Building Fan Bases Through Live Performances - What is the New Reality

Live music is shifting in a new way to adapt to the current climate of the world and create moments of happiness for fans around the world. It’s more important than ever to connect with people on a deeper level through livestreams, video content creation, and releasing new music. Sofar Sounds has built a global ecosystem around intimate live performances hosted in unique locales. These moments have brought hundreds of thousands of fans together around the world and launched major careers. When COVID struck,  Amanda Presson, VP of City Operations at Sofar Sounds and her team quickly pivoted to support their community and artists everywhere on how to engage and grow fan bases through live experiences online. In this discussion we’ll dig in to what the new realities of the live music industry mean for artists and how they can adapt. 

Amanda Presson 

VP of City Operations, Sofar Sounds

Amanda​ Presson is VP of City Operations at Sofar Sounds. Amanda is responsible for scaling operations and training in Sofar’s 400+ cities. ​She​ is an effective and thoughtful leader, with oversight of the largest team at Sofar Sounds — helping develop more than 50+ full-time event producers and hundreds of contractors and brand ambassadors around the world. Prior to taking on the role of VP of City Operations, ​Amanda​ led city operations for Sofar NYC, scaling from 3 events per month to 100, making it one of Sofar’s most successful markets with a dedicated fanbase. ​Amanda​ is a graduate of Western Michigan University’s Music Performance program, and is a classically trained flautist. She currently lives in Brooklyn and her favorite Sofar moment is when Rubblebucket led the audience through a conga line in a Brooklyn prop warehouse.

Moderator: John Vlautin - CEO & Founder, SpinLab Communications