As a side hustle for the last few years, I've been designing custom concert visuals and releasing them on a monthly schedule. I've released 48 VJ packs so far and created a following within the niche community of VJs. These VJ performers then remix my visuals into their live performances at concerts. My setup is unique in that you can download every VJ pack by becoming a member on Patreon.
I want to take it to the next level and make it into a full-time business but I'm struggling to figure out next steps. It would be helpful to get an outsider's perspective since there are so few people doing this line of work and I feel a bit lost.
As far as I can see, there are two routes to go down:
1) Create custom visuals for touring musicians. Should I find a rep or agency to represent me for landing big projects? Should I start reaching out directly to the business managers of musicians? Should I start a company with a partner?
2) Continue making VJ packs for thousands of VJs internationally. Should I move to an annual membership fee instead of a monthly membership fee on Patreon? Should I move to an online shop format instead of a Patreon membership?
Biz folk, what am I missing? What am I not considering? Thanks!
https://www.jasonfletcher.info/vjloops/ --- https://www.patreon.com/isoscelesVJ
There are many ways to get into it, but for the most part it's all about direct connections.
• Network with professional VJs, lasers, sound, and lighting services. You can work freelance to produce content and/or actually play at events. You can probably get paid to make content, but you'll only be able to help out at shows (for free) until you learn the ropes and prove you're reliable. This is the most common path.
• Contact artists directly. You'd probably just have to make free stuff until you develop a good enough reputation to get paid. This is showbiz, so there's a pretty high bar.
• Try to work at a company that does visuals. It's extremely competitive and there are not that many seats available. The first two options are your best way into this later on.
• Do it yourself. Buy a projector, contact your local clubs, raves, event promoters and offer to do visuals. Plan for very long nights. Consider doing guerilla visuals around your town.
• Keep releasing content. Pitch them to VJ loop services like vjloops.com or Resolume. Learn marketing, etc. There's very little money in this, but if you get good, you'll at least make a name for yourself, which can help with the other options.
Great businesses come to resemble their customers (what they value becomes what your business values), and this only comes from an insanely deep understating of your customers. Talk with your patreons and ask "why" a lot - "why" should be your most used word. This can get a little awkward, so one trick is to set expectations early in the conversation with something like "I'm trying to understand how to make you more successful, so I'm going to ask why a lot because on the other side of that I can help you more."
A fantastic book to read (before you quit your job) is Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank. Good luck!
I’m not a business person, but have been involved in visuals for almost 20 years. I have done paid gigs that were one off things, but never anything long term.
I’m kind of a DIY/ad-hoc kind of person, so If I were to focus on such things full time, I would reach out directly to artists that I want to work with. Many of them already have folks in their network that handle concert visuals and music videos, but there’s often room for diversity. If you can make something they like, that’s all you need.
As an example, look at artists like Animal Collective/Avey Tare/Panda Bear… David Portner(Avey Tare)’s sister does a lot of their concert visuals and music videos. They also frequently work with visual artist Danny Perez. Still, they find ways to integrate other artists while maintaining their overall style.
The music video for Panda Bear’s Crosswords involved a small team, including a director and a VFX person that were neither Portner or Perez. The video (from 2015, coming up on a decade old next year) uses early generative models like DeepDream, which was out of the realm of most other visual artists at the time.
Hell, if you can find a younger group or artist that hasn’t established those kinds of relationships yet, you could be the in-house visuals person for a good chunk of their career.
DJs also could use visual accompaniment. Plus, sharing pay with a single DJ is often more lucrative than sharing with an entire band.
Another idea is visuals for events/festivals. I work in the legal cannabis industry, and psychedelic visuals are welcome most places.
Anyway, best of luck in your endeavors
Maybe that's just what people want and props to the creator for nailing the genre but I'd be way more interested in something actually unique and generated real time with the music. I feel like visualizers from the 2000s were more impressive - surely with all the progress in CPU/GPU we could be doing some truly epic visualizations these days...
That, when the light show operators of the 1960s tried to organize to get paid like musicians, Bill Graham Presents crushed them.[1]
Live Nation / Ticketmaster is the descendant of Bill Graham Presents.
[1] https://www.pooterland.com/rabbit_hole_1969_lightshow_strike...
~~~
BARB: In '65 and ’66 there was a time when the Fillmore and The Family Dog were sort of the centers of a community that was developing. I’d like to know whatever happened to the community that was supposed to be being formed.
