Why 1M Followers Can't Sell 100 Tickets (feat. Laylo) | EF EP 148

0:00 There are artists with millions of followers who can't sell 100 tickets, and then there are artists with a few thousand fans who sell out every show they announce. The gap between those two artists has nothing to do with talent. Today, I'm sitting down with Thatch Samet, director of partnerships at LILO, to talk about the psychology of real fan loyalty, what fans actually want, what makes them show up, and how to build a community that carries your career forward no matter what the algorithm does. This is elevated frequencies. Never wonder how top DJs actually built their careers. I had to do. 15 years of hard. Work to get any of the recognition that I wanted. Where I saw a turning point in my career is when I came true to myself.

0:46 From marketing and mindset to networking and negotiation, I'm giving you the tools you need to build a lasting career in dance music. Give them bits of you and your everyday life. You have to change the way you view the word no. Like me, I'm encouraged by it. Join me, Olivia Mancuso and industry leaders as we reveal and it really takes to turn your passion into profit. This is elevated frequencies. Let's start here. There's this assumption online that more followers equals more streams, bigger career, more and more everything. That's not necessarily true. And Lay Low is built on a completely different premise. So talk to me about the premise that Lay Low is built on. Yeah, I think historically there's this perception that and I think for decades we've been trained that you want to get as many monthly listeners as possible. You want to get as many streams, whether that's, you know, a song going viral for a moment or being in a TikTok and you want people to just as many people to kind of touch your music. And with that, I mean, social media followers is I think deeper and more a higher level of fandom than just like a streamer.

2:10 But I think Laylo really is the most potent. Like we've been really focused on helping artists get that most potent type of fan, which is the fan that wants to buy your merch, that wants to get your vinyl, that wants to actually come out to shows. So really we see it as you need fans to listen to your music. You need to have them listen to a TikTok and say, what's this ID? But you need to figure out how to cap, how to catch that fan capture sounds a little evil, but you know how to get that fans contact information, how to take that little spark of interest and then actually get them to listen and be aware of your tour. And so Layla, there's a really simple tool. A lot of fans don't even notice it, even though probably every electronic music fan has.

3:00 I have so many touch points with Laylo. It's, it's crazy. I I just now, since, you know, we've done some content together now I scroll to the bottom of things to see, is this powered by Laylo? Whereas before it's like it was just so naturally integrated into my life, I didn't realize. Yeah. Yeah, I think just being the the net, right? An artist is making amazing music, putting it out into the world, into these vast networks. And often times you're putting out content and you're just a boat on the ocean and there's no fish, there's no fans that see it. But every once in a while you're going to have a fan that's going to swim under the boat and lay low.

3:40 Acts as a really effective net that makes it really easy and seamless. And the fan isn't necessarily having to go through a bunch of hoops to join your list. And they kind of tap in. And I think in electronic music in particular, you have this ID culture and you have these buzzworthy moments and you have these amazing, this amazing content from shows. So really using those moments and Layla hopefully is going to be the best tool to kind of collect and and grow that list. And I think that's only one part of the picture is how do I actually get those fans into my into my network? But the other side is how do I actually engage those fans? How do I continue taking a fan who maybe heard one of my songs on a TikTok?

4:25 How can I get them to listen to my next single and then my EP? And then when I play in New York City, how do I get them to actually come out to elsewhere, right? Because a lot of this is grassroots right now. This is actually a really interesting point to bring up. I found an artist today, a track through randomly looking through. I'm already blanking on his name because I literally just discovered him, found a track I really liked while I was working out this morning. I look through some of his other songs, I go to his profile and I see he's actually following me. Then I go to DM him and I see that he's actually DM me before about something I was doing on Patreon. And that was like a very grassroots way to discover somebody, which I love to do.

5:08 But I told him, I'm like, hey, keep me posted on your career. I want to see where it goes because he's still a very like he's a newer artist. If he had Laylo, I could, I wouldn't have to tell him to keep me posted on his career. He could find ways to be. And and I am invested because I like all the music that I found. So there's like it's you're removing Laylo is removing that friction of like me needing to remember to continuously check up on what this artist is putting out there. Yeah. And I think, you know, I've worked on campaigns from artists that are just starting out to Sabrina Carpenter, Nicki Minaj, Usher, and there's a very different way that you're going to interact with your fans. And so if you're an artist that's just starting out, you really need to cherish every fan. And that could be as simple as like I'm doing a really small show, but I'm going to use Laylo as my guest list tool so that I can get 50 fans that came out to a free show in New York because maybe next year I'm playing, you know, 100 cap, you know, 200 cap ticketed show.

