I use Substack because it lets me write longform pieces about each song I release. No other social media supports that in any useful way (and I don’t do social media anyway). Writing about how songs were written, arranged and recorded is a way of sharing the whole process with anyone who’s interested.
Good question. I think video being added was the best thing for us initially, meaning we could premiere new music directly to our readership. Being now able to see how many people are viewing a video, and where they drop off, etc (like YT) is really great.
Also, we've found that people on here are a bit more thoughtful and want to spend time here - it's a bit more 'slow living' vs the scrolling of IG or TikTok, which doesn't really support our sort of music anyway! Basically, Substack is great for longer form and our music is longer form.
Finally, i think because it's not just designed for one audience (like say a music platform), we've had people get on board or notice us from all different places.
I do like your 'fan club' definition: it definitely feels like that's what we're building, although i would love to be able to sell directly via here vs Metalabel and Bandcamp, and have a one stop shop.
Oh, and everyone seems really nice. Which is a change!
+1 to the engagement here being a lot more thoughtful (like your detailed answer to my question!!) I was honestly shocked about the quality of engagement compared to other platforms.
Also agree the analytics are awesome so far, but I have not tried video content on here yet!
I can def see Substack adding more of a store to the platform in the future.
That would be great. I hope they do. Our last 2 EP's came out on Metalabel which is cool startup, and we earned far more there vs streaming, and a lot of our engaged audience here, went over there to purchase. If we could do that 'in house' here that would be awesome.
One thing I didn't mention is: lack of 'the algorithm'. It's a good thing here. Makes it more human. People find you like walking into a club vs having you pumped into their eyeballs like TV.
Thank you for this. I started out writing about chronic illness life and creativity and tomorrow I’m releasing my first single. I’m excited to see where Substack can take me and my music.
I’ve been saying the same thing to clients for a while (whether they’re on a major label or fully independent), the best path to a sustainable career is through owned audiences, like what Substack helps you build.
Streaming and social platforms own your fan interactions and are too volatile when it comes to algorithm shifts and where you should be focusing your efforts to build an audience. An email list, like you mentioned, is portable—you own that relationship.
Not saying artists should put all their eggs in the Substack (or similar platform) basket. Socials and streaming are still super important. But having a presence here to deepen fan connections, own your audience, and reasonably monetize your super fans is invaluable!
Excellent advice for your clients! I agree. And yes - no platform is perfect and Substack has it’s flaws, but they do let you take your subscriber info with you!
For me, it's the multi-media-ness of the Substack that opens my imagination to how to use not only music, but storytelling, graphic design, and just have a little one-stop shop for creativity. The problem is, most people go to Substack for think pieces and most people go to music streamers for music, and so I don't know if a wide audience has the imagination to go along with something like this, but heck, at least I'm having fun. https://snowmanskeletons.substack.com/p/let-the-garage-rock-revival-revival?r=4diwl5
Great article, Emily! The one big attraction of Substack for me (as a relatively unknown artist) is it combines the direct mailing list capability (without the monthly fee!) with discoverability in my little niche (using notes), all in one place.
Hey Emily, a really entertaining insightful read. I'm a musician from Wales UK who was recommended to try Substack by my long time friend and collaborator 'dunkie' aka Anthony Price. As I'm trying to build connections with like minded souls I thought I'd give this platform a go. As I love being creative, I really enjoy writing songs about my life experiences. I then thought I'd also write about my life experiences too. I'm less than 24 hours into my Substack life and I have to say it's a nice release. Let's see where it takes me next. Enjoy the experience. Thekijexperience.bandcamp.com
As a musician starting my journey from and on Substack first and foremost I can say it's been an amazing place to find a loyal community and to build up the story behind my music and my project, a lore of sorts.
It kind of happened spontaneously. I heard about Substack at a writer meet-up and basically registered with my artists name as soon as I came up with it for “sometime in the future”.
And then I came back to writing a diary and as I was discussing it with my producer friend he said: why don’t you just write your thoughts on music on Substack, start building up a community as you’re making your first record?
So I did, with zero expectation that anyone would actually read it but inexplicably some 300 people already found their way to it which, if you ask me, is absolutely crazy, seeing as I don’t have any of my own music out yet!
