I recently announced my 2nd album as Kid Lightbulbs, called STEP INTO THE OCEAN.
I’ve been doing some experimenting (not A/B tests because my audience is tiny - just trying stuff) on different methods of distributing this album. It’s been a lot of fun and I’m learning a ton about how people value art and the creator/fan relationship.
-
The value of art continues to be entirely subjective, and I’m convinced that artists niches are the future for (at least) musicians. I’ve been a bit jaded recently assuming that music has entirely been commoditized – and I’ve been pleased (and a bit flattered, honestly) that a small group of people are willing to buy an actual collection of music (before they’ve even heard most of it!), rather than stream it on a platform where their membership fee mostly goes to middlemen. I think this works for my music (which is generally more alternative and caters well to the album format) but probably doesn’t work for other genres where “hits” are more common.
-
For those who put value on one’s art, they’re willing to pay a lot more than what a small independent artist might realize. Some folks have given me double my asking price for an album of music, which is still wild to me.
-
It’s really easy in 2024 to enable fans to buy from you directly. I set up my website (kidlightbulbs.com) with a simple Stripe payment link, and if someone preorders my album there, I’ll simply email them a private Dropbox link with the album on release day. It’s a tiny bit more work for me, but I no longer need a middleman platform to handle distribution if I want to avoid that. It also means more $ in my pocket instead of a platform.
-
Streaming platforms can function as low-cost, low-predictability marketing channels, just like social channels can. I’ve found that my Spotify numbers are all over the place, but I’m picking up on a small number of “super listeners” that oddly correlate nicely with the number of folks interacting regularly with social posts of mine, buying my albums, etc. It starts to form the very top of a sales funnel of sorts, which is weird to say about music, but here we are!
Overall, lots of learnings and plenty more of it. Here’s the album art for the upcoming album, created by my wife:
