Olivia King on TikTok, Creative Control, and Making Music Moves

Olivia King is a pop artist who knows the definition of hard work. Her daily routine consists of responding to all her emails, filming content for her hundred of thousands of social media followers,  co-writing for hours, hitting the gym, cooking dinner, recording music in her home studio, reaching out to hundreds of playlist curators, before going to sleep and doing it all the next day. 

“I have been obsessed with TikTok lately and found it to also be an awesome tool to grow my music. After I saw Lil Nas X blow up “Old Town Road” through TikTok, I really started focusing my efforts there.” ( @oliviakingmusic )

“I quit my 9-5 in January of 2018 so I now have a home office and studio I work out of. I refuse to go back to the 9-5 life!”

“The Voice alum is as much a music business nerd as we at Pop of Colour are, also being the founder and CEO of two companies: Make Music Moves and Raffle Junkiez.

Make Music Moves is an online course for independent musicians. “I decided to do this because up until about a year ago, I never really had anyone on my team helping me. I’ve been doing this for about 10 years now and feel like I really know what works and what doesn’t so I wanted to share what has really helped my career take off in these past couple years. If you are an independent artist that is serious about your career and knows how to distribute your music already and get on playlists, I’d suggest joining my Inner Circle. It is a $17 monthly subscription where I give you everything I’m doing on a monthly basis from 100 Spotify playlists to reach out to, to movies and tv shows looking for music to place, the best hashtags to use on IG that month and so much more. You also have direct access to me at all times so I’m here to help you along the way! Here is the link to join my Inner Circle for FREE for the first month to test it our for yourself!”

Raffle Junkiez is a fan loyalty system. “If you save my song on Spotify, watch my music video, download the song on iTunes, you get “x” amount of raffle tickets. I run these “raffles” every time I release new music now. The more actions you complete, the more raffle tickets you get. The more raffle tickets you get, the higher chance that you will win the grand prize! I change up the prizes with each release. Sometimes it’s an exclusive merch package and sometimes it’s a cash prize or a FaceTime call with me. I always want to be able to give back to the people who support me so this is an awesome way to do that!”

Does this idea sound familiar to you? We certainly hope so, as it’s called Enterprise Gamification Theory that Clarence has been geeking out over for the past year! Yes, we found an artist in “the wild” making it work! 

To recap – Enterprise Gamification takes the basic concept of a customer loyalty program (buy 9 coffees, get 1 free) and turns it in a game (Starbucks’ star dash, Tim Hortons’ roll up the rim), thereby lighting up the dopamine sensors in the human brain. This is why people are much more excited about repeat patronage to a store, coffee shop, or any other business with enterprise gamification as a key foundation of their loyalty program than other establishments with a more basic system. 

According to Olivia King, the best part of being an independent artist is the creative control. “If I want to release a song in a week, I can. If I want to change up my style, I can. I’m kind of a control freak so being independent has really worked for me. I love being involved in every aspect of my career from the music creation, to the business side of things.”

On the flip side, the hardest part of doing things D.I.Y. is that she alone is balancing the budget and ponying up the cash. “Major labels are great for providing a big budget but you also don’t recoup as much as when you’re independent because they take such a large chunk. I am all about turning a positive ROI and investing it right back into my music.