Steem for bands

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I have thought a fair bit about how we could get more bands to make use of Steem. What are the advantages?

A source of extra income. Many artists will not earn a significant amount on Youtube or other platforms.
Less vulnerable to the policy changes of the big social platforms.
Do not have to pay to get content to fans.
The fans get to earn too!
Fans could use what Steem they earn to buy music, merchandise and tickets.

I am curious to do some sums, so I will take the advantage of one of my favourite bands, The Fierce and the Dead (TFATD). They are a British instrumental rock band who I have seen live many times. They are unlikely to trouble the mainstream charts, but have a loyal following around the world.

Facebook

As you can see they have over 20,000 followers on Facebook with 5,000 in the fan group plus over 9,000 Twitter followers.

I know some bands use Patreon to raise money from fans as selling music and gig tickets may not be enough to live on. I looked at some random artist there who has various subscription levels that give some perks to the fans. This one has 601 patrons and I suspect many of those pay the lowest level.

Zola Jesus

Author Kevin Kelly said you can be a successful creator with 1000 true fans who buy everything you put out. TFATD are a four-piece, so may need a few more to get by.

So how do the economics of using Steem look? Suppose half their Facebook followers come to Steem. 10,000 people with the basic 15 SP delegation could give a dollar or two to a post. That is obviously not much even if the band post several times a day, which they may not have time to do.

Well their fanbase is largely middle-aged (from the gigs I have been to) and may have reasonable disposable income, so they may well be willing to invest a little in Steem to help the band out. If half of them spend $10 per month on Steem they would have several thousand each by the end of a year and so several million between them. As things stand that would be a large proportion of the available Steem, but that sort of buying pressure might drive up the price so they would need less Steem each for the same effect. There are only a few thousand active Steemians anyway at the moment, so this number coming in would represent a major increase and that is just one band.

As I said above the fans would also be earning from curation and it is likely that many would be posting and commenting. They would also discover other music here. Word would spread in the industry and it could drive a bigger influx of users. This is the sort of tipping point Steem needs and it could start fairly small.

Coincidentally I saw this post by @crokkon with some statistics on the active community. It seems we are only retaining a couple of percent of those who join up and we need to improve on that. @enforcer48 had a similar idea to me in a comment. I think it is less likely that a really big act would rush to join Steem when they already have a healthy income and good associations with big companies. I know pewdiepie joined DLive a while back, but they seem to be losing viewers lately.

So why are musicians not rushing to join Steem with their fans in tow? There could be several reasons. They may be told by others that you have to stick with the big platforms. They also have limited time to spend on administering multiple accounts as they cannot just abandon those other platforms. Steem has usability challenges, but a combination of Steempeak, Steem Keychain and eSteem for mobile is fairly user friendly. The account verification is a barrier, but you can pay to bypass that or have existing users create accounts and delegate.

One thing Steem lacks is communities. This feature is supposed to be coming (next year?) and that could make it a difference. Facebook groups seem to be the current popular option, so Steem has to compete with what those offer.

I have dropped hints to TFATD about Steem, but have not had an in-depth discussion about it with them. I thought they were a good case to use as they already have a good number of fans, but may not break into the mainstream. Steem should be looking at niche markets.

There are musicians using Steem and I would be interested to know what their experience has been. Can you bring fans in from other platforms? Will they stick with it?

I have to include some music in this post, so here is a fairly recent track by the band. You will see that they do not do big budget videos as that is another expense.