Josh Solomon and The Empty Pockets been making a living from touring for several years, booked by Adam Davis of our sister company Skyline Artists. But a few weeks ago the band was able to chart on multiple Billboard charts with an indie album that is two years old – a veritable lifetime in today’s music business.
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Guest post from Indiehitmaker
The Empty Pockets have been making a living on the road for ten years, but only just now achieved charting success, and with an album that’s already two years old.
How?
Through the power of personalized digital marketing says Josh Solomon, the band’s guitarist and vocalist. The Empty Pockets are an indie rock band band from Chicago, Illinois, often praised for their polished yet rootsy sound, who have just now achieved charting success, and considerable success at that.
“The breakthrough came when I realized that people buy songs on the radio, for different reasons than they buy our music.” Josh tells us and details how, over the course of their decade long career, the band has spent over $200,000 trying to get radio success, but never seeing ticket or album sales rise as a result.
The breakthrough came when Solomon met with Josh Oszajca, known for his Music Marketing Manifesto. The meeting led to Solomon submersing himself in a six month long research binge, and emerging with an entirely reinvented way of doing business for his band. “People like to buy directly from the artist because they feel like they have a relationship,” he explains, “It’s all in the marketing and you need to define who your audience is.” When The Ten Cent Tour came out in 2015, it sold 298 unreported copies its first week. In the last week, it’s sold over 3,000 copies in CDs alone, and thousands more digitally, through the use of techniques like AB testing and services like ClickFunnels, to find their demographics and market directly to them.
What advice does Solomon have for other bands seeking the same kind of success?
“YOU HAVE TO LET GO OF ASSUMPTIONS… A DESTRUCTIVE ATTITUDE FOR EMERGING MUSICIANS IS SOMETHING I CALL ‘WAITING FOR MY PRINCE TO COME’ SYNDROME… IT ISN’T ABOUT HOW GOOD YOUR RECORD IS, IT’S ABOUT BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS WITH FANS.”
– JOSH SOLOMON, THE EMPTY POCKETS