How to Support Your Favourite Artists

It's now more important than ever to be supporting your favourite artists in any way you can - big or small. With the live music industry currently immobilised, the majority of artists are missing out on their primary source of income as well as having their ability to reach new audiences limited. Here are some easy ways you can support your favourite artists for all budgets.

1. Interact

Make sure to follow your favourite artists on social media and interact with their posts. The nature of algorithms means that more engagement on a post will boost it in the timelines of other users, resulting in increased reach and therefore further increased engagement. The Instagram algorithm values shares and saves over likes and comments, so save and share artist's posts to your story to help boost their Instagram presence. This is the easiest possible way to show your support and is, of course, completely free.

2. Shout

Another free and incredibly easy option is to share independent music as much as you can. Post about it on social media, introduce your friends to new bands that you love, share playlists of smaller artists. If you follow a lot of blogs/music influencers who put out call outs for new music, take the time to suggest your favourite band. It takes two seconds and it also really makes you feel like you're part of a community.

3. Pre-Save

If enough people pre-order/pre-add/pre-save a single it can have a big effect on how it performs. The first few days following a single release is highly significant when it comes to the Spotify algorithm. A high performance during this time will boost its presence in algorithmically generated playlists and Spotify radio, increasing the single's reach. Pre-orders also contribute to chart performance. 

4. Merchandise

With touring and gigging currently an unviable stream of income, merchandise sales are one of the next best sources for smaller artists. Not only will you be supporting your favourite artist but you'll also be treating yourself to some nice new merch. Consider it a New Year's present for making it through 2020! And who knows - merch from a smaller artist at the beginning of their career may be worth something in the future...

4. Spend

If you're in the position to do so, one of the best ways to support artists is to buy their music. It is well known that streaming platforms pay poorly. Spotify pays its artists $0.003 per stream, meaning an artist would need to reach 3,114 streams to earn just an hour's worth of pay on the UK's minimum living wage. Whilst it's still not enough to live on, artists do get a higher cut from iTunes downloads and they also have more value when it comes to charting. All iTunes singles are less than 99p so this is a cheap but helpful way of supporting your favourite artists. 

An even better option would be to buy physical copies. With an ongoing vinyl revolution taking place, there's never been a better time to start your record collection. Personally I'm a CD fan, but whatever format you're into this is one of the best ways to directly support artists - especially if they're independent.

Lastly, if you're a serious music fan then I'd recommend looking into Bandcamp. Bandcamp artists get instant payment of 85% from any sales they make. Over the last year the platform has been hosting 'Bandcamp Fridays', where on the first Friday of every month they waive their fees and all artists receive 100% of purchases made on that day. This will be continuing into the first half of 2021 and is a brilliant way to directly provide financial support to artists during this time.