A musician with some impressive Spotify numbers wrote me for a bit of Email Guidance, asking how to get people from streaming music platforms to a paid Substack or Patreon. Here’s part of my reply (lightly edited):

Open a Substack account TONIGHT and start filling it up with stories. Give your fans a place to DIVE INTO. You can build a real website later.

Get 10 posts up there. Twenty.

Buy a domain name at Hover.com, point that domain to the Substack.

Stop using LinkTree. Stop driving everyone to platforms where you can’t reach them. 

Get them to your Substack, where you can still embed all your music, and your videos. And that’s where everyone can SUBSCRIBE to your email list. Be RUTHLESS about it.

Get people to YOUR SITE FIRST. That is your mission.

Then go play shows. Have a clipboard and a pen to get people on your email list. Hand it out before your third song to someone in the crowd so people sign it while you’re playing (inspired by this story from Jes).

Send a newsletter once a week, or twice a month. Subscribe to other musicians on Substack and see how they do it. “Steal like an artist,” like Austin Kleon says, and develop your own rhythm and style.

Make your newsletter something that someone wants to open, and not just “hey I’m playing somewhere next week,” or “listen to my new song.”

There’s lots of shortcuts in the online music world, but that just means that everyone is taking them, too. You gotta be where they can’t be, and that’s strumming a guitar in front of 15 people on a Tuesday night. 

Community is your unfair advantage. Whether you’re a musician, a writer, a photographer, whatever – you need other people in your corner. You need fans and friends more than you need funnels and lead magnets.

Yes, you can play the streaming music lottery and maybe hit it big. That’s because the casino has to pay out on occasion, otherwise people stop going to the casino.

The choice is yours; keep playing the lottery, or make better bets.

“It’s absurd how we’ve come to think that reaching thousands of random people will be more impactful to our lives more than meeting a handful of people with whom we share interests and goals.”

That’s from Matilda Lucy (from ‘What do you measure when the metrics don’t matter?’), and it’s spot on – meeting a few people every week and pulling them into your creative orbit is what’s going to build the foundation for your work for the decade ahead.

That reply above was just a snippet. I usually write 1,000 words to folks reaching out for Email Guidance. I’m not saying I got all the answers, but I can put you on the path to finding them. The first email is free, too.