6:15 So really, I think when you're starting out, it's really important to make sure those fans hear you. And with social media, it's a really valuable tool. But if you if you have 100 followers and you post something, on average you're getting 5% to view your story or your post. And then to get them to take action is a whole other thing. So that that content that we we made in partnership, the 1000 True Fans concept, explains that you only really need 1000 people truly invested in your career at any given moment to make a sustainable living. And so artists should do whatever they can to build those 1000 true fans. What?

6:58 Talk to me about what that looks like in practice for an artist to like build those 1000 true fans. What are those people actually doing to like support your career, the merch, the like? Talk to me about that. Yeah, we call it the the fan wheel or the flywheel. So the fan flywheel and really Layla's done a good, a good job of being kind of the bridge between different things, but we're never the destination. So you're using Laylo to get people to your ticket link to get people to your streaming link with SoundCloud and Spotify and all the DSPS to get people to your Shopify account. But we kind of are the intermediary, which is your tool to get people to these different destinations where they can actually engage.

7:41 So what you're asking about is like, how do you develop that, that flywheel, right? And our artists have all of these moments in their cycle, whether it's announcing new music. That's kind of the one that comes to mind, I think most often because everything resolves around the music. But historically people have done a pre save campaign. So hey, connect to this, log into your Facebook to connect your Spotify. And then when the song comes out, it's going to be already liked. And that's a valuable tool. It helps the algorithm, right when that song comes out, it immediately is liked by however many people pre saved it, right?

8:21 If that fan happens to stream music, the other liked songs, then you're going to get a boost in day one streams. But largely like that's kind of the end of that relationship. That action is like the music saved. So Layla looks at it as, instead of just going for the pre save, let's try to collect the fan's phone number, collect the fan's e-mail. And when the song comes out, we're not only going to do the Spotify save, we have that functionality, but we're also going to actually tell the fan, hey, this song is out. Let me know what you think. Like Engage. With me, which we need like at like humans now are we have so many distractions. There's so much going on that like if I'm opting in to something that I like yes text me and remind me yeah, like I.

9:06 I need that at this point because of everything. Like there was three or two big songs that came out I think last Friday. It was like a goodfella track and that. Dean yeah, that came out and it's like I forgot until like a couple of days later because just life, you know. So like if I, and I'm sure they have one of them probably has lay low, if I would have signed up, that would have been really nice to be reminded. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a perfect example. I wanted to talk about this because the Dean Turley Acton tough is has been obviously a huge moment. Yeah, that a lot of people are talking about it this this week here, probably millions of engagements on social media.

9:46 Yeah, it's signed to some to a label in the UK and they have a pre save tool out there and there's all of this buzz around this song. Dean Turley has 10,000 Instagram followers. It's growing quickly and I'm not going to say he's doing anything wrong. I think he's going to. There's going to be a lot of growth for him and there's a lot of eyes on him, like he'll be successful. But I just think about this moment, you have 3 million to 5 million engagements with this song. If you had taken this opportunity to have a lay low drop where you're collecting emails and phone numbers, you now are really changing the trajectory of your career as an artist. Because he's going to have 5000 fans in New York City that are signing up for the ID, acting tough.

10:32 So when he next does his show with tech support where he's going to get booked, tech support's going to pay him more because he's going to be able to get that many more. Seats 100%. So that's the flywheel is like using the viral music moment to build up the fan base to then have this understanding of your fan base where when you play in Nashville, you have 500 fans there. Right. You know, this is what I'm going to say too. I'm sure you agree with this. It's never too early to integrate these tools because 10,000 followers you might not expect something to blow up that big that fast and you want to be ready for when that moment hits. I think it's in an in an interview like this, it's exciting to bring up like these insane viral moments, right?

11:14 Where and that isn't that's when your boat is bringing the net through a school of 1,000,000 fish, right? For most artists, that doesn't necessarily happen, you know, all the time or, or ever, but I think it, it shows you like a really clear opportunity of it for for most artists, it's something that you're doing by meeting people at the show, right? You're doing it by having. I have one artist, Austin Mills, yeah, who's really awesome. And and he's been touring for a couple years and almost every show that he does, he posts a story on his Instagram and he says, yo, Austin, TX, I'm picking a few fans to come backstage. Yeah, reply ATX. Yeah. And he'll get 300 fans that sign up and he'll pick two on Instagram.