GRAHAM: It may have started, but, uh, the seed may have been there somewhere, but in my opinion, again, we’re talking about opinions, not facts, the seed was in the ground, but there wasn’t enough water poured on, and I don’t think the flower ever surfaced.
BARB: Why didn't that happen?
GRAHAM: That’s a five hour question. It needs a five hour answer. It’s so easy to point as to who’s guilty and not guilty, the opportunist entrepreneur, which is an accusation that’s been, you know, we’ve been pointed at for a longtime. That maybe somebody’s opinion. Mine, there are basically two kinds of people, and I don’t mean just physically or mentally, just in the sense of a word, there are thse who DO, DOOO, and there are the other kind, who wait for something to be done to them, to be affected by life, and we have too many of the latter.
There aren’t enough, there never were, in San Francisco, enough people, whether they do right or wrong, or good or bad, inactivity is wrong, mental inactivity, or sometimes physical inactivity. But this community has always been jammed with people who wait for life to affect them, rather than for them to affect life within themselves, or life around them.
We had lovely people that used to come to the dances in ’65, ’66, ’67, with their plumage, their accessories, and feeling very good, and high, and dancing, and jovial, and painting on the floor, under the black light, but what else?
O.K., you're 17, 18, 19, 20, 24 years old, you trip out, you get stoned, you go to dances, and you beg in the street, and you deal, WHAT ELSE? What else do you do about the world you dislike so much? Around you exists this ugly world, which you are always putting down.
[...]
WHAT DO YOU DO? This is in answer to your question, the greatest tragedy in die last ten years, other than war and killings in Viet Nam, and the Civil Rights situation in America, for me, has been the tragedy of the Haight-Ashbury.
The world said: "We’re looking at you, here we come, News and Look and Life and Time and Esquire, and we're getting on the street”.
But what did the Haight Ashbury do, what did it say, where was the political platform? Where was the theater, where was the community spirit?
There never was a community. Look at Golden Gate Park. What do you have in Golden Gate Park? Everybody looks peaceful, nice, docile, stoned, freaky, throwin’ Frisbees, WHAT ELSE?
~~~
At first I was really puzzled how a guy could be running this thing from Lancaster PA and have all these contacts with huge musicians in LA, NYC, etc.
Eventually I realized that he'd been in the industry for decades and got to know a lot of these people over the years organically, from showing up and doing whatever it took to be involved.
All that to say that I have some reason to think the following advice is reasonable:
Get in touch with musicians directly. Find ones you gel with well, bend over backwards to make their shows amazing, and cultivate relationships for the long haul. You won't get rich, famous, or admired by normals, but you may get to be part of creating some beautiful moments for other humans.
Now I work in immigration. Well-established relocation consultants usually get all of their work from large businesses who exclusively work with them when they hire new people.
I'd just advise you to build similar referral streams, and perhaps reward your "salespeople" with a commission.
It's also important to be a constant and genuine participant in related communities. If you bring the community more than you get from it, you can become a sort of well-liked contributor, and the first person they think of when visuals are needed. A sort of household name.
This is shockingly salient advice, and I'm surprised I hadn't heard it before now.
Many churches want motion backgrounds to project behind their lyrics, so companies such as StoryLoop, CMG, Shift Worship, etc. have sprung up to serve this niche.
The general business model is an annual subscription to access all their media. Monthly subscriptions don’t work because people sign up once, download it all, and cancel.
These companies have grown largely by nurturing Facebook groups of likeminded creatives who go on to become subscribers.
It's like someone asking "How do I get my river guide company off the ground?" and you reply "Well you could give tours of old folk's homes instead."
They're not even in the same category.
Viewed abstractly, your setup seems to essentially be open-source visuals as a service. If I understand it correctly, your first route involves being a service provider for specific musicians. Sort of like how different groups might tour with a stage director, yes? This route seems like the endpoint is having an agency or studio that contracts with "Big Names." Or maybe you could reach out to one such agency that designs aspects of musician's tours and work with them in some capacity, be their go-to person, etc.
Your question about moving to an annual membership fee instead of monthly fee -- that strikes me a specific tactic. I think some of the other commenters have the right idea: have you considered introducing more tiers? So some of the packs are free, some it's $10 a month, and the super-fancy ones are even more? I don't know your audience at all, but surely some of them will be willing to pay more for exclusivity, rarity, higher quality, or more bespoke creations.
