Your limited-edition vinyl goes on sale at noon.
At 12:01, you send an email. At 12:02, somebody gets a text.
Which one do you think they’ll see first?
For musicians selling something where minutes matter, that difference is becoming increasingly important. Email remains one of the best tools an artist can own for maintaining a long-term relationship with fans. But when you’ve got 200 signed records, a surprise merch drop or a ticket presale beginning right now, SMS has one enormous advantage.
It’s difficult to ignore.
Twilio says SMS messages have an average open rate of 98 per cent, with 90 per cent read within three minutes. The company contrasts that with average email open rates of roughly 20 to 25 per cent.
Three minutes can be a very long time when you’re selling something scarce.
Think about the psychology of a ticket presale. A fan receives an email announcing that tickets are available. They see the notification while making coffee and think, “I’ll look at that in a minute.”
Then work starts.
Another 14 emails arrive. Somebody sends a Slack message. Lunch happens. At 4:30, they remember the concert and discover the good seats disappeared hours ago.
A text creates a different kind of interruption.
Your phone buzzes. The message is short. “Toronto presale is live. Here’s your code.” The link is sitting directly underneath it.
Click.
That immediacy is why SMS marketing for musicians becomes especially interesting around moments with a short shelf life. You probably don’t need to text fans every time you upload a new photo or have a mildly interesting thought. But a ticket presale, limited merch release, secret show, surprise record or last-minute ticket drop has urgency built into it.
SMS matches that urgency.
Music marketing platform Community says its music clients can see click-through rates two to three times those of email and social media combined. The company specifically markets texting to artists for presale codes, early-access tracks, tour announcements and merchandise drops.
Its artist case studies show what can happen when the audience and offer are particularly well matched.
Indie artist Phem used a text to announce an exclusive merch drop and generated an 18 per cent click-through rate, according to Community. The Score used its text list to offer hand-dyed leftover tour shirts and generated a 47.1 per cent click-through rate. The shirts sold out in less than 24 hours.
Those are individual campaigns reported by the platform providing the service, so they shouldn’t be treated as universal benchmarks. Your 800-person text list isn’t guaranteed a 47 per cent click-through rate because somebody else got one.
But they demonstrate why the format is so appealing.
The audience is already unusually qualified.
Giving an artist your phone number is a bigger commitment than following them on Instagram. Arguably, it’s even a bigger commitment than handing over an email address. Fans know where a text is going to appear: On the same screen where their friends, family and delivery driver message them.
That makes a text list smaller in many cases, but potentially much more valuable.
If you’ve got 50,000 email subscribers and 3,000 text subscribers, comparing the raw size of the lists misses the point. Those 3,000 people may represent a particularly committed part of your audience.
Treat them accordingly.
A text saying “BUY OUR MERCH” every Tuesday will become annoying remarkably quickly. A text saying “You’re getting the link 30 minutes before everyone else” gives fans a reason to have joined.
Exclusivity is especially powerful here.
Give text subscribers first access to signed records. Send them the presale code before posting it publicly. Let them see the tour dates first. Release a tiny batch of merchandise to them before opening the store to everybody.
Now joining the text list means something.
That’s an important distinction because SMS is a more intimate channel. Twilio describes SMS marketing as permission-based: Recipients need to opt in to receive marketing texts. If a fan has explicitly invited you onto their phone, respecting that invitation becomes part of the strategy.
Email can handle depth.
Your newsletter can contain a studio story, photographs, tour diary, merchandise, interview links and a long note about the new album. Nobody wants all of that delivered as seven consecutive text bubbles while they’re eating dinner.
SMS is better when the message can essentially be reduced to: This is happening now.
That makes email and SMS less like competitors and more like two people on the same marketing team with different jobs.
Email tells the story.
SMS rings the bell.
An artist launching a limited vinyl edition might tease the release to the email list several days ahead, explaining the pressing, artwork and story behind it. Then the most engaged fans receive a text when the store actually opens.
The email builds desire. The text captures the moment.
Segmentation makes the combination even stronger. A fan in Vancouver doesn’t need an urgent text about tickets suddenly released for tonight’s Montreal show. Someone who’s repeatedly bought vinyl might be exactly the person who wants first notice of a deluxe pressing.
Community promotes segmentation by location, behaviour, purchase history and other audience characteristics for exactly this reason. Its platform also points to SMS as useful for ticket releases, presales and last-minute inventory where timing directly affects whether someone acts.
The goal isn’t to text more.
It’s to make receiving a text from you feel important.
If fans learn that every message means something genuinely useful, the buzz of their phone becomes valuable. If they learn that every message is another generic promotion, you’ve turned one of your most direct communication channels into another inbox they want to escape.
Save SMS for the moments that deserve interruption.
Tickets are live.
Only 100 copies exist.
The secret show is tonight.
You’ve got 20 minutes of early access.
That’s where SMS has an advantage email can’t completely replicate. The message arrives on the device already sitting in your fan’s hand, at the exact moment you need them to do something.
For musicians, sometimes three minutes really can make the sale.
Follow us on Instagram @thatericalper
Eric Alper is a 6-time nominee for Publicist of the Year during Canadian Music Week and has overseen the publicity campaigns for over 183 JUNO Award-nominated albums (and 16 in 2025), 45 Grammy-nominated albums, including 47 JUNO Award, 58 Canadian Folk Music Award, 126 Maple Blues Award-winning albums and is also truly honoured to work with some of the biggest and most important artists of our time.
Contact me: [email protected]
© Copyright – That Eric Alper

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