Why everyone is throwing pop ups... including me
I'm helping artists in the most important way: getting in front of fans and capturing moments
Pop ups have become all the craze. And I love it.
In today’s music culture, there are a lot of ways to market an artist. Out of all of these, there are two stand alone things that I think are the most valuable thing an artist can do:
Create Content
Get in front of fans
With the rise of AI, the daily song count is increasing every week and eventually (with the help of AI and the growing ease of creating and releasing records for artists in the comfort of their homes) - we will see a million songs released a day. It may not be tomorrow or even in the next couple of years, but it’s headed that direction. So the importance of getting in front of real people and fans is going to only get more valuable. And there is one thing that does both of the things I listed above:
Pop up events.
My job is to create value for artists. It’s what I am here to do. I started putyouon to do just that, and so I’m constantly studying what is the most value I can bring an artist. The rest will take care of itself. We all saw Fred again’s historic run in 2022/2023 where it seemed like every weekend we were seeing a video of him pouring beer’s for fans while DJing at a pub, Riding a bike through London with 800 people, or playing a set on a school bus. The fact of the matter is he was doing something very strategic. He was getting a LOT of content (for himself and especially from fans about him), and he was making a LOT of people feel included in the hype he was building/showing. I ask you, what is more impressive:
An artist announcing a show 2 months in advance, running ads on the show, having friends and music pages post about it, selling 2,000 tickets over the span of weeks, getting openers to push final tickets, and selling out a venue that thousands of artists have played before them
or
An artist posting 24 hours before a DJ set in a random place people have never been before (pizza place, bakery, barbershop) mobilizing thousands of people at the flip of a switch, generating buzz and hype, showing a long line just to get in, only able to fit the first 200 people in, increase FOMO from everyone else that showed up too late, and posting multiple clips of you with people/fans going crazy and creating lasting memories
10/10 times I would say the latter.
This is why Angrybaby and I threw a party on a school bus.
This is why Forester and I threw a party at a co-working space.
This is why BUNT. threw a party in a barbershop.
BUNT. has mastered this art form of pop ups, where his recent one in a barbershop I went to in NYC and it looked like this
The line, the hype, the energy, the luck of the fans, and guess what else he got? All 2,500 phone numbers. Why is that important? I’ll get to that.
The amount of content that BUNT. was able to get from this event (my video alone got 200,000 views across socials, and his content got another 300k) showed a kid from Germany setting the city of New York on fire. This brought hype to his (new) EP, it was right before he announced his world tour, and guess which city sold out immediately when tickets went on sale? You guessed it. New York- and he’ll never not sell out a show in NY ever again because he can now drop a text to his NY fans who either had an amazing time at the pop up and want to experience him live again, OR missed out and are thirsting to see him for the first time. Having those fans waiting on text updates is such an advantage for him.
Do you see the value of these renegade style pop up events? This is why I’ve set my sights on curating these with artists and basically packaging the entire experience that I shared with BUNT into a massive value add for them. Today, I have little desire to throw a big show in a city and act as a promoter, stress over selling tickets, worry about sponsors and venders and scheduling around radius clauses. Instead I’d rather create a fun experience, have the event be free (to avoid radius clause), build hype, capture content, and recap the experience just as I did with BUNT. That is so valuable.
Artists need to ask themselves, “Which event would someone text their friends about?”. Artists need to curate experiences for people based off of that question and fight to stand out in the sea of events that are being put on every week.
I still plan on throwing playlist parties for the music club members, and in fact I’m going to test out an event at the end of this month where the theme is the songs that released this month and were included on the new release playlists that I send to the music club every week (join the club here to hear about all of the events and never miss a release day).
Any event we throw in LA or NYC will be announced in the music club first of course. Priority access for music club members. We’re designing merch for the club. So much on the way.
Next week I’m going to break down why music curators are in fact the most valuable thing to happen to the music industry since streaming. A lot of game from the Music Curator Guide is going to be dropped in this one, where I’ll deep dive on the Spotify algorithm, the TikTok “filter” and the current state of consumption for music fans.
Don’t miss this one
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-Steve