Nikki Camilleri – Building Artist Success Through Strategy and Super Fans on the Virtual Sessions 9/24/25

Summary

Nikki Camilleri joins from London to share her inspiring journey in the music industry, from her early beginnings in Malta to making her mark as a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree. Raised with a love for art but limited opportunities in creative industries, Nikki discovered her passion through the Young Enterprise competition, which propelled her to the UK and into a career that combined business acumen with music. Her story highlights the power of persistence, internships, and hands-on learning, which ultimately led her to roles at Warner Records and eventually to founding her own venture, Mana.

 

She explains how Mana began as small workshops in 2019 and evolved into a full-fledged company offering mentorship, A&R, and strategy services for independent artists. Nikki emphasizes that artists today cannot work alone – building a team and understanding business fundamentals are essential to longevity. She advocates for careful planning while remaining adaptable, likening an artist’s career to a constantly evolving startup.

 

A key part of Nikki’s philosophy revolves around the concept of super fans. She contrasts them with passive listeners, showing how dedicated supporters drive revenue through tickets, merch, and direct engagement. By focusing on relationship-building and capturing fan data, artists can create sustainability beyond fleeting social media trends. Nikki also touches on the importance of PR, distribution, and brand positioning as interconnected building blocks for artist growth.

 

Her outlook is practical yet optimistic: test ideas early, embrace creativity in marketing, and invest in long-term connections. With projects like TEDx event organizing and a focus on community-driven knowledge, Nikki continues to push boundaries while championing artists at every stage.

 

Topics

0:06 – From Malta to the UK and early inspirations
5:02 – Landing on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list
6:51 – Launching Mana and balancing independence with corporate roles
12:12 – Why building a team is essential for artists
16:11 – Workshopping ideas and adapting business plans
18:38 – Navigating distribution and artist deal options
22:06 – Evaluating talent and building artist strategies
27:59 – Super fans vs passive fans and revenue impact
35:13 – Advice for emerging artists on business and testing
37:22 – TEDx involvement, favorite festivals, and future vision

Connect with Nikki Camilleri

• Website: nikkicamilleri.com

• Instagram: @nikkicamilleri

[Darran]
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the DJ Sessions Presents the Virtual Sessions. I’m your host, Darran, and right now I’m sitting in the virtual studios in Seattle, Washington, and coming in all the way from London over there in the UK, we have Nikki Camilleri on the show today. Nikki, how you doing today?

[Nikki Camilleri]
I’m great, thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

[Darran]
Yeah, thank you so much also for, you’re welcome, and thank you so much for being here. I know you’re a busy, busy person, so much going on. Wow, I just gotta say, I look at your like online bio, resume, what you’re up to.

You have a lot of things going on, and it’s super exciting to be sitting down and talking with you, because I want to cover all that, got a little bit of time to talk about a lot of stuff, so we’re going to get right into it here. You started in the industry. What was your main inspiration for getting started in this music industry, in this music biz?

I see you got a gold record on the wall back there. Are you an artist too, or is that a project you’re working on?

[Nikki Camilleri]
No, I’m very much not an artist, so I don’t make music. I get asked that a lot, but I don’t make any music myself. I think my artistic side was actually more in terms of drawing.

That’s what I worked at at school, like an RSA level, all the way through into sixth form, which is I guess our high school. But that record is actually a Queen record, and one of the companies I worked at did Queen’s video but it’s very much not my record. I’ve made musically, but yeah, it’s just a record I really, really like.

[Darran]
You work with a lot of artists here in artist development, music distribution, A&R, finding talent. What was your strongest motivation to pursue a career in the music industry?

[Nikki Camilleri]
It was quite interesting. I think I always knew I liked art, but I didn’t quite know what my skill set was, and it was really part way through our equivalent of high school where, I mean, I was raised in Malta, the little island in Europe. It’s super sunny and nice and great.

At the time, at least, really wasn’t much in the way of creative industries. It’s a very tourism focused market. It’s now much more in the tech space, but still not as much in the creative spaces.

I mean, I knew I liked art, had no idea, like I said, what my skill set was, and it was through an international competition called Young Enterprise. I don’t think you have it in the States, but it’s Europe-wide, and it’s kind of like the Eurovision of startups. So you compete in any country, any business, any industry.

Mine happened to be an arts management company that spanned photography, physical art, like paintings and music. And I mean, we won locally, and we won a bunch of awards, and they’re quite prestigious awards. So they’re like Microsoft Social Enterprise of the Year, like HSBC Company of the Year.

