Indie Sustainability Ep. 03: Patreon
[ED-Full disclosure: DIY Music Guide has a Patreon feed, and we’d love your direct support using that platform! There’s additional content, and subscriber exclusives to explore over there! We maintain that Patreon is not necessarily the right choice for every artist; DIY Music Guide does content in the technical information and educational space, which is a very different thing than the creative art space. We’re still not convinced that tying original artwork to a feed adds value in every case, as discussed below. Patreon, like all creative business decisions, should be applied as is relevant to your individual situation.]
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Patreon, for those not in the know, is an online platform that enables artists to develop a paid feed of content, for their fans to directly support their work on a recurring subscription basis. Patreon sells itself as a new model for direct fan support of artists, and it’s true! The idea of fans directly paying the artist a small membership fee for regular content is appealing, and works well enough that other platforms (like Bandcamp) also allow membership payments. Patreon’s marketing is designed to push the idea that their platform is for everyone. But is this true?
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It’s probably more accurate to say that certain kinds of artists can do very well on Patreon. Just like certain artists can do well on Spotify, or on a major label, or an indie label, or in physical merch sales, or on tour. Patreon is not some be-all-end-all that is going to replace traditional music distribution quickly. In some ways the idea of “regular content for money” doesn’t work at all, in fact.
Depending on what you make, there can be a real race to the bottom going on over at Patreon. More and more content needed to justify fairly low monthly membership fees. Patreon incentivizes this by design. They want creators to maximize engagement by constant “slave to the feed” posting, because that’s how their platform survives. Less posting by creators means less venture capital coming in. Big suprise-they’re gonna go public soon.
All of this may, or may not, align with your own interests as the artist doing the creative work to populate that feed. It may not be possible to generate the amount of regular content needed for Patreon success easily, or affordably, depending on exactly what you make and how you make it. So, by definition, this isn’t something that will work for everyone. Like any business decision, getting into Patreon should be fully considered and applied to your unique goals and individual situation.
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As artists, we also don’t want to push the idea that the only creatives worthy of making a living are the ones that are posting 18 new pieces of content every single week. A recent tag line on the Patreon front page encouraged artists to sign up to “change the way art is valued”. Slightly ironic, considering that some artists might consider the amount of time and regular content-making work required to gain a subscriber that’s worth $1 or $3 per month more like a devaluing of their time and efforts.
The artist who comes out with an album every year, or every three, also deserves to make a comfortable living from their work. It can be difficult to square this circle with the regular content posting required to develop an appealing Patreon membership offer.
More content is not always better content. You, as the artist, always have full control over the pacing and release of your work. Use that control on Patreon. Set expectations clearly on your channel, so that fans that choose to subscribe know how often you plan to post new stuff. And, make sure you pick a pace for yourself that you can manage to keep up production on, consistently, for at least 12 months straight. It will take at least that long, and likely longer, to determine if using Patreon makes sense for you-many creators have contributed to this platform for years, slowly growing the whole time. Try to do what you say you’re going to do, whatever posting schedule you choose.
If you’ve decided on a random posting schedule at your random whims, explain that clearly to your potential followers. Also understand that a random posting policy makes it harder for some people to see the value in paying you every month. Consistent posting will tend to encourage consistent support-by design, Patreon encourages the regular and consistent posting of content.
So, Patreon success is all about value for your subscribers, combined with a pace of creative production that you can maintain long term. How does that pace and quality of creative production then balance out with what you’re charging monthly?
So many options here. If you’re a painter, you could commit to posting regular photos of studio works in progress, and early presales for subscribers of your finished works at a discount. Or, you could commit to one small painting a month available to subscribers only. Whatever works for you. The best artistic fits for Patreon usually involve items that can be regularly and consistently produced. It’s just a monetized feed, after all, and feeds need feeding by you.
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If your purest form of artistic expression is to come out with one album every ten years, that’s totally cool! Do you, never force it. But, that probably won’t make anyone want to pay you on Patreon-maybe not the best fit in this case, for these types of artists.
It’s about finding a balance of quality and consistency, and that’s different for every individual. Consistency is usually the harder one. There are plenty of amazing artists. Not nearly as many who can produce great work consistently, long term.
You don’t really need new content more than once a week, or month. But, maybe try to do more than one thing every decade. In between those bounds there are lots of options that can work for you!
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It’s important to remember that the founder of Patreon got big by playing goofy cover songs on Youtube in the early 2000s, going for mass market appeal and riding one of the first viral internet waves. Guess what, as soon as they stopped posting that kind of content, the money stopped too. It turns out Youtube wasn’t a sustainable economic approach, so they invented Patreon.
And, they’ve succeeded in building a platform that reflects that inspiring origin story, but is also similarly biased. Patreon is a great idea, quite valuable to many types of artists, but not necessarily the right fit for everyone.
