Music Data Decoded: How fan-first marketing *actually* works
This article is the second installment in Music Data Decoded, a follow-up series to our State of Data in the Music Industry report.
In this members-only series, we dive into the role that data strategy plays across different industry verticals, to uncover more sector-specific insights and keep the conversation going beyond our original report in a more focused, nuanced manner. Each installment will feature perspectives from a hand-curated slate of industry executives, many of whom nominated themselves for an interview in our original State of Data survey.
You can revisit our first installment on distribution and label services here.
It is ironic that one of the strongest forces driving major shakeups across the music business today is also one of its oldest.
For as long as people have bought music products and experiences, fandom — the collective behaviors, communities, and data trails created by dedicated listeners and supporters — has served as a critical economic engine for the industry.
Current market realities have put superfans back to center stage as a vital lifeline for artists and music corporations alike. Streaming revenue growth is dwindling, even as more fans globally come online; only a minority of artists are seeing increased gig fees to account for rising touring costs, despite ticketing prices skyrocketing.
Against this backdrop of existing infrastructure falling short, artists are increasingly demanding tools to communicate directly with and rally their greatest supporters. Central to this demand is data — information about who is most engaged with an artist’s work, where and how they are engaging, and, most importantly, why.
Even celebrity musicians are shifting to platforms that offer more direct engagement and control over their fan relationships. A non-exhaustive list of examples announced this year:
- Lana Del Rey moved her fan data management from Universal Music Group to the startup Openstage.
- James Blake is interacting directly with his followers through a paid subscription on Vault.
- Fred again.. partners with Levellr on community management and analytics for his Discord server, which has driven his fan-first growth in recent years.
- Nicki Minaj is building her own “Gag City” fan community on Medallion, a startup that raised $13.7M in December 2023.
- Bands including Modest Mouse and Belle and Sebastian are running their own fan communities on Chorus — a startup founded by Mikel Jollett, frontman of The Airborne Toxic Event.
- Ariana Grande joined HYBE’s superfan platform Weverse, which received investment from Universal Music Group in March 2024.
- J Balvin and Peso Pluma joined Dear U, a global fan platform owned by HYBE competitor SM Entertainment.
Startups are leading the charge in fan data, leaving major labels scrambling to catch up. Warner Music Group first revealed in February 2024 that they were working on a "superfan app" or their roster artists. Later, in September 2024, Universal Music Group reported that direct-to-fan now constitutes the fastest-growing segment of the label’s entire business, and that they will be investing heavily in their own in-house fan data infrastructure over the next several years. (Notably, UMG also owns a stake in Weverse, and is in negotiations for a higher-priced "superfan tier" on Spotify.)
At the core of this transition is a reevaluation of what kind of marketing drives the most impact for artists. There’s a growing movement away from traditional models that treat audiences as passive recipients on rented platforms, and instead toward cultivating owned audiences and developing continuous, story-driven marketing strategies that invite fans to participate more actively. This approach not only distinguishes between casual listeners and true fans, but also opts to nurture fans throughout their journey with the artist — from initial discovery to loyal, repeat engagement over time — instead of merely chasing quick gains.
However, a significant barrier to making this work is that the fandom landscape today is incredibly fragmented. According to our State of Data survey, fan data management is spread across an ever-changing patchwork of third parties, including but not limited to labels, management teams, and tech platforms. This fragmentation is also reflected in a scattered fan experience: Fans are now overwhelmed by numerous new platforms, each demanding their sustained attention.
This not only spreads fan engagement thin, but also pressures artists to constantly produce content across multiple channels. Both fans and artists are experiencing fatigue — fans from deciding where to spend their time and money, and artists from trying to be everywhere at once. As Hanna Kahlert wrote on the MIDiA Research blog, “we cannot fix a plague of too much stuff on too many platforms by adding more platforms to host the stuff and putting more stuff on those platforms.”
Implementing a strategic paradigm shift in such an overwhelming environment presents a major challenge, even for the most seasoned executives. The pressing question is whether it's possible to achieve more meaningful fan engagement by being more strategic. Can artists and their teams use data and technology to work smarter, not harder, in service of building more delightful experiences for fans? And how exactly do we measure success around fandom, if the standards for growth are so different from before?
To explore these issues, we conducted in-depth email interviews with key strategists, builders, and leaders in the world of fandom — many of whom nominated themselves for comment through our original report survey:
- Bandcamp: Dan Melnick, Director of Product, Artists & Labels
- Big Cookie: Aaron Bogucki, Founder
- Cyber PR: Ariel Hyatt, Founder
- Fave: Jacquelle Horton, Founder/CEO
- Levellr: Taz Sharp, Music Lead
What follows is a masterclass on how fan-first marketing actually works, and frameworks for artists to effectively engage their most dedicated supporters with the data already available to them.
How to start understanding your fans
Throughout our interviews, a consistent theme emerged: Fans are not a homogenous group. There’s real power in understanding them on a fan-per-fan basis.