So there’s really big companies affiliated with this, and you win locally, you go on to compete in whatever the host country is, and much like Eurovision. And that year, it happened to be the UK, so I had to come up to London to compete over, I think it was a couple weeks, and did really well locally, and now in the UK as well. And it was really while I was here, where I was like, I love this, I love this place, I love the arts, and clearly my skill set is business here.

And I was leaning either towards music or film, funnily enough, in art form. And then I just said, I’m just going to have a shot at applying to courses, because that gives me an excuse to move, versus, oh, I’m just randomly moving. And I applied to some film business courses, some music business courses, and I got onto a music business course.

And that’s how I kind of got into it. But I think it was really what happened after I moved, that actually pushed me into the music industry, because while I had made some inroads myself through the company and the competition at the time, I think it was just the fact that I moved up, said, well, I need a part-time job to pay my rent, but I’m going to do every internship I can find under the sun in the music industry, just to meet people and get in.

And before I even graduated, I mean, I would say lucky enough, but also like acknowledging the fact that I did so many internships and so much work before that as well. But I landed my first job, and that was at Warner Records, you know, one of the big three record labels, and it kind of just all went from there, really.

[Darran]
And, you know, you also, you have been recognized by Forbes magazine as, in their program, the 30 under 30. Is that, did I say that correctly? Yeah, that’s fine.

Is that part of the whole process? Was that part of the going from Malta to the UK? Or is that after you’ve got there, you’ve also become bigger and bigger?

[Nikki Camilleri]
Yeah, no, so that was years later, actually. Yeah, in the last 12 months, did I get, yeah, land on the Forbes list. So kind of everything I was referencing up until now happened around like 2017.

No, not even. Between 2014 and 2017, really. And the competition happened just before that.

So, yeah, I landed on the 2024 Forbes list, and that, I mean, I think it’s a fantastic program that they run. So it’s, again, across all industries, I obviously landed on the music and entertainment list, but they spotlight 30 individuals who they think are doing good work. And obviously, they know the profile of you and the work you’ve done, and it was just a really interesting process.

And it’s also quite like a nerve-wracking one at the same time, because you know you’re being considered. You have no idea if you’re going to make it until the day, and then your face just pops up on the website or it doesn’t. So that was a very weird thing to wake up to as well, because they were obviously on, I think they released it on U.S. time, so it was very much me waking up super early that day just to have a look and see whether I’d made it or not. Yeah, and being like, oh my god, look at my face.

[Darran]
That’s awesome. No, congratulations on that. You know, what was it like making the transition from working for, say, corporations, corporate, other companies, to now your new venture?

How long has MANA been around for? That’s your new, is it new company, or it sounds like it’s just something you launched recently. New to me in the business world is still less than two years.

I mean, almost two or three years. So when did you decide to make that jump from, you know, corporate to independent or on your own, in a sense?

[Nikki Camilleri]
Well, it’s new and not so new. I think it was actually something, like I always did things on the side, which is very normal, like in music, as you probably know. So I actually started doing stuff like this, I think it was back in maybe 2019.

I started doing little bits and pieces of this kind of work. I was kind of always getting asked for help by artists, and your inbox is often quite full with people asking for help. And I was like, well, there’s clearly a gap here, and you’re not at the stage where you are, you know, getting signed or have a full team.

You still need help, and there isn’t much there apart from maybe general resources that you find online that aren’t tailored. So I started workshopping it a bit with a small group of artists, who kind of really ended up defining what the service is. And then just over the years, I kind of ramped it up a bit, like I would do a bit more here and there.

But I mean, funnily enough, I’ve always had multiple things on the go. So for me, I don’t know, I feel like everything I do kind of feeds into the other thing, and that’s how it should be, I think, in the creative industry. So I never really see myself having this huge division between being in corporate versus being independent versus being between the both.

To me, it’s like, everything should feed in, and if the projects don’t feed into each other, that’s when something’s wrong. But yeah, I think there’s a lot of focus on that, whether you work for someone or you work for yourself.

[Darran]
You know, a lot of my own internal team that I work with, we communicate using Discord. And some of my team members, when I have my one-on-ones with them, they’re like, I can’t keep up with you on the Discords with everything you’ve got going on. Because it is a communication platform, but it’s all typing communication, rather than hearing the inflection and the voice and seeing how all the pieces of the puzzle connect together.

Because there’s always moving parts going on when you run your own company and you run your own business. And sometimes this piece doesn’t make sense to this piece to somebody who’s just reading it. When you put it together, like, oh, I see how it all fits together in the mechanism of the watch or the machine that you’re creating.

You know, so being an entrepreneur is something that I always encourage people to do. I’m big on small business or even start a small business. And small business doesn’t mean making two pennies, but at least you’re on the right route.