It’s actually also thanks to all these people that I decided to cover some songs in the first place, just so there’s something of me to see online. Which, in turn, is obviously a good thing for later when I’ll apply to festivals etc. :) so it’s just a journey that keeps unraveling so far 👽
I feel very ambivalent as a music curator (and I guess "tastemaker" but that doesn't feel great to say about myself) on a platform that is swelling up with many of the artists that I write about.
On the one hand, wow! Great! It's so cool to get to know my heroes and connect with musicians beyond their music! It can really build upon the community and create a more inclusive and dynamic atmosphere.
On the other hand, I'm on that leaderboard... for now. But I'm pushed down lower and lower every day by musicians as they join. Soon I'll disappear entirely because there's no way to compete, nor do I want to. But I want to exist here too, even though I'm not famous or (musically) talented.
That is so interesting because I don’t view what you do as competitive with artists that are on Substack! I think it’s incredibly complementary, and as more musicians join Substack, it creates an ecosystem where both curators and artists can benefit / reference each other.
I understand practically the leaderboard is a source of discovery and being on the same list as artists makes it zero-sum, BUT the leaderboard is just one of several discovery mechanisms on the platform.
Yes I really hope it bears out the way that you see it! It should be the ecosystem that you're hoping for, and frankly I could do without that leaderboard entirely!
It makes sense to me that a lot of bookish folk songwriters would wind up here because they're probably writing other things besides songs as well and this allows them an outlet for that. The Live feature is pretty great too, although I can't figure out why the Music Mode sound option is an iOS-only feature as of right now)
I made the decision to focus on Substack and Facebook for audience building and interaction and I don't regret it, but with that said, I don't think there's been a truly great social media platform for music since MySpace. It helps that it was created with bands in mind first and foremost, but I can see a bit of that potential here on Substack.
Me too, and that was because it was very musician friendly in a way few platforms since then have been. Once music fans started getting MySpace pages it changed a bit but at the core it was still the place to go if you made music. Would be nice to have something like that again that people en masse actually used.
I miss the simplicity of it. The page layout was clean, it was easy to put your songs up and use it for what it was made to do. Social media has gotten so bloated, and everything being at the mercy of an algorithm or paying the toll the companies demand to be visible just sucks the fun out of it.
For Substack to scale, it needs to address a number of things, including pricing and bundling flexibility. As a curator in the music space who plays in both industry news (former label exec on the digital side, hi Emily) and the jazz genre (grew the @jazzandcoffee Instagram to 20K but little to show for it which is why I came here), I like a lot of what Substack has to offer. *BUT* to your point about the cost of a newsletter, there's no flexibility between Free and $5 per month. If I could choose to partner with a couple of fellow Substackers for a bundled deal, that would be a gamechanger. Or a "Buy Me a Coffee" type of tipjar that didn't feel too tip jar-y, as a lot of folks feel tipped-out these days. I'd also like to see more flexibility on embedding audio and video. Right now, it's Spotify or roll your own. Given so many of the musicians here aren't exactly Spotify lovers, that's a conundrum. I could go on: analytics are pretty basic, templates/customizations are limited, and I just had my first unsubscribe from a reader who doesn't want to support Substack because "they platform Nazis". But Substack is still a good option for a lot of creators and musicians. If the platform doesn't put too much emphasis on their social features--leave Notes and such alone for awhile--and improves the platforms writing, multimedia, and analytics capabilities, they'll continue to grow.
Very new here. Joined while starting a new solo music project. I chose to use Substack for my music because I feel better about sending people here than to really any other platform when they ask how they can follow along. It also inspires me to share my other types of writings and creations beyond songs. And has a built in email list. Not to mention I enjoy the other content here. Substack feels more thoughtful and long formats actually get looked at here. Also, nearly all types of content can be integrated.
To me it seems like the best platform to share all do things I create.