That said, achieving this is nearly impossible. Our State of Data report revealed that most respondents use generic CRM tools like MailChimp or HubSpot, rather than music-specific tools, to consolidate their fan data. While these tools offer flexibility in their wide feature offerings, they are not tailored to the music industry, and lack the fan-by-fan segmentation capabilities needed by artists and their teams.
One approach in starting to understand fans more deeply may feel counterintuitive: Stay laser-focused on a single data point. In many cases, that single data point ends up being sales. From the fan's perspective, a purchase signifies a clear investment in the artist or band.
As Dan Melnick, Director of Product, Artists & Labels at Bandcamp, tells us:
“On Bandcamp, purchasing is paramount … There are also leading indicators of purchase intent on Bandcamp — you can follow an artist or label, you can wishlist albums or merchandise, and you can attend Bandcamp Live events like Bandcamp Listening Parties. That provides an interesting funnel towards purchase through direct engagement with fans.”
Bandcamp enables artists, their teams, or labels to reach out directly to these fans, bringing them from casual followers into loyal purchasers. While this alone doesn't achieve the ideal of individual fan understanding, focusing on a single data point — the sale — can help artist teams hone their artist-to-fan strategies more deeply.
This level of focus is especially critical for early-stage artists who may not have an existing fan base, and would benefit from prioritizing only one or two key metrics as their first marketing goals. As Ariel Hyatt, Founder of Cyber PR and an advisor to many early-stage artists, tells us:
"Artists who are developing are so overwhelmed and unsure about first steps, that data fragmentation doesn't really factor in until they are much further along … We encourage our artists to be mindful of who is responding to their emails — the opportunity to move fans from semi-engaged to superfan level is ripe in the inboxes."
Hyatt refers to this focused, early-stage nurturing of fandoms as "pre-work." Artists starting out may benefit more from focusing on the few people who reply to their emails or social posts, before considering more large-scale platforms like Discord or WhatsApp.
A key question in understanding fans is how exactly they progress toward that crucial metric of sales. Building a fandom-centric marketing strategy involves investing energy and creativity into guiding your audience down the fan funnel, with feedback at every step to refine and improve it. Owned channels at the bottom of the funnel take longer to build, but offer greater commercial and emotional value to the artist.
Aaron Bogucki, founder of fan-centric artist services firm Big Cookie, explains to us how he works with artists to identify various fan segments within their unique fan funnels:
“... We actively engage these fans via video focus groups, 1-on-1 interviews and incentivised surveys to gain valuable qualitative feedback on what they love and value about the artist. We also learn what they want to see the artist deliver to the fans in the community or mailing list, and then we work with the artist to help structure and deliver that.”
In other words, getting down to the granular level of a fan-per-fan understanding — or at least moving beyond generic segmentation — requires focus and substantial people-centric work. For solo artists or bands, this is likely impractical without a platform or team that provides the right tools and workflows for actually getting to know their fans.
Mapping the diversity of fan interactions
Another holy grail in fandom and fan engagement is transitioning from artist-to-fan interaction to fan-to-fan interaction.
There are several models out there to help strategize towards this horizontal fan behavior. One of our favorites at Water & Music is the Orbit Model, which frames the most valuable community members as those who are direct contributors and collaborators:
In fan-first marketing and career development, what exactly are the data points to track and actions to take to elevate fans to these levels of engagement? Our interviewees mentioned a wide variety of distinct data points to serve this goal.
Jacquelle Horton, Founder/CEO of Fave, outlined all the different ways to categorize fans, depending on the nature of the actions they take:
Frequency of Actions: Understanding how often each action occurs, since when, and how regularly, and what actions are correlated together.
Recency of Engagement: We consider how recently fans have interacted with the artist, distinguishing between long-time active fans, recent enthusiasts, and those who engage less but still hold loyalty as retired superfans.
Intensity of Actions: Understanding the depth of each engagement. Did the fan attend a show and dress up extensively, spend significant time trying to secure tickets, stand in line for hours, or host an afterparty afterwards? We look at their commitment and effort.
Spending Behavior: We monitor how much fans are spending, what they are purchasing, from whom, and their potential willingness to spend more, especially around the additional supply and peer influence Fave adds that increases fan purchasing actions.
Cross-Fandom Involvement: Examining fans' engagement with other artists and genres to reveal valuable cross-promotion opportunities.
Level of Influence: We pull in data on fans follower counts across other social platforms to help spot influential fans who have built community and respect among your fandom through the fan accounts and micro-influencers, as these become powerful partners to drive efficient impact and powerful conversion.”
Compiling these data points to achieve a granular understanding of each fan requires integrating diverse data sources — an endeavor beyond the capacity of a solo artist or small team. Even for larger teams, data fragmentation remains a critical issue.
As Bogucki notes:
“When assessing an artist's fan segments, we look at signals across a number of data points in their digital ecosystem. These signals are weighted differently based on the expected level of engagement a fan has to partake in to be counted in a particular segment. We work to understand the approximate sizes of their Passive Listeners, Social Media Engagers, Passive Fans, Core Fans and Super Fans based on signals from analytics from DSPs, socials (data from the artists native platform analytics), website traffic, CRM, webstore sales, and ticket sales.