If you’re making two pennies in the green, hey, you’re doing something good. At least you’re not in the red. But entrepreneurship, the one thing I see a lot in the business, and this is why I pursued business degrees when I went to college, was to learn how to run a corporation or understand at least the fundamentals so I could talk to the bankers, the financial side of things, and not be the artist’s heart on my shoulder.

While I love you all out there, get some business education. Read a book. It can really help accelerate you in the industry.

And I love the fact that on your site you have this thing that I found that I’m going to read over and share, but it’s your independent artist release kit. That’s just really awesome that you think about putting something out there for free. Of course, don’t distribute it.

Don’t copy it. Don’t do anything. The rules are right there.

But no, I think that’s really good. I’m going to be going through that myself just because I like being knowledgeable on maybe things I didn’t think about or maybe just having a checklist or something there because it falls right in line with a philosophy I have that I used to have pre-2020, pre-pandemic, was 98% of the information that I had I would give away to people free just to help accelerate them faster or get them up to par at least faster rather than having them go through all the pitfalls and everything they’re going to go through. After 2020, I kind of brought that back to 97% because I found out a lot of people I was giving information to were trying to be my competitors. I was like, no, not cool.

It’s kind of an inside joke, but I’m still always there to help out independent artists, especially when it comes to the business side of things. It sounds like that’s where you’re going to find a niche to help out artists. They’re busy creating stuff.

They’re busy managing stuff, and they got their daily life and everything going on. It’s really important for that to happen. One of the services that I look at, I always talk to artists about what are you doing with your PR?

How are you managing your PR? It’s great to go get all those socials. It’s great to have the baseline, but so does every other artist.

What are you doing to set yourself apart to get yourself out there? It just sometimes doesn’t click that you’re going to have to hire somebody to do that. My most protected asset that I have as a business owner is my Rolodex.

I say Rolodex, probably people don’t know that. Contactless, kids, contactless. I’m that old.

Rolodex, and that’s probably the only thing that I won’t just give away. I will filter things through and get it to the right people. But how important is it for an artist to have a dedicated PR person?

Do you see that as a viable asset to say, if I want to take it from here to here, that should have something going on there?

[Nikki Camilleri]
I think it depends on the type of artist you are and the genre and the space you’re in. I think I’d almost re-angle it as they don’t necessarily need to be PR as in a press person, but if you need a team, you need people helping you, there’s tons you can do yourself and that’s great. Obviously with social media and all the tools we have online, it’s become easier than ever to make music and put it out there.

Fantastic. It’s democratized a lot of things, but you can’t do it alone. There’s so much you need to do and that’s the biggest struggle that I see with any artist I work with.

They always kind of raise the same thing. They’re like, I know what I need to do or I’ve learned what I need to do, I just don’t have the time. They have to build a team and often strategies are lacking as well, so it’s like if you work with people who are maybe on the business side, be it they’re in PR, they’re a marketing expert, an A&R, arts development person, whatever it might be, they can get you there faster or they might know the right people to go to for certain things.

It’s one of those things if you’re building a business and you’re building a brand, at the end of the day, it’s not just doing the arts, particularly in the market we live in. So yeah, you need help and you need a team and you need to kind of invest in yourself as well. To what point?

It doesn’t mean spend crazy amounts of money on working with anyone, really scope out who you’re working with and trial things and etc. Protect yourself, but you absolutely need to work with people. I just would say it doesn’t necessarily need to be a PR person.

[Darran]
Yeah, I experienced that in 2022 when I had somebody working on kind of PR for me and I had a couple virtual assistants that I was working with that really helped out. I mean, we were really just going and going off and had to put a pause on some things for a bit, but we’re back now with our phoenix out of the ashes story, getting ready to hit with some really good partnerships and branding and hitting the market hard. But knowing that rollout strategy, like you said, is strategizing saying, hey, we’re going to start here with this article and then we’re going to go here to two articles and then we’re going to start with artists.

One of the plans we did was I was really low on contacting people for interviews for the show and I was sending out 40 emails a week. I went to my virtual assistant and I said, hey, let’s step that up to 300 emails a week and see what happens. And where we were doing six to eight interviews a month in April 2022, in May of 2022, we did, I think I did like 57 interviews and one hour long interviews.

And I was like, OK, this worked. This is awesome. And, you know, in the whole process of it, I just written back and did all my episodes.

Sorry for the siren going to the background. I kind of live next door to hospital and thoroughfare of the city. But basically, hey, let’s do that.

