Andi Coulter is the Next Speaker in the Anne and Edgar Basse Jr. Author Talk Series Coulter will deliver a lecture on fan-driven marketing for independent artists on Oct. 6.
Andi Coulter, assistant professor of business administration, will deliver a lecture on “So You Need Swifties: Lessons in Fan-Driven Marketing for Indie Artists” at Washington and Lee University at 12:30 p.m. on Oct. 6 in the Houston H. Harte Center Gallery in Leyburn Library. The talk is free and open to the public.
The lecture is sponsored by The Williams School of Commerce, Economics, and Politics and the University Library and is part of the University Library’s Anne and Edgar Basse Jr. Author Talk series, which invites W&L faculty to showcase their scholarship to the campus community. The Basse series is made possible by the Anne W. and Edgar A. Basse Jr. (’39) Endowment, which was created in 1988 to support the varied activities of the University Library Special Collections & Archives.
In her talk, Coulter will explore how independent artists can identify and cultivate niche audiences in today’s attention economy. She will examine how fan communities form and why they matter, tracing the phenomenon from the early days of MySpace to the current viral power of TikTok. The interactive lecture will also teach strategies for successfully leveraging online communities, highlighting how to build authentic engagement, amplify reach and sustain long-term growth in an increasingly competitive digital landscape.
Coulter says she has always been interested in the successful creative, and after working in music clubs for decades, she became fascinated by bands that could sell out rooms but were largely unknown outside of their fan base.
“We often hear about the superstars — the musicians who sell out stadiums, headline festivals and master social media,” Coulter said. “Conversely, there’s no shortage of discourse on the struggling musician, who can barely make ends meet while their art lines corporate pockets. I was interested in writing about the middle-class musician, the one who could make a living on their art alone.”
Coulter will explore fan-driven marketing through the lens of the punk band AFI, which emerged from the do-it-yourself music community in San Francisco. She recently published a book covering the 30-year career of AFI, exploring their role in shaping online fan culture and the band’s success in shifting to new genres while maintaining its fan base.
“When given the opportunity to speak for this series, I chose to create an interactive presentation on how artists adapt their marketing in an ever-changing social media landscape,” Coulter said. “Using my book as a starting point, I wanted to see if the creativity in the room could illustrate how artists can leverage community to create rogue marketing strategies for their art.”
Coulter is in her fourth year as a faculty member at W&L. She previously taught business and technical communications at Georgia Institute of Technology and Grand Valley State University. Before teaching, Coulter worked for 15 years in the music marketing industry and wrote a book for the 33 1/3 music book series on the New York underground band Suicide. Coulter earned a Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of Virginia, a Master of Arts in English from the University of Toledo and a Ph.D. in English and musicology from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
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