If data siloing from the incumbent platforms and partners weren’t an issue, I’d love to be able to apply this to ticket purchasers, store purchasers, streaming listeners and mailing list subscribers to get a full picture of an artist's true fan segments."
Even without a full picture, though, it's possible to deepen understanding of fans as they navigate the fan funnel. The exact strategies will be specific to each fandom.
Taz Sharp, Music Lead at Levellr, shares some examples of successful case studies:
“Ólafur Arnalds has built a Discord where fan contributions drive the experience — from monthly composer competitions voted on by the community to promoting peer-to-peer collaborations. BICEP are another great example: They recently launched a merch competition asking their community to design a T-shirt with a cash prize for the winner. It’s a collaborative, open-source approach to music and asset creation that allows fans to feel truly connected to the artist’s work .”
The examples Sharp mentions above foster co-creation not just with the artist, but among fans themselves — a concept that dates back to fanzines and fan-made merchandise. What's new in our current industry environment is the ability for artists and their teams to track these fan-driven efforts and reward them accordingly, delivering the status and recognition that fans are seeking.
As we track fans and encourage them to become co-creators, there’s another element we should not forget. Participating and co-creating fans invest substantial time in their fandom. What happens when they have less time? What happens when they go dormant?
Our previous research on community found that movement in and out of communities is not only natural and expected, but also provides a source of energy and momentum for their growth and evolution. As we collect more data to understand fandom's granular nature and promote fan-to-fan interaction, we also need to monitor how fans move away from active participation.
At Fave, for instance, Horton mentioned they have a segment called "retired superfans." This mindset allows artists and their teams to consider both onboarding and offboarding strategies to accommodate their fandoms’ natural ebb and flow.
From fragmentation to integration
By now, we know that data fragmentation is a defining feature of our current fandom landscape. Dominant platforms often do not share data, and as our State of Data report indicated, there's often a lack of actionable insights from available data. This is why over half of our survey respondents collect fan data through direct email submission.
Our interviewees also highlighted email several times when discussing solutions for direct-to-fan data ownership — even if it might be considered "old-school," as Nikki Pagliaro from Downtown Artist & Label Services put it in the previous installment of this series.
Importantly, email offers more than just ownership of the communication channel and data. In many cases, email opens are a leading indicator of superfan interest. As Levellr’s Sharp tells us:
“In a post-cookie world, where email data is more valuable than ever, particularly from superfans, this level of engagement is crucial.”
The ability to control communication content, recipients, and timing also makes direct email contact highly attractive. This granularity naturally comes with segmentation, which generic CRMs offer to some extent, but can be enhanced through specialized platforms.
As Bandcamp’s Melnick notes:
“Our Bandcamp Pro and Label subscriptions give artists and labels more detailed analytics on where their fans are, and more advanced targeting capabilities for messaging their fans. That means that if you’re a band going on tour, you can send a message to your fans in Seattle, or send a promotional code to fans who have spent more than $25 for a discount on your merchandise.”
These types of actionable insights are valuable, and probably why artists, their teams, and labels would pay to get them.
While data ownership is gradually shifting from platforms to artists or labels, we must also consider that fans do not own their data, and that their fandom is fragmented across platforms. As Bogucki describes:
“We help [artist teams] navigate the conversations with current or previous partners to collect the legal opt-in data that is rightfully theirs. Data privacy is extremely important for our clients to understand, so we’re working with their BA teams and people like Andy Blair at Reverb Data (UMG’s ex-Chief Data Privacy Officer) to develop the correct legal frameworks to ensure artist teams can activate on this data in a legally compliant way.”
Now, turn this around to the fan. From the fan's perspective, they purchase records on Bandcamp, comment on Instagram, buy merchandise at concerts, and join Discord servers. If status matters throughout, how can fans collect their own data to showcase their fandom across subcultures?
Fave has been working to address this issue over the past several years. Horton explained that a superfan's " influence is driven by an unmatched level of instant, genuine connections among superfans and the authenticity of the enthusiasm they spread." To gain this influence, fans need access to their own data to channel into campaigns that they often create themselves.
There's a growing consensus that artists, their teams, and labels should access the data they are legally entitled to for tailored marketing strategies. Less discussed is how fans should also be able to consolidate their data to showcase their fandom across platforms.
While there's a wealth of data available, the real challenge — and opportunity — lies in aggregating it to make it more useful and interoperable for all of its participants. Ultimately, success in fan-first marketing hinges on understanding fans not just as consumers, but as active collaborators in an evolving musical journey.
By embracing this collaborative approach and leveraging data strategically, artists, teams, and platforms can build more meaningful, lasting relationships with the people who support them the most. This not only enriches the fan experience, but also transforms the fragmented landscape into a more synchronized industry ecosystem that benefits everyone involved.
Revisit Water & Music’s previous research on music marketing and fandom: