Perfect Fans by Mike Moales

You have to thank the fans. These are the most important people on your list, because without a strong fan base, you don’t have a career. The way you describe your fans helps you to define your target market. Where would they live? Where would they go to hear music? What would make them pick up your CD instead of one of the other thousand or so CD’s that are out there trying to get their attention?

As you think about your perfect fans (remember, this is a fantasy), think of how you could reach this group of people. Radio? The Internet? Door to door cookie sales? How can you connect your music to these fans?

All of this information is part of your band’s vision statement. Businesses create vision statements to help them stay focused on their goals. These statements may be long dissertations of the company’s philosophy of life, or they may be a shorter, catchy phrase used to rally the troops.. Often, a company will have two vision statements, one that is short, to the point, and easy to remember, and another that goes into more detail.

Every decision that the business makes is based on how well it contributes to accomplishing the mission described in the vision statement. For example, and I swear I am not making this up, the original short corporate mission statement for Nike was “Crush Reebok.” Everything Nike did in the early days of the company was evaluated on whether or not it helped them to crush Reebok. And you have to love the original vision statement that Honda Motorcycles hung on the walls of their break rooms: “We will crush, squash, and slaughter Yamaha.”

It takes more than crushing, squashing and slaughtering other artists to make it in the music business, although that method was tried with varying degrees of success by some of the early gangsta rap artists. You have to win the allegiance of the fans who will buy your CD’s and shell out the cash to see you perform.

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About The Author

Mike Moales is a 5 star writer for The Music Business Center, read more of her music business success articles and subscribe to the Music Biz Center blog free of charge at http://www.MusicBizCenter.com/blog