Fanonymity: How Musicians know less about their Fans than Walmart does
Fan + anonymity = Fanonymity. How much should you know about your fans? The answer is almost certainly not enough: “Every retail outlet knows more about their customers than a musician does about their fans.”
Every retail outlet knows more about their customers than a musician does about their fans
Have you ever noticed how every one of your favorite brands, stores, restaurants and service providers seems to know everything about you and yet your favorite music artists have no clue who you are? Scroll through your email inbox and count the number of emails you get from your favorite bands. Maybe do the same with your phone and look at TXT/SMS. Have you ever missed out on tickets to a show by one of these bands because you didn’t know it was going on sale until it was already sold out ? Or not been aware that a new track or album was released, or that there was a limited quantity of a new merch item available ? Yes, we have too…
The consumption and monetization of music is unique to itself and amorphous
Access to and revenue streams from music have changed throughout history and continue to do so. Since the advent of contemporary music, performing and recording music artists have become increasingly dependent on third party entities or platforms to market their music and shows. From the 60’s through the mid-90’s, record labels/distro one-stops/stores, print media and radio controlled the marketing communication between artists and fans. Very few independent artists ever broke through to a mass audience without the support of all the above during this period.
The advent of the internet not only changed the way music artists monetized their music, it changed how they reached potential audiences. Digital music meant distribution didn’t require a physical purchase. Post the Napster-led file-sharing debacle, record labels turned to Apple to monetize digital through download sales on iTunes, and eventually Spotify and later generation digital streaming platforms became the revenue gatekeepers for music monetization. Live performance replaced recorded music as the primary revenue stream in the early 2000’s and has remained such except for a brief interruption during the pandemic. Today, streaming platforms, ticketing companies and social media platforms are the intermediaries between artists and fans.
So what’s the real problem?
In our view, there are two primary issues faced by music artists today both related to how that the ticketing, streaming and social platforms they have become dependent on communicate with and engage their fans.
Each of those platforms or providers has their own portion of the fanbase and a vested interest in developing that segment further without consideration of the broader picture beyond their boundaries
Most (if not all) of those platforms “create shareholder value” by renting access to the interaction channel between artists and fans — effectively its an arbitrage model, applied to contact data.
Walled gardens
Artists using these platforms can only engage with their fans who use the platform within the boundaries of the platform. The identities of the fan users are not shared with the artist in order to keep the engagement on the platform. This certainly makes sense for the platforms and their ad or subscription-driven revenue models. For artists, it’s a redundant exercise in counter-production.
Pay to reach
Artists have to pay these platforms repeatedly and in perpetuity in order to reach the same fan audience. They don’t receive any meaningful data about who fans actually are — making this economic relationship very imbalanced. Most artists are active on mutiple such third-party platforms, which means their cost to reach increases (or they are forced to compromise on reach in managing expenditure). Some of these platforms are self-destructing and hemorrhaging users as we write this, leaving artists with a potential further disconnect from a subset of their fans — essentially they invested in a depreciating asset.
Music artists are blindfolded, shouting, and barely getting pennies for their efforts
Even worse, the data these third-party platforms do provide artists is essentially meaningless because it can’t be tied to actual fan identity or cross-correlated between engagement, purchasing, attendance etc, let alone across platforms.
Most music fans are anonymous to the artist.
The reality is that most music artists have no idea who their fans are aside from the very small number of artists who effectively use email and SMS tech to connect directly to those people. Even in those cases, the average number of fans on those lists are somewhere in the 15%-20% range of active fans for a music artist. Most music artists filling rooms, packing clubs, auditoriums and stadiums look out from the stage at a sea of people and have no clue who they are, why they are there or how to know if they will see them the next time they come to town.
Many music fans would love a closer relationship with their favourite artists
Flip that around, and many fans would willingly engage closer or more often with the artists they love, if only it was possible. Most fans know that simply liking or following on any platform isn’t going to move the dial in their relationship with the artist. Some fans will go further and join a mailing list, a fan club, a gig tracking service and attempt to get “closer” to the artist, but there are genuinely very few opportunities for a personal level of interaction.
This is perhaps the great irony of fanonymity. It serves neither music artists or music fans well — perhaps the only winners are the intermediary and relationship brokering platforms who offer to “facilitate” those interactions (for a fee, of course!) without actually resolving anonymity.
So what recourse do music artists and fans have ?
With new technologies come new opportunities. Music artists and fans now have the ability to connect directly and authentically using digital identity protocols and engagement platforms providing the ability to share identity data in an actionable and rewarding manner. Artists are no longer stuck with defaults and can actively choose to use platforms which provide them with the best opportunities to connect to grow audiences, convert passive fans into active fans (and some of those into superfans), and monetize their most passionate and engaged supporters. These platforms are phygital — they operate across the online (social, streaming) real world (venues, festivals, with physical merch) boundaries.
ArtistVerified is a two-sided platform directly connecting music artists and music fans through establishing actionable digital identity. Launching in March 2024, ArtistVerified’s unique approach to the artist-fan relationship is based on artists being able to own their fan relationship at its core empowering both fan acquisition and retention.
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