Not that that probably helped any, but maybe it did. But anyways, basically, I found out that I did over 180 interviews in the course of like seven months and was like, OK, experiment did work, experiment worked, which was awesome, to have that happen. And then now I know what our success ratio is and what we want to do is position us to be in a better position.

So people say yes when we contact them by forging strategic partnerships with people, not just saying, oh, we’re just self just by ourselves out here. Who can help endorse us? Who can we work with?

Who’s on our team or who we partner with or collaborate with? And again, that takes time to do. I’m fortunate enough to be able to kind of do this in a full time capacity.

But, you know, people don’t see all the behind the scenes work. They think, oh, I just pick up a camera and turn it on and start talking to people. It’s like, no, no, that’s not how this works.

[Nikki Camilleri]
I think if anyone who wants to get into music, because obviously what people are exposed to is the finished product a lot of the time and they don’t get, you know, like how long you have to work on things. Like even when you asked me about Mana, you’re like, oh, surely it’s like, you know, new. And it’s like, well, actually, I was kind of like workshopping what is now Mana like since 2019.

And I’ll probably continue workshopping it and changing and shifting. And it’s incredible. And I feel like whenever you speak to people with their own projects, like that’s always the kind of story they’re like, actually, it’s been a very long time.

And yeah, projects shift and change and they’ll continue to shift and change, I think, as a person does, as a team does and stuff like that.

[Darran]
Well, that was one of the first rules I learned in college or when I went out to start writing my first business plans is that you write a business plan. You’re not setting stone on that plan. That’s just your plan of what you want to do at this moment.

Something might happen and you might go, oh, let’s add that in. Like you said, you’re workshopping it all the time. And then I never even thought about that or I did put that, but it’s out here on the burner.

Now it’s time to bring that back in and put it on the, you know, put it into the mix. And I mean, I’ve constantly done that. If anyone knew that if I had reality TV shows going on with the DJ sessions of where it started in 2009 and following me of all the things that happened, it’d be like a whole 16 year series.

Yay. That’d be awesome. Maybe I can win an Emmy for it or something, a Grammy or whatever.

No, Grammy’s for music, but an A-time Emmy or something for it. But no, it’s awesome how that all develops and that works and having a good solid plan is good. And like you said, having a team as well.

Not too long ago, I was talking to somebody, I realized I have 14 other people that I work with that handle different aspects of whether it’s web development, app development, content, VA, PR, all different types of things that come into play that I don’t handle everything myself. It’d be way too much for one person to do. And then I have other 14 hats that I wear on top of that as well.

So when it comes to some other key aspects of what you do in regards to music distribution, is the process something that is simple that somebody reaches out to you and says, Hey, I’m an artist. I’d like to get music distribution. You say, okay, this is my template.

This is my package, one package, two package, three. Where do you tailor it for each artist? How does that process work when somebody approaches you?

[Nikki Camilleri]
So, I mean, under Mona, I don’t distribute music myself. I usually refer people across two distributors, but I have different packages for the services that I give out in terms of strategy, mentorship, A&R, and stuff like that. I mean, I do usually, depending on the type of artist they are, I might recommend one distributor over another.

But I mean, also distribution, it’s pretty, again, democratic nowadays. You can go get yourself signed up on basic distribution, and then there’s higher tiers where funding and stuff comes in. That’s a little bit harder to get into because it obviously depends on how well you’re doing, whether you’re going to recoup the money that they’re giving you, and stuff like that.

So that’s usually how I steer people in terms of music distribution. But then, I mean, I’ve only really been on the master side of the music industry, so I tend to know a lot about the distribution side, obviously, having worked for labels and big distributors and stuff like that. So then I think that sort of in our knowledge, particularly on the types of deals you can get, I think I still find that people don’t know too much about what you can get after you use a service like DistroKid or CD Baby.

It’s like there’s a whole world between those services and a record deal, and a couple of different layers of service, actually, that you can get. And most people actually don’t know that that exists. They think it’s one of those services for, I signed to a major label.

It’s like, no, there’s options.

[Darran]
You know, I just found something recently, PRX in the States here. I don’t know if it’s worldwide, but it’s a service that I’m looking to syndicate our shows. And this is basically a syndication service that I guess everyone uses that I never knew existed.

And I can upload my interviews like this one to that, and then somebody could grab that interview and go, let’s use it over at our show and we’ll pay you for that. I’m like, hey, cool. And the more content I produce, hopefully I can get picked up and paid more for that.

It’s all those things out there. Like I said, there’s just so much in the bucket. Where’s the go-to to start this out?

