Most independent artists walk away from a live show with whatever the ticket sales and merch table produced. Cody DeLong has spent more than a decade helping artists find what's left on the table, and it turns out there's quite a bit.
Cody is the CEO and co-founder of Sound Rink, a live-music technology company focused on VIP experiences, artist pre-sales, and direct-to-fan commerce. He started his career booking shows for punk and emo bands, co-founded Armada Merch, and built Sound Rink into a platform that helps artists of all sizes capture more revenue from their live shows — and own the fan data that makes future shows more profitable.
In this conversation, Cody breaks down how independent artists can start capturing fan data and earning incremental revenue from live shows, even before they're running VIP packages. He explains what a superfan actually looks like in practice, why most artists don't own the data from their own ticket sales, and how to build the kind of direct fan relationships that pay off across an entire career — not just one tour.
Cody also gets into why pre-sale ticketing is the right entry point for most independent artists, what needs to be in place before a VIP offering makes sense, and where artists leave money on the table when they do run one. He covers what label deals can do to a mailing list, why an artist who only tours once a year may have more leverage than they think, and why building a mailing list is still the most important thing an artist can do right now.
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Resources
The Unstarving Musician's Guide to Getting Paid Gigs, by Robonzo
Dreamhost – See the latest deals from Dreamhost, save money and support the UM in the process.
More Resources for musicians
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