What an interesting piece. Speaking as a Substack hobbyist and someone that did a fair share of pre-internet gigging in New York city, probably the best thing a band can do at this point is to just get out there. (even if you have to create your own version of "there." Wherever that is these days??) Play and meet as many people as possible and give them a copy of a newsletter you made on a xerox machine. The "App" based tools all seem cost prohibitive (as measured by the coefficient of effort spent creating posts and the attention that gets sucked out of you whilst doing so.) and unbearably exploitive to me. (If you've ever been on the corporate campus at Meta it all becomes shockingly so.) Substack for the moment seems to offer the best alternative but again, as was pointed out in the article, that can change at any moment so the ability to pack up your circus and bugout with your audience is paramount. That said, at least to me the cool thing about Substack is that the business model is different (for now), you can write a tour diary, involve people in the creative process, post some photos, have a podcast and debut a video all in one service where you can maybe even paywall some stuff.
To my mind the good things were always underground so the enemy in this case might actually be "scale." (personally I think it was a good thing that they built in a $5 minimum as there is already enough free and cheap to go around in the digital world) Substack by virtue of its business model SEEMS to promote a more thoughtful audience who themselves are generally incentivized to be arguably more polite than say on other platforms lest they damage their own publication which could possibly be earning them some income?
Anyway, the music industry has always been a real dumpster fire with the odds of success being very, very low. The good news is that at least the barriers to entry from a recording and distribution perspective have all but evaporated relative to the days of 2" tape and pressing LPs. Frankly it's amazing what kind of music can be made with very little investment so be as prolific, authentic and experimental as possible. With regards to Substack in my opinion it should be the default tool for at the very least audience engagement. If it's interesting enough it just might grow.
Thanks for the insights! I've been thinking of exploring Substack, being an independent musician. Quite frankly, I still don't know where to start from, of if I should start at all, but I'll keep on exploring this possibility.
I’m not a musician myself, but personally, I have found it helpful to engage on Substack as a subscriber and follower of others in my niche for a while before I started writing on here so I had the seeds of a network first!
I would recommend checking out what Fog Chaser is doing on Substack.
listening now 🎧 thanks for the rec!
I use Substack because it lets me write longform pieces about each song I release. No other social media supports that in any useful way (and I don’t do social media anyway). Writing about how songs were written, arranged and recorded is a way of sharing the whole process with anyone who’s interested.
Context! Storytelling! I love it. Definitely missing from streaming services and most social media.
Good stuff. I made a decision last year to use Substack as our music first platform. Going well so far, and beat wasting time on Insta!
Love it - what do you like about Substack so far?
Good question. I think video being added was the best thing for us initially, meaning we could premiere new music directly to our readership. Being now able to see how many people are viewing a video, and where they drop off, etc (like YT) is really great.
Also, we've found that people on here are a bit more thoughtful and want to spend time here - it's a bit more 'slow living' vs the scrolling of IG or TikTok, which doesn't really support our sort of music anyway! Basically, Substack is great for longer form and our music is longer form.
Finally, i think because it's not just designed for one audience (like say a music platform), we've had people get on board or notice us from all different places.
I do like your 'fan club' definition: it definitely feels like that's what we're building, although i would love to be able to sell directly via here vs Metalabel and Bandcamp, and have a one stop shop.
Oh, and everyone seems really nice. Which is a change!
+1 to the engagement here being a lot more thoughtful (like your detailed answer to my question!!) I was honestly shocked about the quality of engagement compared to other platforms.
Also agree the analytics are awesome so far, but I have not tried video content on here yet!
I can def see Substack adding more of a store to the platform in the future.
That would be great. I hope they do. Our last 2 EP's came out on Metalabel which is cool startup, and we earned far more there vs streaming, and a lot of our engaged audience here, went over there to purchase. If we could do that 'in house' here that would be awesome.
One thing I didn't mention is: lack of 'the algorithm'. It's a good thing here. Makes it more human. People find you like walking into a club vs having you pumped into their eyeballs like TV.
Thanks for the insights
Thank you for this. I started out writing about chronic illness life and creativity and tomorrow I’m releasing my first single. I’m excited to see where Substack can take me and my music.
I’ve been saying the same thing to clients for a while (whether they’re on a major label or fully independent), the best path to a sustainable career is through owned audiences, like what Substack helps you build.
Streaming and social platforms own your fan interactions and are too volatile when it comes to algorithm shifts and where you should be focusing your efforts to build an audience. An email list, like you mentioned, is portable—you own that relationship.
Not saying artists should put all their eggs in the Substack (or similar platform) basket. Socials and streaming are still super important. But having a presence here to deepen fan connections, own your audience, and reasonably monetize your super fans is invaluable!
