Continual engagement with their fans and online street team marketing for musicians is important for artists to continue filling up the stadiums and selling all those albums. It’s a missed opportunity for artists not to be using their fans to promote their music or whatever they wanted to promote. Sarah Beth Perry, the Founder and CEO of With the Band, grew up loving boybands. After working with multiple artist teams, she saw that there was an opportunity to improve fan engagement between artists and their fans. In today’s episode, Sarah speaks with Bree Noble about how their platform is helping artists further their career reaching new fans using online street team marketing for musicians.
Sarah Beth Perry of With the Band grew up in Nashville. She was the only one with her group that didn’t have parents who worked in the industry. She moved to Atlanta in Middle School and that’s when she realized it wasn’t normal to know people in the music industry until her high school years when she and her sister started to become fans of boybands such as the Jonas Brothers. She remember fan organizing events and meet ups. And she wondered why artists are not involved in this huge gathering of fans. For a year, she searched for a fan engagement company because she really wanted to work for one and offer online marketing for musicians but she wasn’t able to find any. She asked her fan friends about her idea and she received validation that it was a great idea. She joined a competition in Belmont University and ended up winning it. That’s when she started her company while she was still in college. She had a vision for the company but being a young female with not much experience, she felt she had to prove herself.
As a fan, she knew there was this emotional connection to artists, but she noticed it seems the artists and the people who work in the music industry did not know about this connection the fans feel and how they can utilize it to develop a stronger relationship with the individual fan and bring in more fans. She saw the need for online marketing for musicians.
Before COVID, With the Band was doing fan activations where fans get together to give a huge thank you to the artist. The first thing she did was on a concert of Jonas Brothers. She did it completely on her own during that time. It was a huge success and that is where she realized that is really what she wants to do. After that, she wanted to organized something for another artist. Less than a month after, Sarah partnered with Kacey Musgraves and her team. They turned the crowd into a rainbow during her song “Rainbow”. It was her first headline arena show. With the Band works with different sizes of artists. Anyone can hire them to come and do those fan activations.
When COVID happened, people in the industry contacted her to see how the fan and artist connection can still be done during live streaming. They are in the process of creating an app where the artists can have a monthly subscription to offer stuff to their fans. As of now, they are offering this to Medium to Large artists. The app include features where artists can interact with fans. The fans can talk with other fans about their favorite songs. The artists do not really need to create their own content. Usually they just have to interact with the content the fans are putting out on the app. Ironically when social media happened, artists were not able to take full advantage of their fanbase and no longer had fan clubs. It can also be likened to street teams.
With every artist, they offer having an account manager to provide help in keeping up with their fan crew. The artist may not have an idea what it may mean to the fans because for them it may just me very small. So Sarah always makes sure to keep up with the fans in social media so she’s updated with what they want.
Their first target market for online street team marketing for musicians is teenage fans but their second is what they call the groupies, who are fans of Kiss, Aerosmith, etc. They are also launching a new platform soon for females. She wants to promote women in music as much as possible because she saw the need for help. There needs to be a pedestal to help them get up.
She has a lot on her mind including eventually offering a free tier. She is making sure the app they are developing is super fan-friendly as well as artist-friendly. There is a zero start-up crew to create your own fan crew. The artist creates her own membership and gets 70%, With the Band shoulders the processing fees then end up getting about 20%. They are also building a huge knowledge base with free resources that artists can use to get ideas on how to connect with their fans.
You can check them out on all social channels at @withthebandvip and their website at withtheband.co.
This was previously published on The Profitable Musician Show.
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