Art of Listening #5 with Keith Jopling
A new series called Art of Listening by the ever-incisive Keith Jopling. This week, we’re excited to present the fifth instalment: Artists Who Write To Their Fans
Artists who write to their fans are helping to grow and sustain their careers while deepening our fandom for their work
Since the beginning of ‘show business’ artists, writers and performers have received fan mail. But these days, more and more artists are writing to their fans. Not individually, but as a community. As such, the communication is still very much designed to fulfil a personal connection.
Through the various social platforms, artists can now open a line directly to their fans. While most of it is the usual stuff we’ve come to define loosely as ‘short-form content’, more and more artists are taking to the written word. Quite a few established artists, Jeff Tweedy and Laura Marling among them, have recently turned to Substack or their own web pages as the primary way to communicate with their fans. Nick Cave set the trend as far back as 2018, with the now infamous Red Hand Files. By inviting fans to send him questions which he then responds to for all the Red Hand Files readers, Cave has built a unique bond with his fan community and undoubtedly contributed to his own creative and spiritual journey as a musician and as a human being. The latest question is “2025 is coming. The world seems to be in such a catastrophic state. Where is the hope? What is hope?”, so, like Cave’s songs, the project doesn’t shy away from big topics. And, Cave’s answer in this case is well worth reading.
These types of connection between artists and fans have previously been blocked by layers of industry – labels, retailers, distributors, PR and press. I don’t mean intentionally blocked as such (although I know a few artists who were advised by the teams to give fans a wide berth) but not deemed as a requirement or a good use of creative time. As I said at the start, fan mail has only ever been one way traffic.
We live in a world in which music itself isn’t enough to build a fan base. As fans we are either drawn to or directed at visual content (Spotify now constantly nudges us towards video). This is of course why artists are cajoled into being ‘content creators’ by their teams, to feed the insatiable appetite of ‘the platforms’. This can be daunting, annoying and exhausting for artists. Yes, the content is engaging for fans and good for stats. But the activity of creating short form content to post and sit alongside cat videos, soft porn images and political invective is hardly creatively satisfying.
But the practice of writing is somehow set apart from all other transient ‘stuff’. For one, it’s a form of artistic expression. For another, writing comes straight from the considered mind of the artist - it gives us fans a little piece of what’s going on inside their heads. It supplements and contextualises their music output nicely. Most of all it gives us a deeper look into their lives and allows artists and fans to broaden and deepen the world they’ve created together.
I subscribe to the Jeff Tweedy Starship Casual Substack. Jeff is a gifted writer as his fans well know and is already the author of three books. The Substack is a direct line into a genius creative brain and ongoing diary, but also gives fans access to his constant flow of music output - songs in progress, cover versions, new demos - a smorgasbord of Jeff Tweedy magic. As fan clubs go, it's very engaging.
Now, as fans, we can only consume so much. An individual fan has room for only a handful of these ‘memberships’, but they don’t have to be forever. Like a Netflix subs, you can dip in and out, come and go as you please. There’s nothing stopping you from signing up to dozens of artist newsletters and email blasts and just diving deeper into a few whenever you feel like it.
I’ve been a fan of singer-songwriter Nerina Pallot’s email blasts for years, only ever as a free user. Her dispatches are hilariously funny. They work as written vignettes of her live show between-song banter, which her fans will tell you are funnier than many professional stand-up comics. Pallot is so good at monologues that she recently did a couple of sold-out one woman shows, with more talk than music.
Laura Marling’s new feed Patterns In Repeat (on Substack) is more serious, but works beautifully as a sort-of in-progress memoir, very much a warts and all look at the life of a modern troubadour (well a ‘trobairitz’ actually, but more about this in another post) as well as a recent mother, expectant mother, daughter, upstanding citizen. And her “Tarot of Music Series” is a really great vehicle for writing about her music.
The examples above are of artists deciding to focus their content creation into the area of writing. It’s not without risk - for a start, writing takes time and not everyone can write well. As things stand in this “era of engagement” the other challenge is that people are reading less, so who really are your readers?
But it could be photography, art, filmmaking, pottery - any other focused form of creation that fans will also enjoy and appreciate. And it doesn;t have to feed the beast of social media either. Indeed, writing and photography blended well in two other recent examples that were released as finished books rather than via tech platforms. Colin Greenwood’s recent book How to Disappear: A Photographic Portrait of Radiohead and Keane’s book Hopes and Fears: Lyrics and History are both superb accompaniments to those bands’ music catalogues and again, work brilliantly as deep dives for fans.
For artists, focusing their ‘content creation’ efforts into either ongoing (Substacks etc.) or finite projects (books, films, exhibitions) turns the tables somewhat - making the ‘content creation’ requirement more meaningful for artists and therefore more nourishing for fans than just fulfilling the various platform requests or filling ever widening social media pipes. The end game is a fanbase that never goes away, a group of people you continue to build a world with.
Learn more about Keith Jopling:
Keith is a music strategist, advisor, consultant, writer and mentor. In 2021 he started the music podcast The Art of Longevity, featured under Spotify’s “must listen” music podcasts and on all other platforms. The archive sits on his music curation site The Song Sommelier.
Keith has worked with the boardrooms of labels, streaming services, start-ups and investors. He has held previous roles with Sony Music, Spotify, EMI and the BPI. Most recently he was Consulting Director at boutique music agency MIDiA Research (2019-2024) and began his career in music as Research Director at global trade body IFPI (2000-2006).
As an educator, he has lectured in music business, strategy and innovation at Henley Business School, NYU, BIMM, ACM, Belmont, Syracuse, Westminster and the University of Krems, Austria.