Like I said, I’m really excited to dive into your independent artist release kit, just as a starting point of knowing more about that. Because even we were thinking about in the past and still probably will do in the future, one of those back burner kind of things, is start our own label over here at the DJ sessions. And one of the toughest things that I’ve always looked at is, okay, we’re going to open up the floodgates to having people send us submissions.

Who’s going to listen to all those? Who’s going to decide? What are we looking for?

We know we’re going to get submissions that are completely out. Can you consider this? It’s like, no, this is the type of music we take.

This is the music we do. Or do we just open it up for everyone? And I see that you do A&R as well and finding talent.

Um, that’s a process in itself. Um, is that something that you, you know, something you actively do, but what is that kind of, is there a kind of, what’s the word I’m looking for? Is there a key checklist that you use and say, okay, I’m looking for talent.

I saw somebody. He’s like, I saw him on stage. I love you.

Let’s get you over here. Or is it somebody, you know, how do you find your artists when you’re looking through us? Because there’s so many out there and who do you choose and who do you choose to work with?

Is there like a litmus test, I guess, um, that says, okay, this person’s ready to go or this person’s like, they’re awesome, but they’re not ready to go.

[Nikki Camilleri]
Yeah. I mean, I think there’s, there’s like a basic bar of like, do I think this has any legs at all, even if it’s like really early stage and like might need a lot of work, but like I can see something there. Um, and then there’s stuff that’s already, you know, it’s kind of going already, you know, they’ve kind of got some, you know, some screens there.

They might be digging and like on their first like support tour or something like that, where you’re like, it’s really just a case of accelerating. And then there’s stuff where I’m just like, it’s just not, not for me, like just not stuff I would, I would work with, but even within the other two categories, I think it’s like, I’m a big fan of like looking at all the different variables. And I think this is something I always, um, tried to do, you know, in, in all of my A&R roles and something I had really built into one of the big strategies I put together, um, at one of the distributors I worked at, um, when we were finding a lot of talent, um, but really looking at all the different variables.

So like, obviously the music, you start with that, like, do I like the music, but like, there’s other things you want to look at, like who’s their team, you know, cause that makes a difference. Do they have a team? Um, you know, where are they based?

How many people are in the group? Or is it a solo act? Like what are their socials like?

Do they tell much already? Do they gig? How many people can they pull down to a gig?

And it all sounds obvious. I mean, you kind of just list this stuff off, but when you get into it in practice, you start seeing some of the cracks sometimes where you might have like a bedroom pop producer who’s making absolutely sick songs, like their streams are really going, but they can’t bring down more than five people to a gig. They are like, okay, so the income here is going to be streams, which we know doesn’t pay a lot.

Can they sell much to these people? Cause then that’s a revenue stream. Do we think we can invite them to come to gigs or is it just not the vibe of this artist?

You start looking at like where really, where the revenue sources are for this artist to be able to make a living off this, because most artists, I think that’s the goal. Um, you know, some people want to be the next sit here and some people are like, I want to pay my bills, but either way they need money. Um, so you have to start looking at it that way where it doesn’t mean because someone’s, you know, playlist driven, people on streaming that can’t make something out of it, but then you have to look at it really differently.

I’ve had artists be the other way around where like their streams are terrible. Um, but then they say, Oh yeah, by the way, but I’m making like a grand a month of merch or like, and that’s me selling like t-shirts at the, you know, at the end of my gig. And I’m like, that’s significant, like for an artist of your size, because I mean, to make grand on streaming, you need a lot of streams.

Um, we started going, okay, you’ve got a business model here. Like how can we make the merch more interesting or vary it a bit or dig more to bigger gigs or something like that. And actually do you really need streaming?

Like you might not, you might function really well off like social media and digging and finally put the music up so some people can listen to it, but it’s not musically. Maybe people listen to at home or is this a habit we can also build? Um, so you start really thinking about it that way, where it’s like all these different areas are like building blocks and you just see how high you can kind of build a tower.

Um, and then you look at it, you know, you take a couple steps back, look at it and go, does that stick up to, you know, enough money to make this viable or do we need to keep thinking about the drawing board?

[Darran]
Um, yeah, um, totally understandable. I mean, I know there is no set matrix. Um, but you know, I think that was a really good piece of advice.

So if artists are out there listening, um, is to kind of find out where your revenue streams are come from and dial on that, you know, like, um, you know, and figure out how, how that can grow. And I assume that’s some of the services you offer when you’re going to sit down and kind of assess somebody and say, okay, let’s get you here.

[Nikki Camilleri]
And it’s one of my favorite things to do. It’s so much fun. I mean, I take people through this exercise that is literally just like completely breaking down, um, their whole brand positioning, like who they want to be as an artist and like what we need to look at, where their fans are, who their fans are, and then trying to work this all out and just going, look, it’s kind of like, yeah, breaking everything apart and making a business plan, but tailored to an artist. And then obviously going and executing it and reiterating pivoting.

