CLIP: Want to go viral? Hundreds of artists are now copying his idea... | Billy Lockett

0:00Yeah. And so gigs are sort of dying, sadly. Well, grassroots gigs or, you know, anything under 2000 caps. It seems like it really is hard to sell tickets. So I knew this was a problem. And so I'd always post promoting the gigs and I'd look and it'd do nothing. And I'd be like, how the fuck? I posted like every day on Instagram and TikTok about the dates. Hey, please come to the show. And it's just not working. and so i said to my mom i was like i've got this idea where like this is really affecting my mental health checking the ticket numbers all the time so why don't you just tell me you have the ticket i'm going to get my manager to send you the numbers now not me so you generally didn't see them beforehand genuinely totally and it has to be true it has to be honest it's the only only way it's going to work is if it's real so my mom was like yeah cool i'll have the numbers and And I was like, you just tell me each week.

0:57And then I suddenly thought, wait a minute, why don't I just go live with that? And then fans can find out with me. And I said it to my managers and one of them, Jenny, who's younger, a little, I mean, they're both amazing, but Jenny's a bit more like, fuck it, let's try it. Whereas Mark is a bit more old school. he's he's been jamie cullum's manager for 20 years and and he's you know knows everybody in the industry he's a fucking proper things go top manager but also very wary of new ideas sometimes and he was not not like supporting this decision because he was like everyone's going to know that you're not selling any tickets why the fuck is that going to make you sell tickets yeah everyone's gonna think you're failing when that's not a good idea um and jenny was like yeah fuck it let's see that was like great okay and i know all my other managers in the past would have would have never let me do this you know everyone in the industry told me this was career suicide doing it and the more people told me it was a terrible idea the more i was like fuck i think we might be onto something here and so my mum was like you know she's charismatic anyway she's always been and everyone's always loved my mum she she's she was nowhere nowhere near the fame she's got now um but at the time she'd always been loved at the gigs and things um and there's also something very sweet about you know a supportive mum yeah you know it just works doesn't it and it reminds everyone of their mum and things like that so what's really nice about it since we interrupt

2:36Olly Fawcett:you is also that you're not an 18 year old trying to break through yeah i think the thing i like about is the fact that you're in your 30s and she's still there it's just something really nice about that that thing that's what i really like about it he's still trying he's still trying to make this but it's just that i just the dynamic is brilliant that is great well i guess it got to the point where i was like i just have nothing to lose anymore i just stopped giving a yeah about this fake it till you make it thing i was like this i never felt comfortable doing it no one does and also it doesn't work like if it were if me faking it to make it meant that i made it i'd do it but it doesn't and i was like i'd rather just be honest and i genuinely think that's going to sell more tickets so so we went live and we did the first video and i posted it and it got like i think it got like 10 000 views or something which was so much for me at the time it was like you know we would only get like a thousand views on every video before so i was like fucking hell 10 000 that's good and it was getting quite good engagement like i had like 100 comments and things i was like okay there's something in this yeah it wasn't enough to persuade the manager mark that the that there was something in it yet but it was sort of warming to the idea i think um and then we did the second week and and the numbers were terrible you You know, so I was really fucking worried.

4:02I kind of knew they were going to be bad.

4:05Olly Fawcett:Just for a bit of context, how soon before a gig did the tickets go on sale? Is it like eight weeks before? It's as long as you want it to be. Fine. To be honest, I would have liked to have had way longer. I mean, for the next tour, I'm going to put them on sale for four or five months. Before the show. Yeah, before the show. And do most people still buy way closer? That's what they say. I mean don't get me wrong you do sell more as you get closer yeah um so you're even worried when you're doing this like week one and week two you're still worried about I'm still worried I'm still worried because you know you want to sell you want to be that artist that puts a tour on and it's fucking sells out you know Capaldi's not waiting for well maybe maybe two days before there but you know what I mean I want to be one of them I want to feeling must be horrible yeah oh it was like pity your stomach fucking hell this is going to be so I'm going to lose so much money uh the band's going to be like what the fuck why why is no one going to this and it's just embarrassing you don't want to be walking on stage and and the fans are standing there and because i think another thing about it the embarrassing thing is the fans don't know how many tickets you've sold so when they come to the gig that night and it's empty they're all in that initial oh god he's not doing well is he because i'd be the same if i went into a oh shit yeah and I think the beauty of showing everyone the ticket sales was that it eliminated that worry of them judging me on the night because they can know.

