The Gigging Musician Podcast

The Two Audiences for Music

October 08, 2021 Jared Judge
The Gigging Musician Podcast
The Two Audiences for Music
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, Jared dives into the two audiences every musicians have for their music. Each audience helps you in different ways, and Jared shares how.

What's up musicians, it's Jared. And today, I wanted to share with you my thoughts on the two audiences that musicians appeal to. So even if you haven't thought about this, you're you're doing this and you your musical output, and all of the things that you put out there about yourself, your online BIOS, your website, your videos, etc, they appeal to one or both of these two audiences. Once you start to think about this, and evaluate how that impacts things, you'll see that that actually impacts everything that you do. And it completely impacted both of my experiences at going to music school, because everything I learned there only appeal to, to one audience. And I wish they had taught me how to appeal to the other. And so once I started, once, I realized that my output was catering towards these, these audiences. That's when everything shifted. For me, that's when I got the education that I needed to actually make a living, doing what I love. And so I want to share this with you in hopes that it sparks some thoughts for you, and maybe starts to creep into your thoughts, as you're writing new songs, or writing the copy for your website, or putting out your next social media post. Or even when you're performing on stage. Hopefully, it'll help you identify what audience you're appealing to, and then maximize that opportunity, instead of ambiguously trying to appeal to everybody. So the two audiences that live music, and music in general has is either musicians or non musicians. So think about that. Which audience have you been appealing to mostly. And for me, the audience when I was going to music school twice, the audience was completely musicians. You know, I learned music theory. And you know, all these like dominant seventh chords and resolutions and schenkerian analysis, all this stuff that I was learning, really appealed to musicians. Whereas, you know, a non musician, or even a musical amateur, they don't care about the technical aspects of our performances. As much, they care more about the feelings that our music generates for them. You know, if they're a wedding, and they're walking down the aisle, they care that the music makes that moment feel special. They don't care that Canon and d is a, you know, a Canon with eight notes in the baseline that repeats over and over with embellishments and all this stuff. Yeah, that stuff totally appeals to musicians. But bride walking down the aisle doesn't really care about that. So, you know, I was thinking about this, because it really does impact running a live music business, which that's what you know, what our gigging pros do is we run live music businesses. And by optimizing our live music businesses, that's how we make a living doing what we love. And when you think about your music, appealing to musicians, for most cases, and I'm open to being wrong about this, but I don't think I am. musicians are not the one paying other musicians bills. Sure, you might get some album sales out of it, you might sell tickets in your jazz club to musicians, you know, if you're playing, if you have a name for yourself as a high profile, jazz musician, oftentimes, there'll be a lot of musicians in the audience, and they'll buy tickets. But it's the non musicians that pay most of our bills. If you look at like, sales of the highest grossing albums out there, you're just statistically speaking, most people who purchase albums are non musicians, because it's the soundtrack to their life. That for in my business is experience. The people who are booking my group are mostly non musicians, or musical amateurs, you know, maybe they played violin in high school, but they gave it up. But they knew they needed violin at their wedding. So it's the non musicians who more often than not pay the bills. And so that's why I market to non musicians, which means I choose not to highlight a lot of in depth technical stuff that appeals to musicians. It's a conscious choice, I'm making sure you know it, it would feel good for me to post stuff about, you know, playing really complicated Beethoven string quartets, and I love doing that. And I, I want to get back into that. But I know that if I do that, most of my non musicians who are paying my bills, don't care about that. And it would probably just clutter their social feed or clutter their email inbox with something more technical than they their appetite allows them to consume. So yeah, that those are the two audiences musicians and non musicians and in my personal experience in the hundreds of 1000s of dollars that I've made with my business, it's the non musicians that pay my bills. So, hope that's food for thought for you. If you got any value out of this podcast I'd sure appreciate it if you like to and subscribe to it. And just a reminder, my Gigging Secrets book is out, which teaches you step by step how to run your own live music business and make a living doing what you love. So get your copy at GiggingSecrets.com And remember, you are just one gig away.