11:59 Yep. And all 300 fans are now in his Lay Low account. We he has their contact. And next time he comes to Austin, he's going to play a bigger show. Yeah, right. That's so powerful. Yeah, I think it's it's really cool. And again, Laylo isn't doing anything crazy. We just make that really easy and frictionless for the fans so that that net is going to catch as many of those fish. They're not going to fly through a. 100% yeah. Owning fan data, like sounds really corporate, and I think there's like some resistance around that. But like, what you're actually doing is you're creating intimacy. So what do you like, obviously the artists who come work with you, like, understand the, you know, yeah, how awesome Laylo is, but what would you say to those artists who like, feel like that's like weird corporate, you know?

12:46 I think it's interesting the owning fan data is, yeah, it's kind of what it's been been coined, but really it's Laylo is enabling the most direct communication between what you actually like and the fan. Yeah, right. As a fan, I love this band, right? I want to hear directly from that band. Historically, the way you get communications from that band is from Live Nation, right? Who gets all the data from a tour or bands in town? Who when you sign up for a bands in town, you're actually giving your fan data to, right. Which? Bands in town doesn't necessarily benefit the artist. How many times I've spoken to artists who are like, I don't know what this show did because they wouldn't share the information.

13:31 Right, exactly. So we, I think have taken it right to. We want to be direct to fan. We don't want you to know what Lay low is. The artists aren't signing up for a lay low. Sorry, the fans aren't signing. Up for lay low. Right. It's fully direct communication. Now. I think the concept of marketing being annoying is something I think we all understand with like signing up for e-commerce SMS, you get 10% off if you sign up for text. But I think we're heading into a world where people know how to opt out. People know how to reply, stop. People know how to unsubscribe and they're going to be more picky with what they're subscribed to. But that's actually healthy.

14:14 I always tell artists like if there's a fan that maybe was was a fan of yours 10 years ago and you're importing your SMS list, maybe for a more legacy band, like you want those fans to kind of say, oh, I'm not interested in this right now, right? And you want to always be collecting new fans that are it's at the top of their mind and the top of their interest. And so I Layla's in a good position for that because no one really loves Urban Outfitters. Right. Like they send a million texts, you get like. 8 texts a week and people are still on those lists, right? Artists often times will come and be scared of sending like one text a month, right? And I think, you know, in reality, your fans as artists, like, care about what? You're doing perfect example. So house calls to I'm friends with all the house calls people out in Chicago.

14:59 They use lay low. I always like, and this is not me like patting myself on the back, but like I always buy tickets to shows. I don't ask for guest lists very often because I like to support and I think what goes around comes around very cool. So I sign up for their Lay Low text and there's this DJ who I've been dying to see in the States, Alicia. We saw her out in Amsterdam and I got the text that Alicia was coming to house calls and I got first access to those tickets. They were, you know, very affordable. And they didn't announce the show till midnight. And I was like, this is awesome like that. I got, you know, made sure we got our tickets because I'm sure it's going to sell out.

15:40 And like, that was such a great use case for for Layla, for someone like me who's been waiting to see an artist in, I know she's playing in the States, but never played in Chicago before. And I got that access. I feel so good as a fan. Like that feels like a reward. Yeah, I think that's a really important point, which is you do need to provide value. Yeah. And again, Layla has two sides. One is collecting the data, like getting fans to actually join your list, which I think is what Layla does better than anyone else by far, is our conversion. But then there's the other side of it, which is you owning the data and like actually communicating with your fans. And when you're collecting the data, there's got to be a reason. I think historically, I talk about this all the time, but like, 15 years ago, artists had a footer of their website that said join my newsletter for stuff. Yeah.

16:33 Like, sign up for my newsletter. Yeah. And as a fan, you're like, OK. But what are you gonna? What's the point of that, right? And then now even more modern is pre save my new song. And it's like, OK, I can take this action and then like it adds it to my library and I can yeah. So really, the more tangible you can make it, the more your the more fans are gonna be able to to react. So the most common things that we see always track ID right, is like ultimate incentive. If you sign up, you're gonna hear this song as soon as it's out on DSPS, right? The classic, you know, what's the what's the ID bootlegs for DJs is really common, so I'm going to tease this song. I can't maybe put it on Spotify because it's a bootleg, but if you sign up I'll send you the Download file and now you're in my.

