Anatomy of a modern pop fanbase: How fans use data to build their own music marketing powerhouses

By: Ami PatelCherie Hu

Published: 2021-06-07

It’s hard to overstate the power of pop fandoms in the digital age. Just like any professional marketing team, these fandoms regularly trend hashtags, chart new singles/albums and stage highly coordinated promotional campaigns on social platforms like Twitter and Instagram with clear chart objectives, curated playlists and more. They also develop their strategies weeks in advance, to make sure everyone in their communities is united to accomplish these milestones. Only in recent years has the influence of these fandoms gotten official recognition by major industry stakeholders, from Billboard’s new “Hot Trending” chart with Twitter to Spotify’s acknowledgement of Discord as one of the fastest-growing drivers of music streams.

So, how do they do it? How do everyday music fans plan out effective and coherent marketing campaigns for their favorite artists on a global scale — without any label support?

In analyzing fandom behaviors, it becomes clear that many fans have a sophisticated understanding of data and industry policies that is increasingly in demand in the music business. Fans will read chart predictions, memorize current chart records and even measure the growth in their own communities to understand how many more sales and streams they need to get to No. 1 and beat previous debuts. They will plan and prepare for any voting-based awards by thoroughly looking through the rules and communicating them to their followers to ensure a win without coming off as bots. They will make the most of all streaming platforms available to maximize consumption numbers, but will research proper methods to avoid looking fraudulent with repeat streams. All of this takes hours of research and planning, not to mention near-perfect execution.

In this guide, I’ll walk through the main pillars of modern pop fandoms, drawing from global case studies across multiple social platforms, then offer some guidance for music marketers who are looking to leverage these self-organizing fandoms in an ethical and inclusive way.

Disclaimers:

  1. This guide will focus primarily on the fandoms around established rather than emerging artists. While emerging artists can certainly employ a lot of the strategies discussed below, they first have to focus on cultivating a fan base in the first place. Large fandoms exist because they are drawn to the music and message around a given artist, who likely developed their fan relationships over the course of several years. Hence, emerging artists need to focus on sharing their stories, not just their music, with their early fans. In the process, of course, they can use many of the same tactics as their celebrity counterparts, such as hosting Q&As on Twitter, going live on Instagram and hosting social streaming parties on Stationhead.
  2. Speaking of different social apps, you’ll notice that most of the below examples of fan accounts and campaigns come from Twitter. From my experience, Twitter is a more fan-friendly platform than Instagram, Facebook and TikTok due to having features like quote retweets, trending pages and more that allow fans to spread information more quickly and spark new discussions and conversations more easily. Most fan-to-fan conversations about planning and executing their marketing strategies happen on Twitter first; those conversations might later end up reposted on other social platforms.

The landscape: Fan accounts

The power of modern pop fandom all starts with fan accounts. Usually, the purpose of these accounts — which show up most frequently on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook — is to keep followers up-to-date on the latest news related to an artist, from upcoming releases and media appearances to social-media mentions and even theories on future music collaborations.

For a given artist, accounts can have anywhere from 15,000 to over a million followers each (more than many major labels), and there can be thousands of different fan accounts targeting specific interests, marketing tasks or geographic regions.

With BTS, for example, there are multiple layers of fan accounts on Twitter, including but not limited to the following categories. Importantly, these layers are not mutually exclusive — for instance, many news accounts also regularly share photo updates or member-specific updates, while many voting accounts also publish chart achievements:

As the later categories suggest, the mobilization power of pop fandoms can have far-reaching implications beyond just promoting the artists themselves. For instance, almost exactly one year ago (June 2020), the BTS ARMY matched Big Hit Entertainment’s $1 million donation to the organization Black Lives Matter within just 25 hours, thanks to the hashtag #MatchAMillion. That same month, K-pop fandoms were credited with undermining a rally for former U.S. President Donald Trump using fake RSVPs. The BTS ARMY in particular also recently self-coordinated its own member census — leading to one of the largest-scale fan surveys ever conducted in the music industry, with demographic insights that would be valuable to official music marketing teams around the world.

To reiterate, all of the above accounts are unofficial (i.e. not affiliated with BTS). That said, the boy band does regularly acknowledge and thank these fans with hashtags like #BTSARMY. This multilayered ecosystem of fan accounts also exists for most other chart-topping pop artists today, such as Blackpink, Tomorrow x Together, Ariana Grande, The Weeknd and Lady Gaga.

How pop fans mobilize around a new release

From the moment a major artist or band starts teasing an upcoming release, fans begin organizing and planning promotional campaigns to maximize first-week chart placements, sales records and social-media buzz. There are multiple formats that fans turn to for communicating campaign goals, racking up streams and ensuring cohesion across the whole fandom, in both the short and long term:

Instructional graphics, videos and playlists

Often, the first action that fandoms will take is creating graphics and videos with specific instructions for achieving concrete streaming, buying and charting goals. Details include how to properly stream songs on repeat to avoid being flagged as fraudulent, how to sign up for free trials of DSPs like Spotify and YouTube Premium, what hashtags to use for social-media trends and where to prioritize purchasing music. Regional accounts might also have geography-specific recommendations for platforms to prioritize (e.g. Shazam in the U.S., given that local radio stations often look to data from Shazam to deem what is currently popular). Larger fan accounts will share these instructions to their followers, and rack up hundreds of thousands of retweets and likes and/or millions of video views in the process.

