Music tech: everyone is looking for their superfan model

What is a superfan?

How do you identify a superfan? Luminate defines three essential criteria to hook them:

👋 Their visibility: the superfan is hyper-invested, especially on social media and in fan communities. They like, comment, analyse, over-analyse and interpret!

📢 The expression of their fan identity: they are engaged consumers (buying merch, attending concerts…), because spending money is a way of showing you are a fan. To give an idea, 31% of American Gen Z would like artists to offer more merch options.

🍻 Belonging to a community (fan-to-fan relationships): Swifties, Little Monsters, the BeyHive or the BTS Army, to name just four highly invested and tight-knit fandoms. The superfan ticks every box: they adore someone and they have money to spend to show it. Enough to make the industry obsessive, as it scrambles to offer them tailor-made services.

An ecosystem of start-ups for superfans

Even, Fave, Vault.fm, TRAX and Insidr Music are some of the start-ups investing in this niche, but the established players are not left behind: Spotify says it is studying the creation of “superfan clubs”, WMG is building its own app, SoundCloud is adding direct messaging features, and Universal Music Group regularly speaks about this dimension… it is a rush towards an eldorado that is not so simple to grasp.

A balancing act to attract superfans

There is a tension between monetising these fans more and maintaining an authentic relationship with them. Labels are looking to encourage these die-hard fans to spend more, while streaming platforms want to tap into the trend to improve user retention. Newcomers are using a variety of levers (Web3, NFTs, early-access sound drops, co-creation, exclusivity…) to offer lasting and fair revenues to artists. It is a balancing act in a market where fans expect a lot of value to justify a monthly subscription… especially with the subscription fatigue currently hitting consumers (which can be summed up in one clear sentence: people are tired of being asked to pay separately for different online services).

Many challenges, then, but enthusiasm for tapping this segment remains high: whoever can understand the complexity of real engagement and solve the equation of making that engagement last will probably win the game.

How can the music industry master superfan strategies?