Hi, Caitlin here.
I spent last week at BIGSOUND having back-to-back meetings with artists and music workers, and the same conversation kept coming up. Not about their music, or their next release, or even their goals - but about capacity. "Should I be doing this myself, or should I hire someone? And if so, who?" Every single meeting.
One band put it perfectly: "We know we need help, but we're not sure where to start. Manager? Publicist? Someone to run our ads?" They'd hit that weird point where they could feel things getting bigger, but weren't sure what to keep doing themselves versus what to hand off.
Here's the framework I kept sharing: before you hire anyone, you need three things clear - your vision, your audience, and your current capacity.
Start with strategy questions:
What's the vision for your project? Where do you want to be in two years?
Who is your core audience, and where do they discover new music?
What's working in your current approach, and what's taking up too much time?
Then build your foundation:
Set up your mailing list (Flodesk over Mailchimp if you want something that actually looks good)
Learn basic ad targeting - YouTube tutorials on Meta Ads Manager will get you there
Reach out directly to playlists and outlets that make sense for your sound
Research artists 2-3 steps ahead of you - map out who wrote about them, what festivals booked them, which radio stations played them. Don't copy their brand or what makes them special, just study the tactical pathway they took
Know when to scale: When any of these systems start eating more time than they're worth, or when opportunities are coming in faster than you can evaluate them - that's your cue to bring in specialists.
One thing that struck me about BIGSOUND: the artists who got the most out of their meetings had been trying things, even imperfectly. They had momentum and clear gaps they needed help with, not just a vague sense they "needed marketing."
Live from the post-BIGSOUND recovery ward,
Caitlin xx