A musician’s guide to Substack – introduction
Originally created in 2017 as an emailing tool, Substack has gradually added social and multimedia features, transforming its initial purpose. Now a hybrid platform mixing blogging, newsletters, and interactive spaces, it allows creators to maximize audience engagement while progressively monetizing their content.
The platform has also established itself as a multifaceted tool, covering the entire creative process: its personalization power and its role in natural referencing enable it to compete with traditional social networks that are nearing saturation. To better understand this innovative lever and its many assets, David Percy, Deputy Head of Audience Development at IDOL, shares his insights into the world and uses of Substack.
Can you introduce Substack in a few words?
It’s a bit like a classic social network. There’s a feed where you can post images, videos, text… With all the dimensions of interaction, engagement, and sharing, much in the spirit of Twitter, Instagram, or even TikTok.
The platform offers page customization options: you can choose the appearance, how information is highlighted, much like it was possible to do on Myspace or Tumblr back in the day. And crucially, you can easily integrate audio or video players, whether from streaming platforms or natively.
It’s also super practical for gathering your info: classic posts, multimedia content, highly personalized newsletters sent directly to fans’ inboxes, interactions via chats or forums… The result: it’s truly a hyper-customizable social hub, for centralizing communication, boosting streams, and creating a real interactive space with the community.
What’s interesting is that Substack’s dynamic relies entirely on sharing and subscriptions. But where Substack goes further is on the paywall part: with several monetization tiers, it offers the possibility of reserving exclusive content for the most engaged fans.
How is this platform a good direct-to-fan solution?
It is precisely for its ability to maintain and strengthen the direct-to-fan relationship that Substack is gaining momentum today in cultural circles, particularly music. The platform offers a simplified way to manage one’s community: you can send updates directly to a targeted fanbase with each new publication.
In my opinion, if Substack is so appealing today, it's because it's now difficult to maintain a real connection with one's audience on traditional social networks. Substack offers a direct space to foster relationships and strengthen fan engagement.
The notion of “gated” content, reserved for subscribers, reinforces among the most engaged fans the feeling of belonging to a privileged community. From this point of view, Substack is similar to Patreon’s approach: you can create a real connection and reward loyalty, which helps the community grow.
What advantages does Substack offer compared to a classic newsletter or blog?
What I find interesting is all the personalization offered, with a multi-format aspect. You can write in-depth articles, share very personal things, or conversely post more general content to attract new audiences, much like what you see on a Twitter or Instagram feed. And like on other networks, there’s an “explore” tab that facilitates discovery.
What’s practical is that Substack provides an overview. Whether it’s information for superfans or broader announcements for a new track or video release, it helps avoid scattered communication. With its wide range of formats, the platform multiplies ways of telling stories and truly opens up possibilities in storytelling.
There’s also the organic aspect, which is not negligible. Basically, the more you publish, the higher the artist’s name ranks in search engine optimization (SEO). That’s why many sites keep a blog or a news section; it allows them to occupy space on the web, associate keywords with their brand, and ultimately enrich the ecosystem around the project in a competitive sector.
Ultimately, these Substack pages help create a solid environment conducive to discoverability.
With the explosion of AI, we suspect that tomorrow, prompts will look like “Show me some Moody Sunday Night R&B,” and you’ll need to have put those words in your bio or articles to appear in the best recommendations! However, you shouldn’t fall into the opposite extreme and overuse SEO. Search engines detect keyword stuffing, and that becomes counterproductive in terms of ranking. It needs to be natural, which is why I recommend talking about yourself and your music.
What data does Substack offer to know your super fans?
Substack’s CRM is quite basic, but it offers good visibility into the audience. First, when someone subscribes to a profile, it provides a lot of information: the email address, of course, but also the subscriber’s geographical area. Their behavior will also help establish a conversion rate for each post (how many subscribers came via a specific article) or open and click-through rates. This is enough to get an idea of who follows the page, and this data will be very useful for targeting campaigns.
You can also download the subscriber list (in CSV), with their email addresses, to send newsletters via other marketing platforms like Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, or even Zapier.
It’s important to remember that in Europe, GDPR rules must be strictly followed. This means, among other things, that subscribers must give their consent for their email address to be used outside of Substack.
What types of audiences are on Substack?
In terms of age and gender, we find a fairly classic profile: there is no specific audience on Substack. However, users often want to engage with longer content, articles that take several minutes to read. In comparison to TikTok, which primarily responds to a need for immediate gratification and quick-to-consume content.
So we can imagine that Substack attracts those who like to “dig deep” into subjects. In our experience, the percentage of people who take the time to read an entire article, rather than just skimming it, is often very high, even if it varies by profile. These are therefore valuable audiences that need to be nurtured.
For what types of announcements do you recommend using this platform?
The advantage of this platform is that you can put all types of formats there: text, video, excerpts from handwritten notes, lyrics, making-of snippets… in short, anything that tells the story of a project or an album.
Using it partially loses a bit of that immersive side and therefore that added value. It’s better to exploit it to the maximum to make people want to accompany the artist into their world, as if they were in the studio or in their room alongside them.
It's this "all-in-one" aspect that makes Substack strong: you build a complete space that makes the audience want to immerse themselves and follow the evolution of the project over time.
Conclusion
In summary, Substack is now establishing itself as a powerful tool for consolidating the direct-to-fan relationship and offering a personalized experience through varied formats. The platform paves the way for more intimate and segmented communication, where loyalty and engagement take on their full dimension.
See you in the next part of our interview to explore winning strategies on Substack and discover how to make the most of its features!