[Pictured above: Two of the main infographics with 24-hour goals for Blackpink’s single “Ice Cream” (left) and their album titled THE ALBUM. Credit to the Blackpink fan accounts bpbillboard and HAPPYBLINKSPH.]

You’ll often see “24-hour goals” for a certain number of streams or sales on these graphics. Fan accounts determine these goals based on many qualitative and quantitative factors: What is the current chart record? How much has the fandom and fan accounts’ audiences grown since the last release? What kind of style is the release (dance anthem, ballad, etc.)? Is the label marketing this release differently than from previous releases? Do streaming services have filtering mechanisms for their charts that only count a certain number of plays within a 24-hour period (see the drama in the last week around BTS’ “Butter” as a prime example)?

Usually, larger fan accounts will suggest an initial benchmark based on these considerations, and fans will provide their input on whether or not they think the goal is plausible. After these discussions, accounts will share an agreed-upon goal on their official graphics, but reiterate that it is okay if fans don’t accomplish them. The main point is to have fun while streaming in a more communal way, with these concrete goals as a primary motivating factor.

[Pictured above: General streaming guidelines for fans of K-pop group NCT Dream, compiled by fan account NCT Dream Center.]

Amidst rising reports of fake streams and bot accounts on music streaming platforms, most fandoms today conduct tests and research ahead of time to figure out how to stream a given catalog on repeat without getting flagged as fraudulent. In their infographics, fan accounts typically remind followers not to use VPN accounts, but rather to focus on their own country’s charts and goals instead of trying to interfere with charts in other countries. Many accounts will also recommend hand-curated Spotify playlists with two to three songs in between repeat instances of a newly released single, and will encourage fans to switch among multiple of these Spotify playlists in a given period of time. Obviously, there is no concrete evidence that this method works, but based on data collected by the fandom, they believe that these methods are safe and effective.

Crowdfunding and donation accounts for lower-income fans

In the spirit of widening accessibility and democratizing commercial impact, several fan accounts also run campaigns to raise funds for lower-income fans who still want to participate in driving first-week sales. Most of these accounts raise funds through channels like PayPal, Cash App or iTunes gift cards, and have a clear vetting process to make sure the people who request funds are coming from the right place. Fans have to prove that they haven’t already purchased the single or album, verify where they are located to ensure funds are going towards the right charts and provide a proof of purchase within a certain time frame after receiving the funds. In K-pop, some of the top fan crowdfunding accounts can drive several thousand purchases of digital singles in a matter of days.

[Pictured above: Graph showing the distribution of digital single purchases for “Butter” funded by the fan account Funds for BTS UK, from May 21 to June 1, 2021. Credit to Funds for BTS UK.]

Funding accounts often receive backlash from people on social media over the large sums of donations they accumulate. Some critics feel this behavior is unnecessary and bot-like; others, especially in music journalism, argue that mass-buying a single or album purely for the purpose of chart placement is not indicative of an artist’s “true popularity,” since it is not driven by the general public. These waves of criticism have led some well-known funding accounts to go private to avoid further scrutiny. In some cases, these initiatives’ PayPal accounts have even gotten restricted or suspended.

The rebuttal from fans is that music charts have always been an inherently broken system, and that buying music is one of the oldest methods of supporting an artist. Moreover, the general public naturally will not spend or consume the same way that fans do because the former group is not as loyal or committed. If fans aren’t reflective of who is popular, then what is?

Social streaming parties (official and unofficial)

Fandoms don’t want to just break 24-hour or single-day sales records; they also want to utilize every tool available to them to maintain chart stability and social-media buzz over time, and to surmount any obstacles faced by official chart policies from streaming services, magazines and more.

One trend that has picked up more steam in the last year is the organization of real-time streaming parties across a wide variety of third-party social apps outside the main DSPs. The fan-driven marketing campaign around BTS’ latest single “Butter” — illustrated by the hashtag #StreamingButter, which trended #1 on Twitter worldwide and in the U.S. — is an ironic demonstration of how decentralized fandoms can often drive more real-time activity around social streaming than official marketing teams.

From May 21 to May 27, Columbia Records and Big Hit co-hosted official, daily listening parties for “Butter,” using a proprietary website they had built just for the occasion. This follows a growing trend of major labels building their own software for online listening parties (e.g. Universal Music and Taylor Swift), in part to capture more first-party fan data. Per some industry sources, the peak number of concurrent listeners during these label-endorsed listening parties for “Butter” reached between 40,000 and 50,000 fans.

[Pictured above: Mobile screenshots from the official, label-endorsed listening party for BTS’ “Butter.” Screenshot credits to the Twitter account @MySugaryYoongi.]

