Find Your Niche, Make A Difference = Make A Living

AAs an artist learning the business, one issue I run into regularly is understanding your target audience.

At different points in an artist’s career they have a target audience and need to interact with them for a certain longevity. I never really considered other exciting ways of interacting with my audience and fans (asides social media) until I met a remarkable young lady, Yoshie Kawamura.

Yoshie and I go to school together and I have learned a lot from her. One of such lessons is developing an often forgotten about niche of the music consumers – Children.

Paddington Bear

After completing her Master at Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Joan Havill, Yoshie went to Germany for 3 years to further her musical studies with Prof. Mishory at Musikhochschule Freiburg. She has given many concerts worldwide where her main appearances were; in Germany 200 of celebration for Chopin at Freiburg Musikhochschule, Switzerland Chamber Music Concert at Luzern Marianischer Saal, Berlin Chamber Music Festival Lunchtime Concert Series at Berliner Philharmoniker, and Netherlands International Stichting Apeldoon Festival.

She was also invited to join the Berlin Philharmonic Quartet in performing Schumann’s Piano Quintet on their tour of Japan; subsequently she received an invitation from the Poznan Philharmonia to perform as a soloist in Chopin’s Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise in a series of concerts in Poland.

Knowing this, one would expect her to sit on her high horse and embark on seemingly more glamorous projects. But lately, her current projects are aimed for children to enjoy hearing stories with a live performance of music on acoustic instruments.

She hopes to build her own career in delivering classical music to all types of audience and nationalities to enhance their imagination and creativity in life.

For now, her target audience is Children.

What is your own target audience and what special things can you do for them?

If you are in Newcastle upon Tyne on February 22nd 2014, you can watch Yoshie present a musical story telling of Paddington Bear’s first concert a the ‘Star and Shadow.

I hope this inspires you to come up with fresh ideas for 2014.

Photos below by Nicole Nicolau.

This guest post comes from Christine Ben-Ameh, independent artist & songwriter, currently signed with JTV Digital, a digital distribution company allowing artists & labels to get their music to major digital retail stores and monetize their content online.