Goldman Sachs. Citigroup. Barclays, all confidently modelled the future of music…and all completely wrong. Meanwhile, fans quietly built a billion-dollar resurgence right under their noses. A story proving that if you don’t understand fans…you won’t see what’s coming next. New edition of the Superfan Formula
The phrase “meet fans where they are” is thrown around a lot in the music industry, but rarely understood. This edition of The Superfan Formula explores what it really means, why tiered monetisation misses the point, and how to use attitudinal insight to scale emotional connection and build a fanbase that lasts.
Everyone’s talking about “super-serving superfans” but no one’s asking what’s the actual plan? Strategy isn’t slapping “digital” in front of a campaign—it’s understanding what your artist means to fans, and where they’re going long-term. If you’re still throwing spaghetti at TikTok and calling it a strategy, it’s time to read this.
A decade ago, we predicted how streaming would reshape music — and we were half-right. The industry embraced track-based strategy but ignored the need to build enduring artist brands. Now, labels lean on catalogue, artist development has stalled, and WHY data is more essential than ever. Time to rethink. #superfans
AI has never had its heart broken. That was Sting’s beautifully simple explanation for why AI-generated music may be technically competent without necessarily being meaningful.
It also points to a much bigger truth: when everything becomes easier to make, human meaning becomes more valuable.
New Superfan Formula: AI Can Create Content. It Can’t Create A Reason To Care.
Hold up, hold up!! We need to pause for the briefest of moments and think about something slightly nonsensical.
Music is among the most personal and powerful of all art forms. It soundtracks the highs and lows of human experience. Sport is much the same: the irrational adoration of a team seemingly incapable of winning.
Emotion. Identity. Memory. Belonging.
Yet the principal systems we use to profile the 'identifiable fan' cannot capture, analyse or explain the basis of that human connection.
They can connect every stream, click, purchase, ticket and interaction. Brilliant. Valuable. Technically impressive.
But the technology can connect the evidence. It cannot make the human meaning appear.
And if the person has never purchased, registered, attended, downloaded or joined? They are not an incomplete record. They are completely invisible.
Owning fan data matters. But possessing the record of someone’s behaviour is not the same as understanding the person.
The fan who spends most may not be the most passionate. The supporter who attends least may be making the greatest sacrifice. And some of your most influential advocates may barely appear in your database at all.
Article 47 of The Superfan Formula asks a deceptively simple question: what do you actually understand when you ‘own’ the fan data?
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the slide in your presentation labelled “Insights” probably doesn’t contain any.
Streams increased by 14%. Frequent match attendees buy more replica shirts. Vinyl buyers spend more on concert tickets.
These may be useful observations, patterns or correlations. But they do not necessarily explain why anything happened. And without the human explanation, we may be measuring activity while completely misunderstanding the person.
This atricle: why data, evidence and insight are not interchangeable and why knowing what fans did yesterday is not enough to create growth tomorrow.
You Keep Using the Word “Insight”…