17:23 List did that, but with his own music. He did it in a really big way where he's like, and it crashed Dropbox, right? Because he's like, if you like music, sign up and I'll send you some stuff. And then, yeah. Yeah, Skrillex notoriously dropped his whole album via Dropbox the day before it hit DSPS. Yeah, which I don't no comment on the league, however that went down. But it was a really powerful moment of like that direct to fan communication. Yeah. And Skrillex, like working with with Sony's team, just wanted it to be really like. I remember setting up an e-mail template with with their team and he didn't want it to have any design or aesthetic. He wanted it just to be like someone open Gmail. Hell yeah.

18:10 Sent an e-mail Dropbox link Dash. So smart. You know, so really cool. Just like creating that exclusivity and that value for fans. Yeah, to be in the list. So IDs merge. Talk to me. We know those two things. Talk to me about what fans actually want. Because it's not more content, it's just exclusive first access. What are some other things? Like if an artist is listening to this and thinking, OK, maybe I'm not producing so much music yet, but like I'm more of a selector or whatever. Like what are the some of the other things that people want that a tool like this can give them? Yeah, I mean, there's a couple ways and and strategies in our guides. We have like hundreds of these.

18:51 But the most common things that we see artists dropping, which is the concept we use a lot is tickets. And then if you think about tickets, what are you actually, what is the incentive for a fan? It's number one. If the show sells out, that fan misses out, right #2 if you get a notification right when those tickets go on sale, you're going to get the lowest price. So and, and #3 pre sale code, maybe you can't access tickets unless you have a code. So there's the incentive is like, what's the point of me signing up for this? It's that I'm going to get first access before it sells out at the lowest price. Yep and that's why every festival, every promoter is doing pre sale registration campaigns and merch.

19:34 Merch is interesting. I think a lot of artists are sleeping like are not doing enough merch. It's. Got to be good merch though. It's got to be good. You got to be creative. My favorite merch store that we work with a lot is Grizz and Grizz has spent years building this segment of his fan base on Laylo that they have signed up for his list in exchange for an hour of early access to a Shopify store for every merch drop. So he he'll do a merch collection that has like maybe 5 items that will run out really quick like a signed vinyl or like limited edition items. So his die hard fans know that if they're not getting that early access, they're not it's going to be sold out before.

20:15 So he's created. This culture of like. And this just, yeah, like drop sneakers have been dropped on. Like that's like a before artists did it, like people who, like, sell sneakers and stuff. I've been doing, yeah. Drops came from Supreme. Yeah, it's that stresses me out, I'm not gonna lie. Trying to like get access to something like it's fun, it's a rush, but wow, it's stressful. So it definitely creates like a good tension. Yeah, the FOMO that that people want. And going back to what you said about the people who are going to spend on early bird, I remember someone else told me on the show, you don't want to look at the fan that spends the most. You want to look at the fan that spends the least because that means they're buying your early bird tickets.

20:57 And I was like, wow, that is so true. You want the people who are in there like, like as soon as you and, and I am that person for like a lot of things, like there's just no questions asked. Like as soon as I see something announced for a specific artist that I like, I'm like why would I even hesitate? Yeah, 100%. And that actually in the last year in the Lay Low app, we've been building a much deeper fan profile system. So if you ever have been in, in Layla, you can basically open up a fan and it shows you just a ton of interaction data, like engagement data. So a year prior, we would show like how much they spend on your Shopify, their location, their Instagram follower account, like, you know, whatever data we could pull. But now we're actually starting to track and source if they've ever clicked on a link, if they've ever texted your number back, if they've ever purchased tickets. Yeah.

21:54 I mean it's all standard data that yes. Well, this is what every company is doing. So as an artist, you can now filter your fan base and say, hey, these are the top 10% of fans that are really engaging with me. Maybe I want to give them. I want to filter these fans and give them a first listen. That's really cool. And something exclusive. And then again, that's reinforcing the value of being an engaged community member, right? Yeah. Being in the fan, you know, in the fandom. It change, it changes so much. Like I'll never forget there was a like an entrepreneur that I was a fan of and I would share some of his quotes like on Twitter. This was years ago, like on Twitter and stuff and of nowhere. Once I got an e-mail from someone on his team saying, oh, he's hosting like a dinner in Chicago inviting some like young entrepreneurs to, you know, whatever.

