"You don’t make new fans at $35".
Mark Brownstein, bassist of the Disco Biscuits

Mark goes on to say:

"The number one thing you can do is write new great music to bring your crowd."

Which I agree with.  First and foremost, it’s your music that keeps old fans satiated and brings new fans in.  The old paradigm of making a record every three, four or five years and flogging it around the world, making sure Inuits and third world denizens are aware of it before you go back into the studio, is dead.  It’s about placating your core.  And your core does want access, but what it wants most is music.  A huge fan will buy your album the day it’s released (if he doesn’t steal it weeks before, and then buy it in support anyway!) and play it incessantly for…a few weeks?  I’ve played a number of albums for a week straight.  But after that, you know it, you move on, you want something NEW!  So, when radio tells you they’ve got the new track by ___________ your ears used to prick up, until you found it was another album cut that you digested YEARS AGO!

Rather than building to a one time event, keep your audience engaged.  And they might be interested in what you had for lunch and who you’re screwing, but what they want most is music.  Make more music!  In today’s world it doesn’t matter if each track is perfect.  The audience will separate the wheat from the chaff, then you can play the winners in concert and the various iterations can be traded ad infinitum!  The music is alive, it grows and changes, it’s not calcified on wax.

So rather than focusing on a drop date, create a lot along the way, and monetize along the way.

As for ticket prices…  A superstar can charge what the market will bear, he’s got more takers than tickets.  But if you’re up and coming?

Let’s forget the complete wannabes.  I know it’s rough.  But play for your friends and families, gig in the park, do school shows, and then graduate to paying gigs.  If you’re good, you’ll get a leg up, you’ll get started.  But what if you’ve done all the legwork and you’ve hit a plateau?  That’s when you must get innovative.  And that’s when you must address the issue how to grow your fanbase.

People need to be able to sample your music on a whim.  A fan will bid umpteen bucks for your dirty sheets on eBay, a newbie just doesn’t care.  So how do you entice the newbies?  With great music and affordable prices!

We’ve got two tiers of music.  Expensive that everybody wants to see and cheap that almost no one wants to see.  For this business to grow, we’ve got to have an echelon of great music that’s affordably priced. The reason the jam bands can tour year after year is they KNOW THIS!

You’re in partnership with your audience, for a very long time if you’re lucky.  A hit Top Forty track and an instant arena tour might garner some bucks right away, but it’s a road to obsolescence.  

Furthermore, until we make the audience regular concertgoers, until we’ve got a spectrum of shows at affordable prices that people want to see, this business will continue to spiral downward.

Jam bands are doing it on their own.  Many don’t have a major label telling them what to do.  They can innovate.  They fly under the radar.  And these are exactly the kinds of acts the public is yearning for!  Hit acts are train-wrecks.  Credible, long lasting acts are the future.  It’s not about getting everybody to know, but enough people to know.  Don’t focus on world domination, but getting your piece of the rock.

Jam Bands Play the Part of Community Organizers