5:30And even if there is 50 people there, they know because they saw weeks before. And if anything, they're going to fucking be the loudest crowd. They're going to be so supportive because they know there's not going to be many people. Just like Liverpool. Liverpool was the only one that didn't really sell that well on the last tour. And they were all the loudest crowds because I think they'd psyched themselves up to be there for me.

5:48Olly Fawcett:it felt like you had turned something so negative into something so positive like i remember looking through comments and i looked before we came on the show just looking through some of the videos and like people just wanting to use actually what social is brilliant for which is this like positive reinforcement you know some people clear like you know if people saying i'd love to and i can't afford the ticket and that kind of stuff or that you know just even engaging with it is doing yeah saying on just commenting to help the algorithm it's beautiful man it was it really brought it created so the second week it got like 20 or 30 000 views or something and i was thinking hell this has gone i've doubled twice in a row is it having an impact on sales yet not really no no and if i'm honest it really wasn't and and my mum was like and i was saying to my mom wow we got 50 000 views now on both of them she was like yeah that means because i don't know until the and then week three was really bad i mean it was like i i think there was some of the shows we'd sold like one ticket yeah i think i remember saying that uh and it was it was a hard watch you know and my band were like billy you've got to stop doing this like my guitarist matt you know one of my best friends i love him and i'm like and to be fair he now is like that fair enough fair enough that you win but at the time he was like are you sure this is a good idea because like my family are calling me and being like what the fuck dude like what the fuck he was it's good and and it's embarrassing for all of us it was embarrassing because we're showing behind the curtain and it doesn't look good and then that video the third one the third one yeah so the first one did 10 000 views second one did 30 000 views and then the third one did five million so it just and that was just on instagram on tiktok it did six million so it just and it just blew up and all of a sudden everything just from that moment on just skyrocketed and the ticket started to sell and the feeling of it blowing up which are like you know we've all experienced like with what i do in in marketing we run socials for brands and also i've seen content get like traction in real time yes and have an impact business or personal whatever might be the feeling of it blowing up like the notifications, how hot the phone gets.

8:00Olly Fawcett:Yeah. It does fucking happen. Yes, it does. The phone's like going to blow up or something. Like literally it's going to blow up. How hot the phone gets. It hurts my legs sometimes. And you've got to turn all notifications off. You've got like four battery packs on the side of it. Yeah. But like that feeling for you after having everyone doubt it, what you've been through, your father, the drug stuff, the label thing, to now know that just by your own action and by your own idea, it's now impacting. What did that actually feel like?

8:31It was a relief. It was a fucking relief. It just made me a little bit, I mean, me and my mum found the whole thing really funny, really, because it's just like fucking hell, you've been on Made in Chelsea, James Corden, two major record deals for fucking agents, shit loads of Radio 2 play. And it's just sitting in my mum's kitchen, the show that did it, you know? It's just great.

8:55Olly Fawcett:what the but that is the world we now live in yeah it's just like it's so hard and not everyone would have succeeded but like it can just be one video yeah and i think it was just because it was so real um yeah and wholesome and and it also had numbers and i think people are interested in like the numbers of things oh that's interesting like he's only sold that many i thought he would have sold because some of the cities really did sell well and some of them just didn't you know and and they didn't move like london still would not move and i'd always done so well in london always done like a thousand tickets in London no problem but this time it was really difficult I think that made me realize god everyone really is struggling at the moment yeah um especially in the bigger cities but from from my point of view it was just I was just like fucking finally fucking finally I've had something that's worked yeah in a big way um and it's also not only has it worked but But it's something that me and my mum can just keep doing.

9:53It's not like some random thing happens and we can't recreate it. So now it's like, okay, cool. Right now let's do it for the album sales. Let's do it for everything.

10:03Olly Fawcett:And transparency is repeatable. Yes. And not only let's do it for everything, but let's encourage as many other artists as we can to do this, you know? and it's like loads of people are there's hundreds of artists that are now copying my formula really yeah which is great to see and they're all going viral as well i mean it's a formula that works and and it really is and a lot of them ask my permission oh do you mind us copying and it's like hell please copy like this is helping people sell ticket this is like solving a problem that artists and bands had so much anxiety over