10 Ways To Support Your Favorite Musicians During Covid

Seeing musicians play live provides a list of benefits from relieving stress and providing a sense of community and connection to just having some down right feel good fun. While the benefits concerts provide are all needed now more than ever, unfortunately as we all know, they have been put on hold. So while musicians and their spectators are shelved from gathering, this hasn’t stifled both parties from exhibiting an industry standard “the show must go on” mentality. Adapting and finding creative ways to stay in front of their fans, musicians are still delivering their essential-for-the-soul content to all of us. Below is a list of ways they’re doing it and more importantly, how we can support them.

1. Become a YouTube subscriber.

A lot of musicians have a YouTube channel as an outlet to post past concerts, behind the scenes and “making of” their music, music videos and recordings of new content. Subscribing to their respective channel and liking their posts benefits them far more than simply watching them. 

• More Subscribers = More Views. Subscribing to their channel boosts the algorithm of the video and where it will be placed for relevancy in the search engine. So the more subscribers, the easier it is to find, and the more views it will get.
• Advertisers = More Money. The more subscribers and overall likes videos have will attract advertisers who want to advertise their content with those channels. 
• Awareness = More Fans. Since subscribing and liking their content will make them easier to find, this will in turn attract more people to their content with the hope of converting them into followers and fans.
  

Our YouTube recommendations:
Mylo Music
The National

2. Follow them on social media.

Musicians thrive on the fans, and social media makes it easy to show your appreciation. Most bands and musicians now have professional pages for themselves on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter. Liking, following, and inviting your friends to their pages is a big way to support them. Musicians also have group pages on Facebook in which fans can join to geek out and interact with other fans AND the musicians.

Our go-to musician social accounts:
Catlea
Magic Giant
Skating Polly (and their Fan Group)
Violent Bloom (and on Facebook)

3. Participate in live streams.

Musicians and bands are regularly performing live streams from home through Facebook and Instagram. Not only do you get to see them live and make comments, many musicians are attaching a PayPal or Venmo link to these lives to make it easy for their fans to send them tips. Another way musicians can receive tip money is through Facebook’s “Stars” button where you can purchase stars through them allowing you to allocate how many you want to send the musician. Facebook has also added a Watch Party feature for live streams. When a musician goes live on Facebook, there’s a simple button that allows the viewer to create a Watch Party. Once selected, this will then post the live to your Facebook feed and the only comments you’ll see are people who decide to hop on and watch from your personal friends’ list. It’s a great way to have a private interactive concert with just your peeps.

Our favorite live streamers:
Jeff Stewart
The Ottawa Tavern
Jake Pilewski

4. Buy and download tracks on your favorite streaming service.

While streaming services don’t put much money directly into the musicians pockets, the convenience of streaming has become the dominant force in how many people choose to listen to their music. You can purchase music to download, but some people are opting to pay a monthly fee. If you pay a monthly fee, make sure you actually download the music as this helps the musician. 

5. Attend exclusive online concerts through StageIt.com.

StageIt offers ticketed digital events where musicians are performing online through StageIt and interacting exclusively for fans who paid for a ticket. Shows are not recorded or archived, so  attendees experience a once-in-a-lifetime event. Not only can you buy a ticket for yourself, you can opt to request to “hitch a ride” to a show, where a generous fan can pay for your way in. In addition to the cover charge, fans also have the option to tip the performer throughout the show.

Our recommended StageIt performers
Keith Harkin
Griffin House
Reverend Horton Heat
Rhett Miller

6. Support independent venues.

Organizations like the non-profit group, The National Independent Talent Organization, are rallying together to get the word out about getting funding to help relieve venues. A bill was proposed to the Senate last week called the “Save our Stages” act. The bill would establish a $10 billion grant to help independent venue operators, promoters, and producers stay afloat to pay for expenses that have staggered against them during Covid. If more and more venues are forced to have to shut their doors, the musicians will have less places to come back to play in. Learn more at Nitolive.org and how you can reach out to your elected officials.

7. Rock some band swag.

Visit your favorite band or musician’s website and purchase t-shirts, pins, posters, albums, and other merchandise to show off your fandom and support the musicians directly. The residual effect is it will also get people interested in the bands you’re representing that they may never heard of before!

8. Visit your local record shop.

Indie record stores are at the hub of all-things local music. In-store performances, local band sections, private browsing sessions, and Record Store Day celebrations are just a handful of ways record stores support a thriving music scene. This week, we received big news from Toledo’s own Culture Clash Records, who will soon be moving to an historic location downtown!

Our favorite record stores:
Encore Records (Ann Arbor)
Everybody’s Records (Cincinnati)
Friendly Beaver Records (Toledo)
Gotta Groove Records (Cleveland)
Magnolia Thunderpussy (Columbus)
Reckless Records (Chicago)

9. Buy tickets for live shows.

Bands are already starting to reschedule their 2020 tours, and you can get in on the action by reserving your tickets now. Another growing trend are drive-in concerts. It’s just like the drive-in movie concept, where attendees drive into the venue and watch the show from their cars or a socially-distant tailgating space. Drive-in concerts may require some extra travel and money, but it might be worth it in order to see some of those bands where the live experience can’t be matched.

10. Support an artist’s Patreon.

Patreon gives fans the opportunity to monetarily support musicians on a monthly basis for bonus content and prizes. Membership levels range in price and rewards (anywhere from $1 to hundreds of dollars), but typically, you can expect things like exclusive online content, digital downloads, discounted or free merchandise, signed copies of albums, hand-written postcards and thank you notes, one-on-one discussions or music lessons, and VIP experiences.

Our Patreon recommendations:
Ben Folds
Scott Mulvahill
Steven Page
Matt Pond

Have more ideas on how to support musicians during the pandemic? Send your thoughts to socialbcreative419@gmail.com or leave us a comment on our social media channels.