So it’s, it’s very, like, when you think about it, it’s kind of mimicking a startup or kind of building a business, but completely tailored to the artist. And I mean, people respond really, really well to it. I’ve had people say that, like, even just taking these kind of exercises away, like as they develop as an artist, they keep redoing them.

And they find that as they change or their music projects kind of shift, their fans shift as well. So they’re kind of constantly reiterating this ways, and it’s really great to then see people I’ve worked with kind of, you can kind of almost spot it. I’m like, Ooh, they kind of get it.

And they’re, you know, moving their music according to their market, etc, etc. But yeah, with your point on the independent artist release kit, obviously, that’s like, in my view, like the most simple thing you need, like to get started, like there’s so much more to it. But I do like to make at least, you know, the initial levels of things that you need available to people and kind of try and democratize things as much as possible to get people doing what they need to be doing.

But yeah, I find at least even in my own career, like on the music business side, it’s like when I’ve drawn most value is like, when I work with someone who, you know, like has done it before me or knows a bit more about an area than I do, versus like resources online are amazing, but they only take you so far.

[Darran]
Can you describe to our DJ sessions fans and people out there? What is a super fan? And why are they important?

[Nikki Camilleri]
Yes, absolutely. And I get asked this a lot.

[Darran]
Okay.

[Nikki Camilleri]
I was gonna say, and it’s one of my favorite topics, but I’m like, is it anymore? I don’t know. But it’s a very important one.

It’s a great question. So I like to juxtapose it with like, there’s passive fans, and there’s super fans. And passive fan is, you know, I came across your song, or I saw you on social media, I listened for a bit.

And then I carried on with my day, I might come across you again, I might listen now and then. I’m, I’m a fan, like it’s in the name, but it’s pretty passive. Like, I’m not gonna like, be the diehard fan at the front of the queue, giving your name.

Super fan is just that. So it’s someone who will buy the merch, buy the gig ticket, they’re willing to part with their income for you, essentially. And they will comment on things, they’ll be sharing your posts.

So engagement is just a lot higher. And actually, in a presentation I gave not too long ago, I kind of, I kind of did the math. And I was like, okay, like, if we’re taking averages, across everything, how much more is a super fan worth?

And it’s it can be worth anywhere from 10 to 100 times more in terms of revenue. And so then you go, okay, well, obviously, I want super fans then. But it’s not that it’s not that easy.

It’s like, how do you get these super fans? And where do you find them? How do you get someone passive super fan?

And there is there is a strategy. And there is a model. And there’s actually a lot of tools that are popping up now that facilitate kind of, you know, finding, you know, using third party as a big market where you kind of cast your net out and find people, but then capturing them and converting them to that super fan.

And being able to be in direct contact with your fans, tons of tools, you know, like, there’s a whole handful I can name that you’re probably already aware of as well. And that helps you kind of do this. But that’s the big thing that everyone’s trying to do right now is like, the social platform were to disappear.

Like we always like to have disappeared, it might have done it didn’t. But you never know in the future, if we were to lose social media, lose all your fans, 100,000 followers, like it’s really worth that much versus if you have 500, you know, emails or phone numbers, and diehard fans, and they’re all willing to spend 10 $30 on a t-shirt, whatever it might be, again, that’s a streaming revenue, way more. And that’s why everyone’s droning on about super fans.

[Darran]
And you know, that is something it’s so funny. Okay. I mean, I kind of got the whole just what the definite what exactly that would be what a super fan is.

I was explaining a few people recently about some back end numbers. I’m really quick with numbers when it comes to putting things together and realizing, you know, like a platform like Twitch has typically, you $5 subscription or the $25 subscription per month. And you know, if you take an artist, and they go live, say three times a week, and they’re making bits, and those bits are a penny, but they’re making say $1,000 each time they go live on bits, okay, that’s $3,000 a week, and $12,000 a month, 150 grand a year, yay.

But when you take those fans that are paying five bucks a month, and depends on what their split is with Twitch, can’t tell you what ours is because NDA. But basically, you know, if you’re getting the basic 5050 revenue split, and you had 1000 fans a month, hey, that there’s another 2500 bucks a month. But if you have those super fans that are paying 25 bucks a month, and you’re getting that 5050 split, okay, you know, you see how much this can grow.