22:43 And I'm like, how did you guys find me? And I think they did that like grassroots, like they were filtering for people in Chicago who like had shared some of his content before or whatever. And I couldn't go because I hadn't. But I was like, I'll never forget that. Like how special that made me feel. I mean, and obviously there was like money at play here, right? It was like a ticket for his event, but it was an exclusive small round table conversation. And that really can change the perception that can take people from like big fanniers to like ultimate if you play your cards right. Yeah, 100% I think. And that's where having the direct communication like you post on your story, 5% of your followers will see it.

23:26 Mehta wants you to pay for ads they want to make, you know they make a lot of money off ads for by limiting that exposure. If you send a Lilo blast, every fan gets it through their Airpods on Siri. So just like having that mass mind control device. It's the evil Mojo JoJo way of explaining it, but. But we're saying it out in the open, so it's good. Yeah. I mean, yeah, again. So I think owning that relationship with your fans allows you to take them from I kind of like. You. Yeah, I kind of like your music. That was a cool song to like. Oh, I want to actually come out to your show. Right, right. So talk to me about why our artists should not chase like virality as their main goal.

24:13 So virality obviously is is beautiful when you get it. We were talking about Dean Turley and this moment where there's a lot of fans that you can potentially collect and kind of have in your, in your ecosystem, in your community, but it's very difficult to, to, to actually make happen. You can, you can spend years and years trying and, and never being successful, right? So, and also a lot of virality happens from the micro community that you have. You have a new song, maybe the 1st 15, you're 15 super fans are using that song in on Tik Toks. That's when the virality can happen. So instead of focusing on this expansive, let's get 100 million streams, you should focus on building that initial community that will actually, you know, be your your early supporters. And and that's more likely that effort in creating this smaller community of fans that really care is oftentimes going to lead to virality better than just trying to go viral 1. 100% right.

25:22 So a couple more questions here. For the artists listening to this who are working hard at their careers, what is that first step that someone should because using the Dean example, like 10,000 followers, like that's that's an accomplishment for a lot of artists, but you're not massive yet. What is that first step that the people listening can take to start implementing some of these tools, especially if they don't necessarily have a ton of music out yet? Like how can they start building more touch points with the people that are following them? Yeah, 100%. It's starting to build your community, starting to to figure out maybe you have 20 fans that actually care about your music right now. You should really look at that relationship with those 20 fans and figure out what they like and reward them. So if you're doing a show in a certain city, you should figure out how to communicate with those fans that have been day ones and get them to come out and support. Those are the fans that are going to tell their friends about it and are going to bring their friends to your next show when you when you come back and they're going to be talking, posting stories and saying, Oh, I love, you know, this specific artist.

26:28 So I think honing in, of course, make great music, you know, check all the boxes. You have to put out content. You have to you have to have your Spotify updated as that's where the fans are existing in the ecosystem. But you need to start to focus on really how do I develop these deeper relationships? And I think looking ahead with AI and a lot of crazy things happening to the music industry, it's going to be about that 1000 true fans is going to be worth more than a million that just passively are listening. Yeah. So and that thousand true fans is something that's really realistic to develop. You know, it just takes dedicated effort in that.

27:09 And I think most so many artists just from the last decades of pre save DSP Spotify playlist, they aren't thinking about that side of it as much. So Layla exists as just a tool to make that easier. I love that answer. Last question for you, and I love that we're going to touch on this at Nexus tomorrow. What's a principle of community that every artist should internalize before worrying about the tools? Like what do they need to know about what community actually is? You have to understand that like at the end of the day, you are, you are building a community and your goal is entertainment.

27:54 Your goal is to provide value. And a lot of your fans are going to be using your creations and your music to meet other fans to actually share with the world themselves. So many people that are in the electronic music world are sharing IDs with each other. So I think it's just really important to understand that your goal here is to entertain and like create an environment where a fan can really live in and have pride in like being being. Being part of your fan. Of your of your fandom. Totally. Yeah, totally. Well, thank you for doing this. I was always a fan of what you guys did before, but now working with you a little bit and seeing how you're just changing the game for artists, I love everything you do. Awesome.

28:43 Well, appreciate taking the time and I'll see you at the Nexus event tomorrow. Hell yeah if anything we talked about today resonated.