When You Don’t Need New Fans

When You Don’t Need New Fans

When live music and touring start buzzing again (and fear not, it will) there’s going to be a new amphitheater in Nashville called Graystone. It’ll be kinda like Red Rocks. Cut out of a quarry, really beautiful.

In order to sell out that venue you’ll need five thousand people.

Not five thousand and one. Not ten thousand. Five thousand of the kind of people who will buy a ticket to see you play.

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One of the oldest, iconic venues in Nashville is called Exit/In. It’s a mid size club and just about every touring artist has rolled through there.

In order to sell out that venue you’ll need five hundred people willing to buy a ticket.


So why does this matter?

Whether the goal is five hundred ticket buying fans or five thousand, it’s helpful to decide when you’re going to stop putting your time and energy into trying to convert new fans.

If need to sell out Graystone and you accomplish that, the prize is that you no longer need to sell to any new customers. You did it. You get to put all your focus on thrilling the fans you have.

And the same thing applies with Exit/In. If you have five hundred eager ticket buyers, that can be enough to wash your hands of ever having to advertise to strangers.

This is not to say that the number of people who come to see you can’t or won’t grow or that you should never consider growth. It’s about where you’re putting time, energy and recourses and the reasons why.

When are you going to stop focusing on new people and simply focus on the ones you have?

You get to pick that point, whatever the number you want, but you have to pick.


***Seth Godin has been talking about this idea, the smallest viable audience, for a long time. Start here and here.

***And the best way to sell five hundred tickets at Exit/In is to have two hundred and fifty excited fans and then incentivize each of them to bring a friend.

***Two ways to get new people. You promoting to new people. You giving your fans a reason to tell others.

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Drop me an email: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com

Another Chance At A Playlist

First Monday of the month, new Hum Love playlist on Spotify and Apple.

If you’re in the music business and you’re not making a playlist on a regular basis, it’s worth your time to start.

It’s free. It’s fun. You’ll listen to more and different music in order to make it each time. You’ll find out what kind of songs you think go well together. It allows people to hear your taste in music.

And you don’t have to do it just right. You’ll always have another chance to do it again.

(Archived playlists are here on Spotify and Apple)

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Drop me an email: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com

Reading The Fine Print

I suppose this is an addendum to the post about hotel rooms from a couple days ago…

The fine print never seems to make the offer better.

It’s never “Win $500” and then upon reading the fine print it’s $600 and on top of that they’re going to cover federal taxes.

It’s never “Win an autographed guitar” and then upon reading the fine print it’s not only the guitar but five zoom guitar lessons with the person who autographed it.

It’s never “Guaranteed or your money back” and then upon reading the fine print you not only get your money back but they’ll buy you another one, any brand of your choice.

No, the fine print always serves to undermine the exciting, advertised part of the offer.

But what if you did it the other way? What if the fine print was even better than the big print?

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Drop me an email: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com

The Cycle

The ingredients of the cycle for a long time have been : make music, advertise and market, release music, tour.

Not always in that order, but those ingredients…and usually in that order.

So the question of ‘what is the artist going to do with their time after they release their music’ always had an answer: tour. The months and sometimes years after a release were naturally spoken for with touring.

But for the time being an ingredient (touring) has been taken out of the cycle.

So now the question of ‘what happens with an artists time post-release’ is completely up in the air. And it’s a big deal because the old answer took up so much time. Time that an artist and the team didn’t have to think about what to do next. They already knew. But now they don’t know.

The six months that was going to be spent on the road, what do you do with those six months now?

It’s a new cycle of being an artist. You get to answer the question however you want because the age-old answer is off the table.

So it begs the question…When touring becomes an option again, will that be your best option? Or will you have discovered a different one that works better for you?

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Drop me an email: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com

Booking A Decent Hotel Room

You booked a decent hotel. You walk into the hotel room. It really pops. Looks great. Trendy wall paper. Cool light fixtures. Mounted flat screen. Gray trim. Patterned tile in the bathroom.

But the more time you spend there…

It’s trendy wall paper put up poorly and the corners are separating.

The light fixtures feel cheap and a couple bulbs are out.

The tv isn’t mounted square with the bed.

The corners of the baseboards don’t match up.

The tile is uneven.

But hey…when you walk in it really pops. Looks great.


That’s the difference between decent work and great work. Decent work looks worse the more time you spend with it. Great work looks better the more time you spend with it.

Build what you build in a way that it pops and then gets better the more time people spend with it.

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Drop me an email: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com

Research And Pulling The Trigger

Sure you can research but can you pull the trigger?

Window treatments

Pest control

Skinny jeans

Car washes

Frying pans

Natural candles

Floor mats

At some point more research doesn’t go you any good. And getting good at research is different than getting good at pulling the trigger.

Going from research to pulling the trigger turns you from someone who knows about something into someone who knows something.

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Drop me an email: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com