[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How to grow a concert visuals business?
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Ask HN: How to grow a concert visuals business?
I'm tired of working full-time at companies that waste my talent
and energy. I want to work for myself. As a side hustle for the
last few years, I've been designing custom concert visuals and
releasing them on a monthly schedule. I've released 48 VJ packs so
far and created a following within the niche community of VJs.
These VJ performers then remix my visuals into their live
performances at concerts. My setup is unique in that you can
download every VJ pack by becoming a member on Patreon. I want to
take it to the next level and make it into a full-time business but
I'm struggling to figure out next steps. It would be helpful to get
an outsider's perspective since there are so few people doing this
line of work and I feel a bit lost. As far as I can see, there are
two routes to go down: 1) Create custom visuals for touring
musicians. Should I find a rep or agency to represent me for
landing big projects? Should I start reaching out directly to the
business managers of musicians? Should I start a company with a
partner? 2) Continue making VJ packs for thousands of VJs
internationally. Should I move to an annual membership fee instead
of a monthly membership fee on Patreon? Should I move to an online
shop format instead of a Patreon membership? Biz folk, what am I
missing? What am I not considering? Thanks!
https://www.jasonfletcher.info/vjloops/ ---
https://www.patreon.com/isoscelesVJ
Author : nuclearsugar
Score : 24 points
Date : 2024-07-12 13:45 UTC (9 hours ago)
| chabes wrote:
| Great work. I checked out your concert visuals 2024 reel. There
| is definitely work out there for folks that are familiar with
| techniques such as datamosh and generative visuals. People are
| familiar with them, since they have seen them used before, but
| most folks don't know how to wield them.
|
| I'm not a business person, but have been involved in visuals for
| almost 20 years. I have done paid gigs that were one off things,
| but never anything long term.
|
| I'm kind of a DIY/ad-hoc kind of person, so If I were to focus on
| such things full time, I would reach out directly to artists that
| I want to work with. Many of them already have folks in their
| network that handle concert visuals and music videos, but there's
| often room for diversity. If you can make something they like,
| that's all you need.
|
| As an example, look at artists like Animal Collective/Avey
| Tare/Panda Bear... David Portner(Avey Tare)'s sister does a lot
| of their concert visuals and music videos. They also frequently
| work with visual artist Danny Perez. Still, they find ways to
| integrate other artists while maintaining their overall style.
|
| The music video for Panda Bear's Crosswords involved a small
| team, including a director and a VFX person that were neither
| Portner or Perez. The video (from 2015, coming up on a decade old
| next year) uses early generative models like DeepDream, which was
| out of the realm of most other visual artists at the time.
|
| Hell, if you can find a younger group or artist that hasn't
| established those kinds of relationships yet, you could be the
| in-house visuals person for a good chunk of their career.
|
| DJs also could use visual accompaniment. Plus, sharing pay with a
| single DJ is often more lucrative than sharing with an entire
| band.
|
| Another idea is visuals for events/festivals. I work in the legal
| cannabis industry, and psychedelic visuals are welcome most
| places.
|
| Anyway, best of luck in your endeavors
| brudgers wrote:
| [Generic/random advice from the internet]
|
| _1) Create custom visuals for touring musicians. Should I find a
| rep or agency to represent me for landing big projects? Should I
| start reaching out directly to the business managers of
| musicians? Should I start a company with a partner?_
|
| To me, the big idea is right. The approach vector is wrong. Talk
| to musicians directly. They are the one's calling the shots.
| Talking to their gatekeepers means dealing with someone whose jam
| is gatekeeping. Gatekeepers are risk adverse because they want to
| keep their position as a gatekeeper.
|
| No primary is going to reject your product because you bypassed
| their gatekeepers. They might redirect you to one of their people
| if they are interested instead of hanging with you. Or they might
| reject you outright.
|
| The next step is hard work and lots of rejection. The reality is
| that most people in any business have existing relationships for
| goods and services...e.g. people who use VJ services in their
| business already have working relationships with people providing
| VJ services.
|
| Going further, touring musicians tend to have a team they tour
| with..."there's a VJ in the tour van" so to speak. That person
| has experience with the problems of touring.
|
| _2) Continue making VJ packs for thousands of VJs
| internationally. Should I move to an annual membership fee
| instead of a monthly membership fee on Patreon? Should I move to
| an online shop format instead of a Patreon membership?_
|
| My advice is to become more personal. More custom. What actual
| problems can you solve for for specific VJ's and how much will
| they pay? Basically, consulting/freelancing/contract work for
| people with money to spend on bespoke products.
|
| Doing either or both of those things will raise your experience
| when making new commodity products if you go that route. And
| three revenue streams is better than one. Be flexible, try lots
| of things and see what there is a market for. Good luck.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| Problem with talking to musicians directly is that they might
| quite like or even quite love the idea, but they often prefer
| to hand off decisions about stuff that they are not super
| passionate about to the people who look after the money. Many
| musicians actively avoid wanting to have to deal with the
| commercial and logistical side of the shows and stuff around
| their music and delegate that side of stuff to managers and
| labels, so that it doesn't distract them from their core
| mission which is creating.
