Make money doing the work you believe in
🎶 Your Fans Don't Want a Monthly Subscription
For two years, music marketing has sold an idea: open a Patreon, build your base of paying superfans, live off monthly subscriptions.
Three data points from this week tell another story.
Vault, the platform launched by James Blake, closed subscriptions in December after less than two years.
On Patreon, free members outnumber paying members 4 to 1, and those who earn the most are podcasters, not musicians.
Spotify had announced a superfan plan for late 2024. It never arrived.
.
The problem isn't that there's a lack of fans willing to pay. It's that a music career alternates between months of silent writing, a release, a tour, and then silence again. A monthly subscription, however, demands regular content every month.
Two logics that don't meet.