Thanks for writing such a great piece!
Excellent advice for your clients! I agree. And yes - no platform is perfect and Substack has it’s flaws, but they do let you take your subscriber info with you!
For me, it's the multi-media-ness of the Substack that opens my imagination to how to use not only music, but storytelling, graphic design, and just have a little one-stop shop for creativity. The problem is, most people go to Substack for think pieces and most people go to music streamers for music, and so I don't know if a wide audience has the imagination to go along with something like this, but heck, at least I'm having fun. https://snowmanskeletons.substack.com/p/let-the-garage-rock-revival-revival?r=4diwl5
What a cool use of the format, thanks for sharing! And yes, that has been my goal here so far too...focus on having fun and experimenting.
Great article, Emily! The one big attraction of Substack for me (as a relatively unknown artist) is it combines the direct mailing list capability (without the monthly fee!) with discoverability in my little niche (using notes), all in one place.
Yes! Guaranteed reach + growth is a great combo!
Hey Emily, a really entertaining insightful read. I'm a musician from Wales UK who was recommended to try Substack by my long time friend and collaborator 'dunkie' aka Anthony Price. As I'm trying to build connections with like minded souls I thought I'd give this platform a go. As I love being creative, I really enjoy writing songs about my life experiences. I then thought I'd also write about my life experiences too. I'm less than 24 hours into my Substack life and I have to say it's a nice release. Let's see where it takes me next. Enjoy the experience. Thekijexperience.bandcamp.com
Welcome!
As a musician starting my journey from and on Substack first and foremost I can say it's been an amazing place to find a loyal community and to build up the story behind my music and my project, a lore of sorts.
That is so cool! Just watched your space song cover and loved it. One of my favorite songs.
What made you decide to start your journey on Substack versus another platform?
It kind of happened spontaneously. I heard about Substack at a writer meet-up and basically registered with my artists name as soon as I came up with it for “sometime in the future”.
And then I came back to writing a diary and as I was discussing it with my producer friend he said: why don’t you just write your thoughts on music on Substack, start building up a community as you’re making your first record?
So I did, with zero expectation that anyone would actually read it but inexplicably some 300 people already found their way to it which, if you ask me, is absolutely crazy, seeing as I don’t have any of my own music out yet!
It’s actually also thanks to all these people that I decided to cover some songs in the first place, just so there’s something of me to see online. Which, in turn, is obviously a good thing for later when I’ll apply to festivals etc. :) so it’s just a journey that keeps unraveling so far 👽
Thank you SO much for your wonderful feedback on the “Space Song” cover ✨ I’m super happy you liked it and it’s one of my fav songs as well 🖤
I feel very ambivalent as a music curator (and I guess "tastemaker" but that doesn't feel great to say about myself) on a platform that is swelling up with many of the artists that I write about.
On the one hand, wow! Great! It's so cool to get to know my heroes and connect with musicians beyond their music! It can really build upon the community and create a more inclusive and dynamic atmosphere.
On the other hand, I'm on that leaderboard... for now. But I'm pushed down lower and lower every day by musicians as they join. Soon I'll disappear entirely because there's no way to compete, nor do I want to. But I want to exist here too, even though I'm not famous or (musically) talented.
That is so interesting because I don’t view what you do as competitive with artists that are on Substack! I think it’s incredibly complementary, and as more musicians join Substack, it creates an ecosystem where both curators and artists can benefit / reference each other.
I understand practically the leaderboard is a source of discovery and being on the same list as artists makes it zero-sum, BUT the leaderboard is just one of several discovery mechanisms on the platform.
Yes I really hope it bears out the way that you see it! It should be the ecosystem that you're hoping for, and frankly I could do without that leaderboard entirely!
It makes sense to me that a lot of bookish folk songwriters would wind up here because they're probably writing other things besides songs as well and this allows them an outlet for that. The Live feature is pretty great too, although I can't figure out why the Music Mode sound option is an iOS-only feature as of right now)
I made the decision to focus on Substack and Facebook for audience building and interaction and I don't regret it, but with that said, I don't think there's been a truly great social media platform for music since MySpace. It helps that it was created with bands in mind first and foremost, but I can see a bit of that potential here on Substack.