|
| So to get those musicians on board you need to make them
| passionately care, creative to creative.
|
| So as you rightly point of the best way is to approach the
| creatives who design shows for lots of musicians and get them
| to care to be able to sell it in to the musicians and their
| teams.
| andoando wrote:
| This is cool. I am just getting started in this space but its
| also my dream. Best of luck to you
| conductr wrote:
| This is super niche is my feeling, not going to be super easy.
| Musicians are a niche, those that use these visuals is a niche
| within, those that will like your particular style is a niche
| within.
|
| That said, I'd guess that business managers are a waste of time.
| Musician's themselves are typically accessible on social these
| days. Make them custom art for their music and share with them.
| Probably only a small clip is needed, something to get their
| attention and hopefully reach out to you for custom work. This is
| where you can charge bigger prices.
|
| The patreon approach is a great start but unless you really can
| build a huge following it's going to be hard to make it add up to
| to a greater sum. Prove me wrong though!!
| baxtr wrote:
| Which approach would you recommend instead to someone starting
| out?
| pryelluw wrote:
| My friend, the best way to grow a business is to work with the
| people who already trust and support it. Start having
| conversations with your patreon supporters. Ask them these same
| questions.
| Animats wrote:
| > Biz folk, what am I missing? What am I not considering? Thanks!
|
| That, when the light show operators of the 1960s tried to
| organize to get paid like musicians, Bill Graham Presents crushed
| them.[1]
|
| Live Nation / Ticketmaster is the descendant of Bill Graham
| Presents.
|
| [1]
| https://www.pooterland.com/rabbit_hole_1969_lightshow_strike...
| royjacobs wrote:
| It might be more useful to talk to the people behind the tooling
| that is used during concerts.
|
| For instance, Notch grew out of the demo scene and could be
| interesting maybe? See https://www.notch.one/
| fransjorden wrote:
| Do you have any long versions on YouTube? I checked out your
| showreel and I have noticed that these 1 hour VJ sets get a lot
| of views, as people like me put them on at parties. It might be a
| good way to get attention, but I'm also asking out of personal
| curiosity as I love your style!
| gffrd wrote:
| You're asking questions already and looking for input with an
| open hand, so you're already on the right frame of mind.
|
| Before anything else: just start asking people in your target
| industry/demographic questions. "Hey, I'm thinking of making a go
| of this. How do you make money?"
|
| Are you open to creating motion content for any type of
| situation, so long as it gives you the freedom and compensation
| you want? Or is your heart set on the contexts you've outlined?
|
| If the former, I'd optimize my efforts on creating a wide surface
| area from which to learn where the money is for motion visual
| creators. (Answer: it's probably in advertising)
|
| If the latter, I'd go deep on understanding the business of
| motion visuals: who pays for them, how much (and how big is the
| pool?), who decides on them, what the process looks like. Reach
| out to labels, radio stations, other artists in the same space.
| YossarianFrPrez wrote:
| Fascinating stuff! Big Caveat: I don't know a lot about the VJ
| industry. But if you have thousands of people downloading your
| work, that seems like a decent first step.
|
| Viewed abstractly, your setup seems to essentially be open-source
| visuals as a service. If I understand it correctly, your first
| route involves being a service provider for specific musicians.
| Sort of like how different groups might tour with a stage
| director, yes? This route seems like the endpoint is having an
| agency or studio that contracts with "Big Names." Or maybe you
| could reach out to one such agency that designs aspects of
| musician's tours and work with them in some capacity, be their
| go-to person, etc.
|
| Your question about moving to an annual membership fee instead of
| monthly fee -- that strikes me a specific tactic. I think some of
| the other commenters have the right idea: have you considered
| introducing more tiers? So some of the packs are free, some it's
| $10 a month, and the super-fancy ones are even more? I don't know
| your audience at all, but surely some of them will be willing to
| pay more for exclusivity, rarity, higher quality, or more bespoke
| creations.
|
| For a very different take, which you may or may not be interested
| in: What do you think about the productization route? Is there a
| way you could develop what you're doing into software that could
| be acquired by the DJ/VJ hardware companies?
| bgirard wrote:
| I think they look amazing. Letting your customers download all
| your media for a onetime $10 is unreal. You definitely need to up
| the pricing somehow. Maybe $10/pack and $100++ for unlimited
| access.
|
| Value added might be to bundle it with software to make some of
| them reactive to the music via FFT. I'm not familiar with the
| prior art of the field. I've only ever seen Winamp style FFT
| visualization, or great visuals like you that aren't really
| synced to the music. I'm not sure how realistic this is.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Also try indiehackers site for lots of discussion around business
| building/marketing etc
|
| https://www.indiehackers.com/
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