Superfans have become a hot topic in the industry since last summer, when Goldman Sachs predicted that this segment of fans could put more than $4 billion into the music industry by 2030.
As mentioned earlier by Advertising signin January, CEO of Warner Music Group Robert Kyncl called for 'stock[ing] the blue flames of superfans” and additionally “direct artist-superfan products and experiences”, while the CEO of Universal Music Group Lucian Grange highlighted the value of 'superfan experiences and products'; and Spotify hinted at future 'superfan clubs' in a blog post.”
Described by Luminate as listeners who “engage with artists and their content in more than five different ways”, superfans were a talking point at IMS Ibiza 2024, which last week brought hundreds of electronic music personalities to the island for three days panels and parties.
On Friday (April 26), programming included a superfan discussion presented by industry knowledge platform Music Ally. The speech appeared Evie Thomas of Atlantic Records and Warner Music Group UK, Jack Bridges of SoundCloud, Myradh Cormican of UK management company Frame Artists and coordinated by Marlen Hüllbrock of Music Ally.
The conversation cited statistics from Music Ally, which found that superfans spend 80% more on music each month than the average listener, and that 2% of an artist's monthly listeners on Spotify account for more than half of that artist's monthly merchandise purchases of the artist.
Additionally, superfans are 54% more likely to be the first among their friends to discover new music and new artists, and superfans are 59% more likely to say they want to connect with an artist on a personal level. About 15-20% of all music listeners consider themselves superfans.
Here are five other takeaways from the speech.
1) Even 100 Superfans can successfully start a campaign — if you can find them
Fan bases are spread across a myriad of platforms, making it difficult for artists to understand who their fans are. This is especially true since data is fragmented and often controlled by third parties, meaning artists don't have direct access to fans and have to rely on different tools and platforms to understand who their super fans are.
Music Ally's Hüllbrock noted that it's “incredibly important” for artists and labels to figure out how to speak directly to their own fans, “because they're fighting the algorithm if they're just posting on their own channels.” One solution here is to cut down on content clutter by moving artist/fan chats to more closed and direct spaces like WhatsApp and Discord.
“It's about how to cut through the noise in an authentic yet relatable way, so that even if an artist has 10,000 fans, it takes 1,000 or even 100 to successfully launch a campaign,” Bridges added. Thomas noted that it's important for teams to test to see what different platforms work and where the engagement happens for each particular artist, “as it's not one size fits all. Every artist is different. every community is different.”
2) Soundcloud has long been a home for Superfans
“I think there was also an underestimation of how important a role superfans played before they were properly identified,” Bridges said, citing the 2022 hit “Afraid To Feel” by British duo LF System. That song “went to No. 1 but lived on Soundcloud for almost a year before it was picked up and signed,” he added. “When that was signed as part of the release strategy, it went out on Soundcloud and immediately artists were inundated with messages every day asking where the record went.”
Bridges cites this as a moment “where labels, artists, artist managers really realized how important it was not to get bogged down with certain things or market without certain platforms.”
He says that in the last 18 months, as the industry has focused heavily on superfans, there has been a shift in strategy that has seen “a lot more artists and labels go to Soundcloud early… and create records from scratch and from artists directly messaging their fans , because we have the tools to do that.”
3) Strategy is not one size fits all
“You have to look at how much time you have to invest, the reward you've earned for your fan base, and where your fans are actually messaging you and commenting and what platforms you're seeing that on,” Thomas said, adding that those factors is classified, the process can be very customized. “Maybe for a bigger artist with a bigger budget,” he continued, “you can do something like Discord where you can bring in agencies and there's a lot of paid features.” Meanwhile, for artists who want a simpler solution, “something as simple as a WhatsApp group can be amazing.”
Frame Artists' Cormican cited Scottish DJ Arielle Free as a success story for using WhatsApp to connect with superfans. “It was an easy thing to do, we just gave him room to grow,” he said, noting that the discussion in the group is often about topics beyond music and that many fans from the group meet up IRL to watch his shows Free.
Panelists also agreed that an artist's language and tone should be adjusted based on the platform they're using and which fan base they're speaking to. On WhatsApp, the artist will likely be more open and relaxed, while the caption on Instagram will be shorter and sharper. Overall, the key is to create different spaces for different types of fans.
4) Filtering Superfans by region is effective
When data is used to segment superfans by location, artists can easily reward these people with special experiences — meet and greets, guest lists, etc. — when they come to town.
Thomas again brought up Atlantic Records artist Fred..'s March Australian tour, for which the team cross-referenced people who were in the artist's Australian fan community and anyone who had a birthday on the day of one of the Australian shows . The team then DM'd these fans again from the Fred account.. saying that they had been added to the +2 guest list for their birthday.
“This is such a unique experience,” Thomas said, “I think it really enhances the user experience of this fan.” As for the long-term benefits, he compared it to getting a surprise upgrade from an airline: “You'll want to fly that airline again.”
5) Bring Superfans into the Storytelling
When coordinating Chase & Status' 2023 Boiler Room set, their management at Frame Artists told organizers they wanted a small guest list dedicated to superfans “because,” Cormican said, “we wanted to have their energy in the room ».
This guest list offer was distributed via the UK duo's Discord channel. When this set was recorded live, there were a few people in the crowd who knew every lyric, danced the entire time, and never once looked at their phones: the super fans who had made it onto the Discord guest list.
The Frame Artists team then messaged one of those fans, Don Lemons, and asked him to take part in a merchandise campaign. (And offered him “a free guest list for life, apparently,” Cormican said.) When Chase & Status appeared at the 2024 Brit Awards, fans from the artists' Discord were invited to join the show, as the group “wanted real raver on stage.” This group participated in rehearsals and the live show, and a video clip of this performance is now Chase & Status' highest-grossing content of all time, with 100 million views. The video features Dom Lemons “who,” Cormican said, “is now a legend in our scene.”