And I just did the numbers breaking down for somebody recently. And realizing that an artist that goes in there number one, and they’re getting X amount of viewers here and X subscribers at this level, and this level, they’re probably making half a million to $700,000 a year streaming live on Twitch. And it’s kind of at that point, they’re making more than what they would ever make touring, they’re doing this from their living room.

And they are, you know, and they can put that money back into marketing or back into shows. And so when they go on tour, it’s like, I’m gonna be getting $30,000 a tour here, or I might be getting, you know, $25,000 to do these 10 shows a year. But I got to go out on the road, I got to go over here and do all this stuff when I’m making this in my living room.

And they could actually start funding their own project. But the biggest thing I think you brought up there, and this is what I want to touch on, I tell so many artists, you can have all your socials and everything out there. But they don’t use they don’t have their own domain name.

And they don’t have their own website. And they’re not capturing those email addresses to retarget those fans saying sign up for my newsletter and get inside information or get inside discounts or get first run picks on stuff to turn them into super fans. I mean, they can have the Patreon, they can have all that set up.

But you’re right, if those platforms go, you lose everything. And you’re not building an email list, you know, up. And that’s a huge thing.

I think for artists to do is have that monthly newsletter, if it’s even if it’s a quarterly newsletter, but a monthly newsletter to stay up to date. And, you know, I wanted to come in and chime in, I know we’re running a little bit of time here, but talking about, you know, how AI has come in and made some of those back end tasks easier to do. For artists, you know, I use AI for tasks that I do, you know, to help me with like making show notes for my shows or transcribing my shows.

I’m not out there having to generate content from other people’s stuff for my shows. But you know, I mean, you know, there’s tools out there now, I think it’s going to make it a lot more accessible for artists to go, oh, let’s click a button. Oh, here’s my web pull off my socials and make me a monthly newsletter.

Cool. And then you know, there’s tools with sites like WordPress, you can go get the plugin, the newsletter plugins that I use, upload your email database in their format and go. I think mine even has an AI plugin to the plugin now to help generate the emails for it.

You know, but those are huge things. I’m glad you brought that up because that’s how you you do flip those fans into super fans and even having a pop up in your site when they get there saying, hey, come to our website. Not all not annoying, but there’s ways to make it.

But again, this goes into the tech stuff. And people don’t have time to learn how to website back in to get their image and everything up and running, but it’s coming. It’s there.

So thank you for sharing that. I definitely, you know, like you said, you can ask it all the time. But I’ve never asked anyone that question.

I want to know. And I’m sure our fans want to know, you know, getting back to I know we’re in short on time here. But is there something that you would like to say to new and up and coming artists and producers to watch out for when it comes to making their career successful?

Is there kind of a key checklist? Don’t do this. Don’t do watch out for that.

Or, you know, anything you could give is a number one. Watch out for this. Don’t you know, or something like that.

You quite frequently hear yourself saying to a lot of artists.

[Nikki Camilleri]
Absolutely. I think the main thing I find myself saying to people is like, like, stop caring about like, if you post a bunch of stuff up, and what the reaction is going to be like, particularly on on TikTok, or Instagram reels, like they’re gone in a second. And you need to do that market research early on.

And you want to do it when people don’t know who you are. And it doesn’t matter. You don’t want to be testing out whether a video is cringe or not, or whether it works or whether it’s great when you’re Beyonce, you want to do it, you know, early on.

So I think like get testing, like start thinking about the business side, you know, alluding to stuff that you said earlier, like you do need to know the business, you want to make a living off this. And you don’t need to know everything, but learn the basics, like, how much money can you make from doing this thing? What are your revenue sources?

And pretty easy to find out. And I think just get testing, because you’ll see what works and the market will kind of steer you like, it’s there’s a pretty easy model to get posting up online, see which videos do better, like, analyze it a bit and go, why is it done better? Oh, I had more of a hook at the start, make more videos like that.

And like, you don’t need to be a hugely like business minded person just to be a little bit analytical about what you’re making and putting out there. And it doesn’t have to remove from the art. So I think, again, most people say like, Oh, but I hate social media, I just want to make the music and I really feel for them because I’m not someone who loves social media.

But it’s the world we live in right now. And it’s a communication tool to find people who love your art. Have fun with it.

You can be so creative, like on social and so why not try. And I mean, there’s other ways to do it. You’ve seen people do like very rogue social media stuff, like groups like salt or I mean, even what Fred again did, and like bands like Sleep Token and stuff like that.

They’ve all done like very like different ways of marketing. But you can lean into thinking like, there’s lots of different things you can do. Now everyone’s going to be asking for people’s emails and saying they’ll send a newsletter like I like the data, but you can do things differently.

I think definitely.