"I don't think there's been a truly great social media platform for music since MySpace" absolutely. I discovered so much music from Myspace!
Me too, and that was because it was very musician friendly in a way few platforms since then have been. Once music fans started getting MySpace pages it changed a bit but at the core it was still the place to go if you made music. Would be nice to have something like that again that people en masse actually used.
What are the musician friendly features you miss the most?
I miss the simplicity of it. The page layout was clean, it was easy to put your songs up and use it for what it was made to do. Social media has gotten so bloated, and everything being at the mercy of an algorithm or paying the toll the companies demand to be visible just sucks the fun out of it.
For Substack to scale, it needs to address a number of things, including pricing and bundling flexibility. As a curator in the music space who plays in both industry news (former label exec on the digital side, hi Emily) and the jazz genre (grew the @jazzandcoffee Instagram to 20K but little to show for it which is why I came here), I like a lot of what Substack has to offer. *BUT* to your point about the cost of a newsletter, there's no flexibility between Free and $5 per month. If I could choose to partner with a couple of fellow Substackers for a bundled deal, that would be a gamechanger. Or a "Buy Me a Coffee" type of tipjar that didn't feel too tip jar-y, as a lot of folks feel tipped-out these days. I'd also like to see more flexibility on embedding audio and video. Right now, it's Spotify or roll your own. Given so many of the musicians here aren't exactly Spotify lovers, that's a conundrum. I could go on: analytics are pretty basic, templates/customizations are limited, and I just had my first unsubscribe from a reader who doesn't want to support Substack because "they platform Nazis". But Substack is still a good option for a lot of creators and musicians. If the platform doesn't put too much emphasis on their social features--leave Notes and such alone for awhile--and improves the platforms writing, multimedia, and analytics capabilities, they'll continue to grow.
We're one of those music curators and tastemakers! Awesome article!
Very new here. Joined while starting a new solo music project. I chose to use Substack for my music because I feel better about sending people here than to really any other platform when they ask how they can follow along. It also inspires me to share my other types of writings and creations beyond songs. And has a built in email list. Not to mention I enjoy the other content here. Substack feels more thoughtful and long formats actually get looked at here. Also, nearly all types of content can be integrated.
To me it seems like the best platform to share all do things I create.
What an interesting piece. Speaking as a Substack hobbyist and someone that did a fair share of pre-internet gigging in New York city, probably the best thing a band can do at this point is to just get out there. (even if you have to create your own version of "there." Wherever that is these days??) Play and meet as many people as possible and give them a copy of a newsletter you made on a xerox machine. The "App" based tools all seem cost prohibitive (as measured by the coefficient of effort spent creating posts and the attention that gets sucked out of you whilst doing so.) and unbearably exploitive to me. (If you've ever been on the corporate campus at Meta it all becomes shockingly so.) Substack for the moment seems to offer the best alternative but again, as was pointed out in the article, that can change at any moment so the ability to pack up your circus and bugout with your audience is paramount. That said, at least to me the cool thing about Substack is that the business model is different (for now), you can write a tour diary, involve people in the creative process, post some photos, have a podcast and debut a video all in one service where you can maybe even paywall some stuff.
To my mind the good things were always underground so the enemy in this case might actually be "scale." (personally I think it was a good thing that they built in a $5 minimum as there is already enough free and cheap to go around in the digital world) Substack by virtue of its business model SEEMS to promote a more thoughtful audience who themselves are generally incentivized to be arguably more polite than say on other platforms lest they damage their own publication which could possibly be earning them some income?
Anyway, the music industry has always been a real dumpster fire with the odds of success being very, very low. The good news is that at least the barriers to entry from a recording and distribution perspective have all but evaporated relative to the days of 2" tape and pressing LPs. Frankly it's amazing what kind of music can be made with very little investment so be as prolific, authentic and experimental as possible. With regards to Substack in my opinion it should be the default tool for at the very least audience engagement. If it's interesting enough it just might grow.
Thanks for the insights! I've been thinking of exploring Substack, being an independent musician. Quite frankly, I still don't know where to start from, of if I should start at all, but I'll keep on exploring this possibility.
I’m not a musician myself, but personally, I have found it helpful to engage on Substack as a subscriber and follower of others in my niche for a while before I started writing on here so I had the seeds of a network first!