But that was only around one-fourth of the concurrent listeners for a separate, unofficial streaming party that the fan account BTS Chart Data hosted on the social music app Stationhead. The BTS Chart Data show drew over 200,000 concurrent listeners at its peak — the highest ever concurrent listener record on Stationhead for a single show, and far higher than the record on other social audio apps like Clubhouse and Discord.

On Stationhead, users have to log in by connecting their premium Spotify or Apple Music accounts, which drives incremental streams for every listener who tunes in to a given live show. In this case, if “Butter” was played once for 200,000 listeners, then that song would gain 200,000 unique streams. These kinds of features are appealing for fans who are trying to counter the filtering mechanisms on DSPs like Spotify and maintain chart stability over time, using services that align with existing fan behavior. Unsurprisingly, most of the top accounts on Stationhead’s weekly leaderboard are now fan accounts, for artists like BTS, Nicki Minaj, Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande.

A brief note on TikTok

Of course, we would be remiss to talk about fan marketing without addressing TikTok, which seems to be mandatory on almost every music marketing campaign nowadays. There are several examples, from BTS to Olivia Rodrigo, of pop artists and fans creating challenges around dancing, fashion lookbooks, fan theories, art timelapses and more. Due to TikTok’s flexible sharing policy, these videos transfer easily onto other platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to generate even more views and exposure.

The important takeaway is that these TikTok challenges are most successful when viewed as just one component of a wider marketing strategy, across social media, radio and streaming services. In the case of pop fandoms, TikTok can certainly be useful for driving hype and awareness of a song. But the focus of online fan mobilization continues to be primarily on social platforms like Twitter that make it easy to share information and conversations, and on DSPs and video platforms like YouTube that have a more direct impact on the charts.

What does this mean for music marketers?

The fact that all of the above activity is openly accessible presents an enormous opportunity for music marketers to meet passionate fandoms halfway, by amplifying and complementing the market-leading work that these fans are already doing.

Unfortunately, there are several examples from recent history where artists either underestimated or oversimplified the role of fans and the intended relationship between an artist and their community. For example, in January 2020, Justin Bieber reposted then quickly deleted instructional infographics for maximizing sales for his new single “Yummy” on Instagram. This was widely seen as a faux pas because it focused the top-down narrative around the single entirely off of commercial performance, not on the storytelling in the music or lyrics themselves. A year later, in January 2021, Jennifer Lopez launched a #LoveDontCostAThingChallenge on social media to commemorate her eponymous hit single — but most fans seemed confused as to what the challenge was actually supposed to be, and felt that the original video of J.Lo relaxing on the beach was out of touch with the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic at the time.

First and foremost, I think it’s important for marketers to understand that fandoms don’t like to be labeled as crazy fanatics, or merely to be studied as if they are some sort of “phenomenon.” Fans have become especially protective of their online spaces amidst the persistent stigma and misogynistic attitudes that exist towards predominantly female fan bases.

With that in mind, any form of collaboration between fandoms and official music marketers should be based on a mutual goal set by both parties leading up to a release. Marketers in particular have to enter these spaces as if they were fans themselves, with the intention of contributing to fan communities’ fun and hard work and not for the purpose of using them merely for social power.

Hashtags are perhaps the simplest and most proven way that music marketers can share and amplify fan-made art, edits, infographics, theories and more, especially on Twitter. But marketers can go even further and build campaigns that are intentionally interactive and participatory, where fans feel like they are joining on a longer journey to solve the mystery of how a given song or album will sound. A regular schedule of teases — like a behind-the-scenes picture, or a random lyric or ten-second audio snippet of an upcoming song — can build up hype and anticipation and spark unique theories and conversations among fans. The key to all these tactics is to make fans feel like they are part of the campaign.

Taylor Swift is one of the artists who is best-known for dropping teases and easter eggs for fans in her music and marketing campaigns. After the release of her albums folklore and evermore, fans were trying to connect the dots among different lyrics and come up with theories around the characters she was singing about, namely Betty, James and Inez. In April 2021, leading up to the release of her re-recorded album Fearless, Swift posted a Twitter video of a gold vault door to reveal a series of scrambled letters; fans immediately were trying to decipher what the words meant, with some decoding the puzzle in minutes. Many younger artists and internet celebrities like Bella Poarch have adapted this model of incremental, interactive teasers to apps like TikTok.

When observing these fandoms, however, labels and marketers shouldn’t just be asking questions like, “How can we create the next BTS?” or, “How do we replicate a fandom like Swifties?” The truth is there will never be a “next” BTS or Taylor Swift. A fan becomes a fan when they feel a certain connection to an artist, their music and their message. This parasocial relationship leads to a strong bond where fans want to help their favorite artists attain their goals and dreams.

Hence emerging artists need to focus on developing their music, story, and relationships with their current fans, and building rollout strategies around that narrative foundation. If your focus is simply on replicating another artist’s fame and following, rather than focusing on developing a sound and brand that is unique to your artist, you will struggle to maintain loyalty over time. Pop fandoms are modern-day, self-organized marketing machines — but at the end of the day, the root of it all is good music.