For a very different take, which you may or may not be interested in: What do you think about the productization route? Is there a way you could develop what you're doing into software that could be acquired by the DJ/VJ hardware companies?
Before anything else: just start asking people in your target industry/demographic questions. "Hey, I'm thinking of making a go of this. How do you make money?"
Are you open to creating motion content for any type of situation, so long as it gives you the freedom and compensation you want? Or is your heart set on the contexts you've outlined?
If the former, I'd optimize my efforts on creating a wide surface area from which to learn where the money is for motion visual creators. (Answer: it's probably in advertising)
If the latter, I'd go deep on understanding the business of motion visuals: who pays for them, how much (and how big is the pool?), who decides on them, what the process looks like. Reach out to labels, radio stations, other artists in the same space.
Value added might be to bundle it with software to make some of them reactive to the music via FFT. I'm not familiar with the prior art of the field. I've only ever seen Winamp style FFT visualization, or great visuals like you that aren't really synced to the music. I'm not sure how realistic this is.
For instance, Notch grew out of the demo scene and could be interesting maybe? See https://www.notch.one/
1. If you are looking to create custom visuals as a service, I'd suggest creating a specific page on your site which outlines what you offer and ideally some testimonials from VJs or clients who have used your service.
2. I wonder if there's a line of business in creating slick motion graphics for business conferences which could compliment the custom visuals work? I had some gigs creating AR visuals for pitches and presentations a while back.
3. On the subject of networking, my experience has been that regularly doing lunch/coffee with other creatives is valuable for generating business- so long as you can clearly state what you do and what kind of client you're looking for in a way people can remember when they come across it. If you do everything and you're looking for any client, people won't necessarily let you know when they find someone relevant to introduce you to.
All the best!
"The global event pro-av services market size was valued at $28.6 billion in 2021, and is projected to reach $56.9 billion by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 7.1% from 2022 to 2031."
https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/event-pro-av-services-m...
Adding the creative VDJ sugar on to could be a good niche.
1) Create custom visuals for touring musicians. Should I find a rep or agency to represent me for landing big projects? Should I start reaching out directly to the business managers of musicians? Should I start a company with a partner?
To me, the big idea is right. The approach vector is wrong. Talk to musicians directly. They are the one's calling the shots. Talking to their gatekeepers means dealing with someone whose jam is gatekeeping. Gatekeepers are risk adverse because they want to keep their position as a gatekeeper.
No primary is going to reject your product because you bypassed their gatekeepers. They might redirect you to one of their people if they are interested instead of hanging with you. Or they might reject you outright.
The next step is hard work and lots of rejection. The reality is that most people in any business have existing relationships for goods and services...e.g. people who use VJ services in their business already have working relationships with people providing VJ services.
Going further, touring musicians tend to have a team they tour with..."there's a VJ in the tour van" so to speak. That person has experience with the problems of touring.
2) Continue making VJ packs for thousands of VJs internationally. Should I move to an annual membership fee instead of a monthly membership fee on Patreon? Should I move to an online shop format instead of a Patreon membership?
My advice is to become more personal. More custom. What actual problems can you solve for for specific VJ's and how much will they pay? Basically, consulting/freelancing/contract work for people with money to spend on bespoke products.
Doing either or both of those things will raise your experience when making new commodity products if you go that route. And three revenue streams is better than one. Be flexible, try lots of things and see what there is a market for. Good luck.
So to get those musicians on board you need to make them passionately care, creative to creative.
So as you rightly point of the best way is to approach the creatives who design shows for lots of musicians and get them to care to be able to sell it in to the musicians and their teams.
That said, I'd guess that business managers are a waste of time. Musician's themselves are typically accessible on social these days. Make them custom art for their music and share with them. Probably only a small clip is needed, something to get their attention and hopefully reach out to you for custom work. This is where you can charge bigger prices.
The patreon approach is a great start but unless you really can build a huge following it's going to be hard to make it add up to to a greater sum. Prove me wrong though!!
Patreon probably will give more dopamine hits as you get to feel like you're building a community as seeing it grow. The musician approach I assume is a hard grind. Months will pass with hours invesred and no conversions, so probably has a higher give-up rate. I'd do both. I'd also set some traction/revenue goals as I can see this turning into more of a hobby (earnings/time is very low)
