Business News Digital Management & Funding

Strategic considerations remain the biggest challenge in direct-to-fan

By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 21 October 2016

“While there is a lot of awareness now about the existence of various platforms that can be used to assist with a direct-to-fan strategy, there isn’t yet a widespread understanding about how to plan the strategy that must underpin any direct-to-fan campaign in order for it to be successful”. That’s the conclusion of Wicksteed Works boss Jessie Scoullar in a recent CMU Trends article assessing where the direct-to-fan business is in 2016.

The article itself notes: “The single biggest impact that mainstream adoption of the internet has had on the music industry is the direct-to-fan relationship, the fact that artists can now connect directly with core fanbase. Yet it seems like the music business in general has taken a long time to truly capitalise on the new opportunities here”.

Scoullar continues: “Artist management get this nagging feeling that perhaps they ought to try a PledgeMusic campaign, because they are hearing about how successful others have been. But they may not grasp the planning and work and resources that go into executing for success. There are many tools to support fan engagement, but managers are so busy with every other aspect of the tasks before them that they don’t have the time to figure out what they want to achieve, which is the best platform for those goals, and how to go about reaching them in an effective way”.

It seems that one of the key challenges in capitalising on the opportunity of direct-to-fan is working out who should lead on this side of an artist’s business, and where other key business partners like the label and promoter fit in. Could the label, in fact, lead on all things D2F?

“This is always going to depend on the artist’s unique situation”, Scoullar says. “It depends on how active the label is in day-to-day marketing, and where the initiative lies for product management”.

She goes on: “For some artists, management will have very developed ideas about the campaign and what they hope to achieve, and will rely on the label for resources to assist with execution. For others, management and the label may work with a third party – such as the platform’s own team or an external specialist such as Wicksteed Works – to help tease out goals, advise on strategy and to assist with getting things done on a day-to-day basis”.

Scoullar was speaking to CMU following the launch of the second edition of her ‘Which Platform’ report, which compares and reviews the various different and differing direct-to-fan tools and channels available to artists and their business partners. The new version of the report comes two years after the original.

“Many of the featured platforms have made incremental changes to their service offerings”, Scoullar says of what has changed between the two editions. “For example, as they look to appeal to major labels and bigger artists, more are offering chart reporting in more territories. And more have responsive or mobile-ready template store offerings, in an effort to keep up with our shift to mobile browsing. Some platforms are also offering a greater level of administrative support addressing changes to the law, like the EU VAT digital goods requirements, in keeping with the rule change in Jan 2015”.

Premium readers of CMU can read the full CMU Trends article ‘What challenges remain to truly unlock the power of direct-to-fan?’ here.

To become a premium subscriber click here. You can also buy a standalone PDF version of the article for £1.99 from the CMU shop.

Meanwhile you can buy the latest edition of ‘Direct-To-Fan: Which Platform’ here for just £29.