[Darran]
And you know, something that I’m excited to actually see you do here up coming up in the future is you’ve been invited to be part of TEDx. What was that like getting that invite? Or what was that process like of getting involved with them to speak at a do a TEDx presentation?

[Nikki Camilleri]
So I’m actually organizing the event. So I won’t be speaking myself. But I’ll be the people who will be speaking.

And I mean, there’s a process which in theory, I mean, anyone can apply. It’s obviously a competitive process in terms of pitching the event to them and where you want to do it and what you want to do what you want the team to be. And I saw a bit of a gap in terms of like knowledge about creative careers.

And I’m really just like the music industry at that grassroots level. So that was the concept I pitched to them. And you then get awarded a license if they’re happy with that.

So I was awarded the license, which is amazing. Licenses can only be awarded to individuals. So they can’t be awarded to companies.

And yeah, and I’m really excited. So I’m doing it at a music college that I work with called LCCM. So it’s going to be in their amazing venue.

And yeah, super exciting. It’s a little while away. So it’s still in the process of curating and stuff like that.

But it’s obviously TED is amazing. It’s a super aspirational brand. I’m really excited to be organizing an event with them.

[Darran]
Well, if you look at it like kind of like getting another medal, you know, I think that’s a pretty big accomplishment. If I was ever asked to host or put together a TEDx conference show or even speak, I’d be like, this is awesome.

[Nikki Camilleri]
Really cool. I would love to speak. I think that’s more of a career goal for me in the future.

I would absolutely love to speak at a TED event. But yeah, but it’s a start. You got to start somewhere.

[Darran]
If you could say out of the in the music industry, if you could choose one of the top music events in the world that happened, which one do you think? And I know that I’m not trying to pigeonhole you. You can’t get in trouble here with anyone.

But if you could pick one music event that you suggest that any artist should go to in the world, do you have one that you would say, this is where I think you should go? This is the one that you should be a part of, or at least make it there one time? Is there one that comes to mind when you think when I ask that question?

[Nikki Camilleri]
Yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna cheat and I’m gonna get through. So one would be a Primavera festival that happens in Barcelona. That’s a personal favorite of mine.

I think the quality of the lineup or, you know, the cost is incredible. And I mean, it takes place along the harbour, which is amazing. So you’ve got the sunset and all these amazing, polite artists playing.

You get a real good mix across loads of different genres. And I think it’s a really good thing to go to as an artist to see like what’s on, what’s breaking, because they tend to get stuff as it’s breaking. Like when I was there, Lizzo played as her song was going, like the number one.

It was mad and like loads of cool stuff always in the Primavera. And then the second one would be The Great Escape, which is a festival that takes place in Brighton in the UK. It’s very focused on up and coming talent.

So it’s one that’s worth going to and one that’s worth applying to play. It’s kind of like our South by Southwest, even though we had a South by Southwest in London this year. But yeah, it’s very much focused on new talent.

[Darran]
Yeah, I’m definitely planning on being over in starting point with Berlin, a collaboration I’m working on, but then focusing on going to, you know, ADE, going to IMS, going to Sonar in Barcelona. I want to check those ones out too. But definitely, I didn’t know South by Southwest did a UK verse.

So I’ll probably be coming over there and doing some stuff there as well. So, you know, before we let you get going, is there anything else you want to let our DJ Sessions fans know about?

[Nikki Camilleri]
I think we kind of covered everything. Feel free to grab the Independent Artist Release Kit. And yeah, I think just get posting, keep doing what you’ve got to do, learn the business side of things.

And yeah, and good luck with everything.

[Darran]
Where’s the best place people can go to find out more information about you and what you got going on?

[Nikki Camilleri]
You can go to my website. So it’s just my name dot com. So Nikki Camilleri dot com.

You can also find me on social media under my name. So it’s all at Nikki Camilleri. So yeah, feel free to reach out and yeah, you’ll find me there.

[Darran]
Awesome. Nikki Camilleri on the DJ Sessions today. Thank you so much for being here.

I’ll let you get going and I’m going to do my outro and we’ll be gone. So again, don’t forget to go to her website Nikki Camilleri dot com. And don’t forget to go to our website, the DJ Sessions dot com.

It’s right down there. Check us out over 700 new stories a month published 2700 plus past episodes, all our socials. We have our virtual reality nightclub we’re launching or is launched.

It’s called Beta. That’s why it’s not officially launched yet. But we have our mobile app and more at the DJ Sessions dot com.

I’m your host Darran coming to you from the virtual studios in Seattle, Washington. That’s Nikki Camilleri coming in from the UK, London in the UK for the DJ Sessions. And remember on the DJ Sessions, the music never stops.