When the pandemic hit, independent D.C. band Sub-Radio found themselves in the same boat as most artists. With touring shelved for the foreseeable future, the band quickly turned to social media, doing livestreams on Instagram in an effort to support themselves and grow their audience. The results were lackluster and disheartening.
“We had a national tour planned,” says guitarist Matt Prodanovich. “We were going to do sets at South By Southwest. Our plan was to grow during this time, and that just wasn’t going to happen on Instagram live. The reason that we stopped doing Instagram livestreams, was because every time we did them, we were pretty much playing to the same people.”
The answer revealed itself during a case of evening boredom.
“I was late night scrolling on my phone, as one does during the pandemic,” explains Prodanovich. “I saw that these people were doing these livestreams on Reddit. I found one and I was like ‘this is cool,’ so I clicked on it. It was this guy just looping these keyboard things. I looked over at his viewership, and I saw that there were six thousand people watching him do this. I thought that was just wild that so many people were watching these livestreams on Reddit.”
Pitching the idea to the other band members, Sub-Radio quickly got to work performing a weekly set on Reddit, which launched on September 25, 2020. The livestreams produced rapid results.
“The third time we went live, we hit like 385,000 people, and we were just absolutely shocked,” says Prodanovich. “I knew there was a high viewer count. I had absolutely no idea that it could get as high as it could get.”
The band’s inventiveness has paid off. Since their first Reddit livestream, Sub-Radio’s social media followers have increased substantially with a 291% increase on Spotify, 102% increase on Instagram, 25% increase on Twitter, and over 300% on YouTube. They’ve also seen an increase in merchandise sales which, before the Reddit livestreams, would average 1 to 2 items every other month. Now they're getting consistent monthly sales. Another benefit from the streams is building a fanbase worldwide.
“We’re getting messages from people in the U.K., Canada, Australia, Japan, people in Germany, tagging us every day in stories so it’s been crazy to watch,” says Prodanovich. “It used to be contained to regional and maybe a little bit of national. Now it’s all over the place.”
The added awareness has also brought the attention of music industry executives (the band now has a publicist and signed with APA agency), something Sub-Radio realizes wouldn’t have happened as quickly without the Reddit streams.
“[We’ve got] interest from various persons and groups and organizations [in the industry],” says drummer Michael Pereira. “The Reddit thing is pretty unique, honestly. We’re hitting a lot of people. It’s very new. It’s very exciting. So we’ve got a lot of interest from people.”
Check out the band's vlog, How To Stay Sane On Tour (above).