How to Serve Your Audience

Art is about making something that you feel needs to be created.

In its purest form, art does not take into account the preferences of the audience. Art is channeled through the artist in moments of inspiration and then finished through discipline and mastery of the craft. 

Art does not have to serve a purpose. It does not have to have meaning. It certainly does not need to possess any commercial value to be great art. 

Art is an exercise in creativity for creativity’s sake. Art is a vision brought to life in a tangible form.

The challenge comes when bridging the gap between art and business. 

Business is about creating value for other people. Sometimes art proves to be valuable to others, but sometimes it doesn’t. And that is okay. 

To become a professional artist, you must be willing to take the continuous risk of putting your art out there to see if others find it valuable. You must consistently show up, share your art, and see if an audience begins to build around you. 

Once you start to build an audience, you must learn to serve your audience.

Your ability to make money from your art will directly correlate with your ability to serve your audience and deliver consistent value to them in a way that they can easily receive it. Sometimes you serve your audience by sharing new art with them, but you can’t rely solely on that method.

When developing a strategy to serve your audience, there are two things that need to be considered:

1. The channel

2. Your intention

The channel simply means where you are going to show up.

It is important to note that, the channel must be ‘two-way’.

In order for you to serve your audience it must be possible to build a dialogue between you and them. In other words, a platform like Spotify is not a channel through which you serve your audience, because it does not allow your audience to comment, message, or otherwise communicate with you directly. 

There are only a few ‘two-way’ channels that you can choose from:

• Social media platforms

• Email lists

• Text Messaging

• Community platforms

• Video conferencing platforms (like zoom)

• In person events & meetings

You can start by serving your audience through only one of these channels. And as you build your team and systems, you could potentially serve them through all of these channels. 

Here are a few important questions to ask yourself when you are considering which channels to use:

If you love making TikTok videos, then do that. If you feel that it comes more naturally for you to write emails, then focus on that. The last thing you want to do is make yourself miserable trying to show up in a way that feels inauthentic to you. 

If you like sending text messages, but find out that the majority of your audience feels that it is too intrusive, then you may have to rethink your strategy. Also, if you like making TikToks, but your audience is in an older demographic, you may need to consider a different platform where you are more likely to find your fans. 

If you have a lot to say, then you will need a channel that embraces long form content like email or maybe YouTube. It will be difficult to deliver long, thoughtful messages on text platforms or via IG reels. 

If you are serving an international audience and trying to get them to join you on a zoom call, you may find out that it is very difficult to choose a time for the event that works for everyone’s schedule. 

This question is especially important if you are using social media platforms, which are notorious for making you pay for reach by boosting posts or running ads. On the other hand, there are more and more email platforms that have a fixed monthly subscription cost to send unlimited emails and reach unlimited contacts.

If you are selling merch, then you might lean into TikTok and IG. If you are charging monthly fan subscriptions, then you would probably opt for a community platform like Patreon or Discord. Email newsletters also now allow for paid subscriptions. If you get value from this educational newsletter, you can show your support by becoming a paid subscriber. (After all, I have to practice what I preach ;)

Once you have thought through each of these questions, the next step is to consider your intention.

How will you be of service to your audience?

As creators, we tend to overcomplicate this simple question. And unfortunately, we often focus too much on ourselves instead of focusing on our audience.

If you are like most creators, you know that you need to be posting, but you often just end up posting something that is about you - something to try and make yourself look cool instead of something that will serve your audience. 

Remember, when you are creating art the focus is on you, your message, and your inspiration.

When you are building business, your focus is on serving your audience and providing value to them. 

So how will you provide value?

When thinking about value in the context of content creation, there are actually only five ways that you can serve your audience:

1. You can educate.

2. You can inspire.

3. You can entertain (music, art, storytelling, beauty, performance).

4. You can document something interesting.

5. You can provide a sense of identity and belonging.

That’s it. Five ways. Pretty simple right?

The next time you sit down to plan your content, make sure each post fits into at least one of the five categories listed above. 

That is how you can make sure you are consistently serving your audience and providing value through your content. 

Of course, in the context of business, you can also provide value and make money by offering a service or product. Your music is a product. But because music is so widely available, on demand, for free, it is more difficult to monetize than other products and services. 

As you consider offering products and services to your audience, be sure to clearly communicate the value of those products and services. 

Here is a useful chart called the ‘Value Pyramid’ that shows many different ways that your audience can receive value from your product or service:

As you encounter content, products, and services that you find valuable and engaging, ask yourself the following question:

Make sure you use the Value Pyramid chart above to help you clarify the value in your own mind so that you can find ways to deliver the same value to your audience.

To take a deeper dive into this concept, be sure to read my post ‘Value Proposition of Music, Art, and Entertainment’.

Remember, your art is about your inspiration, what you want to say, and how you want to express yourself as an artist. Your business is about how you are consistently providing value to your audience. 

If you learn to serve your audience, your audience will serve you in return.

That is how you can shift from being a starving artist to becoming a successful music entrepreneur.