:And I'm not necessarily well, I'm I'm not saying that you should embrace sales and ignore streaming. You should do both, but you should do you should embrace them both in complementary ways. But what I do wanna constantly get up on a mountain and scream out to every musician in the world is don't ignore sales models. We have this terrible habit in this industry, and it and it and it predates streaming, but this terrible habit in this industry of of trying to emulate the rock stars of the world and do what they're doing. But what they're doing works because there's usually, if not at least 100 of 1,000, even 1,000,000 of dollars behind them, and they're engaged in very expensive and very risky branding, branding strategies where you spend so much money that you create these tipping points of awareness, and at the end of it, you have a hit on your hand, on your hands.
John Oszajca:And you need to have a massive hit in order to make that money back. And we just can't do that when we have a few $1,000 to spend. Of course, there are exceptions. You can get struck by lightning and be one of the lucky ones, but that's not, you know, hope is not a strategy. And so so we need to build we need to engage in strategies that allow us to basically scale.
John Oszajca:And that means spend money and spend $1 and make at least $1.1, hopefully more, out the other end. And you can really only do that with sales models. Again, there are exceptions to every rule. You can, especially if you're if you get lucky along the way, you can theoretically spend enough money to algorithmically trigger organic growth with platforms like Spotify, but it's very, very, very, very hard. And there's a lot of, frankly, BS and hype and a lot of the claims wrapped around that.
John Oszajca:But, you know, it can it can theoretically be done, but just, again, it's way less consistent and predictable as artists building their mailing list and selling stuff to their mailing list. Now where am I going with all of this and how does this pertain to membership sites? Right now, we typically do this by selling an album. The album is still the product that the masses are familiar with. It is, obviously, a collection of music that we can justify charging a reasonable amount of money for, 10, 15, $20, and that allows us to run ads.
John Oszajca:Because if we have a really fine tuned funnel, then we can we can we can profit. We can at least break even, and we can grow that fan base, that list with without losing money. And then we can go back to that list with promotion after after promotion after promotion, making money indefinitely from from that one sign up, from that one initial conversion. But the album is problematic, you know, less and less people feel connected to the concept, the younger generations don't don't connect to it as much. And I don't wanna I don't wanna say that there's a lifespan on it, because I don't think I really believe that, and despite what people will tell you about, you know, how physical albums are actually dead, that's really not true in the independent space, it is industry wide, You can't you know, artists can't rely on selling physical albums if they're trying to blow up in the mainstream, and the amount of physical albums they sell is not going to be overwhelmingly significant, and that's unless you're one of the flukes like an Adele or a Taylor Swift who can release a special release or special pre order kind of release and and make a significant amount through through physical merch.
John Oszajca:But for the most part, the traditional physical album in the main stream industry is sort of dead, but it's not dead. I wanna stress this with independent artists, not because people are chomping at the bit to get a piece of plastic with cover on it from the artist they love so that they can put it into their car stereo and listen to it. That's not so much the thing. What it is is that the buying triggers for independent artists are very different than the buying triggers for mainstream artists. They buy from us not because we're the biggest greatest hit that is sweeping the nation by storm.
John Oszajca:They buy from us as independent artists because they feel a connection with us, because they're on our mailing list, because they follow us on social media or on YouTube or wherever we broadcast, and they feel a connection with us and they want to support us and they want to have something physical to commemorate that experience. So the album is still very viable, As the owner of of TunePipe, my website, and funnel builder platform for musicians, I see sales numbers all the time. Many artists are selling hundreds of CDs a day. There's a lot of revenue there, and I still think that well, not think. It is.
John Oszajca:I have they had to support that it is the best and most immediate way for an independent artist to sort of monetize a funnel and and to scale. But I do think we need to be careful there, and we can't the world is just gonna continue to change more and more and more, and we need to have other ways to monetize. And that's where the membership, comes in or a membership site. A membership, again, is a password protected area of your website that you charge fans to get access to, again, much like Patreon. But where Patreon not only takes a very significant percentage of your income, how much they take depends on your plan.
John Oszajca:I believe it can be as high as 20%. If not, it's certainly, commonly around 15%. Check out the prices and make sure what I'm saying is right there. I haven't looked in a little while, but, they take a significant percentage of your income. That's a lot of money.
John Oszajca:You make a $100,000, that's, you know, $15,000 or so that they could be taking from your your your revenue, but it's also they're controlling the entire experience. They're controlling the customer flow. They're controlling the customer data. They're controlling the brand. And then there are distractions on the platform where they've got millions of other users that your customers can become distracted by or engage with, which could cut into their engagement and their spending with you.
John Oszajca:So there are drawbacks. The the the big pro is that it's sort of easy and people are familiar with it, but we can do the same thing on our own platforms very very easily where we password protect either an entire site or an area of our site, which would be more common, and create our own brand, our own portal, our own world. We control the customer data. We control the customer experience, so we can present them with upsells and downsells and tag them and create automations to follow-up with them and all of those things in a much more precise way than we can when working with a third party platform, and more importantly we get to keep all of the money with the exception of whatever processor we're using that is inevitably going to take a percentage of your fees, usually around 3%. But that's a heck of a lot better than, you know, the those bigger numbers I was citing, like 15 or percent or more in some instances.
John Oszajca:So there are a lot of advantages to doing setting all of this up yourself. And while this is still somewhat anecdotal, I don't have, hard case studies on this because they're sort of just difficult to do. People tend to be a customer of 1 or the other. And, I just don't I have only a few reports from customers who have switched over to TunePipe and set up their own membership sites that they're actually converting better than they were with Patreon. So, again, that's anecdotal.
John Oszajca:I can't categorically say that, you know, this is always the case, but it appears to be. So there's no that was my concern initially is that the the brand awareness around Patreon might lead to greater conversions, but it doesn't appear to be the case, again anecdotally. But the way this works, and again you can set there are many different platforms that allow some version of this. Some are simpler paywalls. Some are complete password protected members areas.
John Oszajca:I as I mentioned earlier, I launched a platform a couple of years ago called TunePipe. TunePipe is a advanced website and funnel builder and email marketing tool and music store creator, and a bunch of other things, split testing tool and on and on, specifically designed for musicians. It's where most of my attention has has shifted over the last few years is is really building out that platform and providing what I believe is the best solution out there for musicians, who want a web presence. But one of the features that I didn't mention within TunePipe is the membership creator. And it's it's really simple to create within TunePipe.
John Oszajca:Again, TunePipe is not the only way to do this. You can even create this with an old fashioned HTML site or WordPress site. It's just depending on the platform, it might be easier or more difficult or more expensive. With WordPress, there are various plugins. There are some free ones, but inevitably you end up needing to upgrade to get the features that you want, in my opinion, and they can easily cost a few $100 a year, whereas it just comes with doom pipe, which starts at $20 a month, and you get all that other stuff that I mentioned as well.
John Oszajca:But the way it would work, and again, I'm gonna try to be speaking a little more broadly here, but I do wanna illustrate one setup flow, is that you would simply go in and create a membership group, and you could you could have multiple tiers. You can have a silver or what, a bronze, silver, gold or, you know, any number of tiers, really, and call them anything that you want, or just one tier, and you create a membership group around that, give it a name. So for example, it could be John O'Jakos Backstage Pass, for example, and then I can go and create pages, and when I create the page it's as simple as selecting, who has access to that page. Is this a public page, a password protected page, or a membership page? If I select membership page, then I select the group.
John Oszajca:So again, if it's if it's a particular tier that has access to it, I can tick that, and then in order for someone to view the content on that page, they have to log in and to get access, and when inside of TunePipe, when creating a product, you can select what kind of product you're creating, whether that's physical, digital, a service based product, or a membership product. And same thing, when you create that product by assigning a membership group, that customer will be asked to create a password when they purchase and then they'll be sent a login link and they can log in anytime, and they'll be redirected to your membership home page. You'd create a dedicated home page for that membership site. It can have its own header if you want. You can make it look and feel different from the rest of your site, whatever you want to ultimately do.
John Oszajca:And then you've got this little hub. Now this could be a single page or it could be an entire sort of website within a website, which tends to be how I do it. If you've ever signed up for any of my programs in the last couple of years, like music marketing manifesto, you've been inside an example of this. But again, what you sell, what you charge people access for, this is really can this can be anything that makes sense to you and your brand. So the obvious one is new music, and it can be that simple.
John Oszajca:A simple home page where you have a welcome message or a video, and then every month you're dropping a new recording, a new track, and charging people access for this. You could put a small monthly fee on this. It could be $1 a month, $3 a month, $10 a month, or you could put an annual fee on this. It could be, of course, a one time fee, but I think that would defeat a lot of the purpose behind how valuable this is. So you one of the things that I like is annual payments.
John Oszajca:So we try to close maybe a 20 or $30 sale, make it something a little more comparable to an album price. It always it usually pays to sort of start low and then try raising your price until you hit that drop off point where it no longer converts, and test a little bit to see how much you can ultimately charge, how much your fans will ultimately pay. And let's say you're charging 20, $30 a year to get access to that, that also lowers that that cancellation pressure. If a person is being charged every month and they're not logging in every month, which will happen to the best of us, because attention wanes. It ebbs well, it tends to ebb and flow, and if they're logging in if they're not logging in every month, the fans may tend to go, I'm just not using this, and cancel every single time they get billed that $5 a month or $3 a month or whatever you're charging.
John Oszajca:Whereas if it's an annual fee, then they're really not seeing that statement or that charge, but once a year. And as long as they're logging in occasionally and occasionally engaging with your emails and content, they can still feel good about that pretty affordable annual fee because they know they're supporting you, which should be a big part of the messaging around around the sale, around your selling proposition. So, once more from the fans perspective, what this feels like is just as you'd be promoting an album, you would promote a membership. If the prices are pretty comparable, again, you might you can probably justify a slightly more expensive membership, and you can make this as simple or as complex as you want it to be. I kinda I kinda brushed through that, but it could be, new music once a month.
John Oszajca:It could be an archive of all of your past music, it can be, a place where you put on live, streaming concerts once a month, you can hold live chats, you can do anything that you want. I would I would advise people not to make it too complicated or you're gonna have a hard time. It's gonna become this big amount of pressure for you to keep creating, the specialized content, but but as long as you make it manageable and you regularly release content and stay engaged with those fans in that password protected members area, then you you should do quite well. And I'm seeing many artists coming through Tune Pipe that are doing well with these membership models. So, again, what would that look like from a fan's perspective?
John Oszajca:Just as you promote an album on social media and in your email list, you're taking people to a sales page. But instead of selling an album, which is still very viable, but instead of just selling that album, you're asking you're explaining to people that you're making your music available in a different way. And what I would recommend is probably not limiting the music to only the members area, but making some of it exclusive to the members area and releasing it in advance to the rest of the world within the members area, and that will allow you to still do all of the other things, still print up that album and sell it to the people that want the physical copy, and you'll probably find a lot of your members also buy that, boosting revenue even more, but also allowing you to still release at least some, if not all of it, to the streaming platforms. And so, again, you're driving to a sales page, you're making the pitch, you're explaining how hard it is for independent artists, And by supporting this membership site, they're not only, helping you execute a sort of viable model as a struggling independent musician, but they're also just supporting you in a healthier music industry.
John Oszajca:And then, optionally, depending on the platform you're with, you have the ability to even upsell that. So, for example, that would be a great opportunity now that they've bought the membership site, or the membership. They would you like a physical copy when the album's released? An extra, $15. Would you like it to be autographed?
John Oszajca:An extra $5 and so forth. And, of course, you're tagging people based on their purchases. So you're you've got automated follow-up campaigns to market, complimentary or additional products down the line. And as always, you should be continuing to engage with them as well with regular free and entertaining content to sort of win that attention, so that you have the right to market to them occasionally over the coming years. So I I really think that, I again, I think through platforms like patreon that has already somewhat become the model, whether we connect to it in that way or not, but I think what's sort of missing from the equation is retaking control over this.
John Oszajca:It's crazy that we would spend or we would give 15% or more of our revenue. It's not it's not always that high. I should I should add in. It depends on what platform you're going with because there are other platforms that would allow you to do this as well. But it's crazy that we would give anywhere near 15% of our revenue just to do something that you can set up with a few clicks and that you can set up in a much, much cooler way that is more consistent is really no different than the marketing of an album, with the difference being that there needs to be supportive and clear language around the selling proposition.
John Oszajca:You're selling a better, more intimate experience. You're selling, hopefully better, more exclusive content that they get earlier than others might get it. In some cases, they get content that no one else will ever get. And in turn, you're also creating a very loyal tribe because you are engaging with this group regularly, and they're appreciating that engagement because they're spending money to get it. And that's, I think, what more and more, I think that's what the future of monetization is going to look like for independent artists.
John Oszajca:I don't see the album going away anytime soon in the literal sense or in the conceptual sense, but it it isn't something that we can rely on being there as a point of monetization forever, especially as younger generations that never bought albums mature. And I think the solution is, without question, memberships. Whether you go out and do it through a patreon, which you absolutely can do, or you set up something custom yourself, or you go and set up something through a service like mine, through tunepipe.com. I see this as the way that most musicians are making the majority of their revenue in the coming years. It already is for many, and I I see a lot of these artists through tune pipe, but I think that this is something that we should be targeting and thinking about as musicians.
John Oszajca:Because if you're not going after sales, then you are leaving money on the table, and the amount of money you're leaving on the table is, in many cases, going to be the difference between being profitable, being able to scale, being able to grow, or not. Because if there's not sales revenue, if there's not these 20, $30 purchases coming in as a result of every conversion, then you're you're most of you are never going to be able to spend money on advertising. And without spending money on advertising, you can't scale. You can't grow fast enough. You're going to have to go out there into the real world and tour and shake hands for the rest of your lives.
John Oszajca:And for some, that probably still sounds romantic, but it's very, very, very difficult to maintain, and it's very healthy. If you can do it, you should do it. There'll be no more valuable experience for you as a musician. But it it isn't it is impossible for a lot of people, people with families, people that can't afford to pay band members. And it's not ideal for people who want some semblance of normality in their life and don't wanna be on the road forever.
John Oszajca:So if if that's, if that's a factor for you and it's a factor for most, then you need advertising to do that job for you, that job of growing your audience. And you can't do it if you're making 0.003¢ per conversion. But you can do it if you're making 15, 20, $30 per conversion. And if you are gonna embrace a sales model, then you really, really, really should be looking at subscriptions, and that means a membership. So that's my 2¢ about membership sites, food for thought.
John Oszajca:If you ever have any questions about this, leave a comment below this video, if you're listening if you're watching it somewhere, get in touch at musicmarketingmanifesto. Dot com, shoot me an email if you're listening to this somewhere, and if you'd like to learn more about, how you can use TunePipe, the service that I own and mentioned earlier to set up your own memberships, then head on over to tunepipe.com. It's free to try. You get 14 days for free. Prices start at just $20 a month if you want to stick with us.
John Oszajca:I just absolutely love the platform and the feedback from people who've been using it has been been tremendous. I believe it can absolutely, help any artist that makes that switch, and me and my team are always here to help anyone who's interested in getting their website and funnel and email marketing and membership site, up and running. Alright. So once more, musicmarketingmanifesto.comtunepipe.com. You can always reach me, by reaching out or sending an email to support at musicmarketingmanifesto.com.
John Oszajca:Until next time. Thank you and take care. Thanks for listening to the Music Marketing Manifesto podcast. If you'd like to learn more about how you can market your music using the direct to fan strategies discussed on this show, then head on over to music marketing manifesto dot com and sign up for your free copy of the music marketing blueprint. Once again, that's music marketing manifesto.com.