How to Support Your Favorite Bands and Musicians

The world, you have concluded, could be a a lot better place if it had been listening to the songs and attending the performances of your favourite lesser-known indie band.

Whether you discovered this favourite musical act on a curated Spotify playlist or bought hooked when serendipity put you close to their stage at a music competition, you need to share these golden hooks and candy vocals with the entire world. These are your jams. You are a fan.

But with the music business upended in the previous few a long time by the rise of MP3s and streaming, the pandemic shutdown of touring and reside music, and now a future that might embrace AI-generated tunes, many musicians are struggling to make a residing. The pennies they earn from streaming providers mixed with live-gig ticket income, merchandise gross sales, and attainable promotional offers might barely cowl bills.

That’s the place the fandom is available in. Those who really need the acts they love to succeed have a lot of methods to present help and make it possible for the music continues and these creating it receives a commission. Here’s how one can be a greater fan. 

How to Support Musicians in Person

The most evident means to assist musicians is by shopping for their music, shopping for tickets to attend their reveals, and paying for official merchandise.

But there’s some nuance to spending these {dollars}. For occasion, if you’d like to purchase posters, T-shirts, and vinyl albums for a musician, one of the best place to do that’s immediately, at a reside present, the place the artists might give you the chance to pocket as a lot as 100% of merch desk gross sales. 

That’s preferable to shopping for from, say, Amazon, and even the band’s personal web site, the place delivery and different charges may apply, or printing and manufacturing prices might take a chew out of the underside line (for them and for you). The price of shopping for at a present may be increased, but it surely’s more likely these {dollars} will go to the musician, not the retailers and delivery firms.

And in the event you purchase a T-shirt or hoodie, clearly, sporting it in public can increase consciousness of the musician; it is free promoting for the artist.

Artists make a lot much less cash from music gross sales than they used to, however shopping for vinyl albums or CDs at a present nonetheless makes a distinction. You can stream your favourite artist all you need (we’ll discuss that in a bit), however buying bodily media is an effective means to put cash of their pocket.

Some bands may additionally have a donation or tip jar on their web site or might supply crowdfunding campaigns for brand new albums or excursions.

How to Support Artists Online

David Lowe, who performs as LUCKYKAT, has a nice record of the way followers might help musicians, a few of them totally free. Among his ideas are following artists on social media, tuning in to livestreams they could be doing on Twitch or different video providers, signing up for his or her mailing lists, fan golf equipment, or newsletters, and sharing and commenting on their songs and posts. The latter few of these might help increase the artist’s publicity and encourage more and more algorithmic social networks to present their content material to different customers.

Streaming an act’s songs on providers like Spotify and Apple Music might generate solely a fraction of a fraction of a penny, however these streams do add up. It might solely be just a few hundred {dollars} for an act with an energetic fan base, however that is not nothing. So even in the event you personal their vinyl album and play it religiously, preserve these digital streams going, particularly whenever you’re on the go. Write critiques or submit constructive feedback in locations the place that is an possibility, akin to on YouTube or SoundCloud.