Don’t Niche Yourself to Death

I was having a conversation the other day with a very good friend of mine who is a recording artist and the topic of developing an audience came up. He had thought of a fantastic idea for himself (which I won’t reveal because that would be really unfair to him) in regards to reaching a niche audience with his work. I told him that it was great, but he should also remember to focus on creating some more far reaching ideas that would be more inclusive because while it’s nice to have a niche audience the goal is to reach and affect as many people as possible with your work, not just people with certain similar interests. This is when I realized something, a lot of artists I speak with that are trying to get known, especially in Hip-Hop, niche themselves to death. Don’t worry, though, there are cures for this ailment.

For some folks expanding their audience is a time related issue, they feel there just aren’t enough hours in the day. In truth, there aren’t, but if you can’t work around that you can’t really reach people and if you’re not interested in reaching people what are you doing talking about developing an audience in the first place? If you’re a painter you want as many people as possible to see your work, and if you’re an MC you want as many people as possible to hear your album. Here’s my thought, start taking ten minutes a day to investigate pop culture, be it via TV, the radio or the web (or all three!).

A lot of artists tend to brush off pop culture as something artistically beneath them, and those that do usually don’t end up reaching their full potential audience because they have no idea what is making people excited and what groups of people pop culture is being geared toward at any given moment. The first key to creating a bigger audience is to learn about everything that’s popular. Once an artist has done that they need to figure out why those things are popular and not be elitist about it, “they’re dumb” is not an answer. Finally, once an artist has figured out the what and the why their final mission is to figure out how they can reach and relate to that gigantic fan base because they will be running into them, even if it’s just on the street. Hint – Although each case is different it probably won’t be in the same way as the pop star.

Everyone is a potential listener and everyone is a multilayered individual. At one point boy bands were selling a million copies of their albums in their opening weeks. An artist needs to take a look at the huge audience that clearly has money to spend and say “what am I doing that can relate to them?” Think your rapping doesn’t relate? A lot of those some boy band buyers also own Eminem CDs. And could you imagine if Eazy-E had only marketed NWA to other street cats? They would have missed out on 75% of their fan base! This is not about changing your style in any way, shape, or form. It’s about taking a look at the body of work that you have and like any good advertiser, because in this case you are advertising yourself, hitting your target audience. And don’t under any circumstances underestimate your target audience. Think pop culture fans aren’t educated? Then you’re forgetting how well Gnarls Barkley did.

As an independent artist a person has to wear many hats, market research is one of them. Imagine this scene; someone sees you hawking CDs, or hears you singing / rhyming with some friends and approaches you to tell you you’re dope. The potential fan then asks who you listen to. It’s fine to list as many obscure artists as you want, but when they give you the screwface look they’re gonna ask “what about (fill in name of popular artist here)?” if you say “never heard of them,” or the always inappropriate answer of “they’re garbage,” you will instantly lose a potential fan, a potential sale, and a potential network into more potential fans and sales. It’s not that hard to say “Miley Cyrus, yeah, she had a huge movie opening.” The potential fan will smile and at the very least THINK you might relate to them in some way and suddenly all those doors that would have been closed are wide open.

In the indie world being able to reach a number of different audiences at once is one distinct advantage artists have over those working in the commercial world. Instead of going after the big hit single they can go after everybody with a variety of songs. There’s nothing preventing someone from sending out one song to Hip-Hop radio stations, blogs, websites, etc. and a totally different one to pop stations, blog and sites. An artist that chooses to ignore all of his or her potential audiences is like a runner putting weights on his ankles before a marathon. They’re just slowing themselves down for no reason.

So in the end, while it’s great to create niche marketing campaigns to develop an audience in a specific area, and I think my friend’s idea (which, again, I won’t reveal) is brilliant, artists shouldn’t neglect the biggest potential audience of all – everyone. It doesn’t take that much effort to get to know the masses, and it would most definitely be time well spent.