I have something I need to get off my chest, and I’m embarrassed to admit it.
I’m a fraud.
For more than a decade, someone has asked me, “Have you heard of [artist]?” and I’ve said, “Oh yeah, they’re cool.” Then I’ve dreaded the follow-up.
“What’s your favorite song by them?”
The honest answer, in the streaming era, is that I have no idea. I’ve liked a band for years and realized I couldn’t name a single one of their songs on the spot.
This from the kid who hit maximum flow state peeling the cellophane off a CD, popping it into a boom box, and reading every word of the liner notes.
I helped build the growth engine at Pandora, a key part of getting it to the number one streaming service in the US. Maybe that’s the problem.
The Superfan Problem Streaming Created
From the inside, I can tell you where we lost our way. We decided breadth mattered more than depth.
We asked, “How do we cram the most possible value into a $7.99 monthly subscription?” (Yes, $7.99. I’ve been at this a long time.) Our audience insights were about predicting your next move before you thought of it.
The technology made that logical. We had the data to predict what you would like, and artists could record a song and release it the same day. So why would we show you the old stuff when there’s new stuff every hour? More new. More new. More new.
Somewhere in there, we lost the point of the whole thing: how do you get someone to fall in love with something?
We were optimizing for consumers. Fans are a different animal.
What Is a Music Superfan?
A music superfan is a listener who engages with an artist in many ways beyond streaming: buying records and merch, going to shows, following the artist everywhere, and recruiting friends.
The data shows how much they matter:
- About 15% of the US population are music superfans, and they spend about 80% more on music each month than the average listener (Luminate, via Music Business Worldwide).
- Buyers of vinyl, CDs, or cassettes are more than twice as likely to be superfans.
- Goldman Sachs estimates superfan products could add about $4.3 billion a year in music revenue (Music in the Air, 2025).
Every label, streamer, and music startup is now chasing superfans. Most are trying to sell them a premium tier. I think they’re missing the mechanism.
Why Superfans Need Something to Own
If you want to understand devotion, study religion. It has been running this experiment for a few thousand years longer than the music industry.
In 1912, the sociologist Émile Durkheim gave the mechanism a name: the totem. A totem is an object a group owns, gathers around, and fills with meaning until the object itself becomes sacred. It starts as a symbol of belief. Over time, with enough ritual, it becomes the place where belief actually lives.
Picture a vinyl record you bought at a show. You’ve brought it to every show since and gotten every band member to sign it. Your best friend Rick spilled a whiskey and Coke on it. You met a girl at one of those shows. She’s your wife now, and you play the record every anniversary.
The band made the record. You made everything that matters about your copy of it: the signatures, the stains, the story. Fans co-author their fandom. The object is where they write it down.
Nobody has ever said “look at my streaming app” to show how devoted they are to an artist. Streaming is frictionless and fleeting by design. Every time you open it, it refreshes to something new. Access is great. It just never feels like it’s yours.
So the pendulum is swinging. Fans are reaching for things that feel permanent, that cost a little skin in the game, and that say a specific person planted a flag on something they love. Vinyl. Ticket stubs. Merch. Even tattoos. It’s showing up across the fandom economy, from sports collectibles to the kidult economy.
Ownership Is Coming Back to Music
Music is starting to follow. One company I’m watching is Lume, a music platform out of New Zealand built around a simple promise: buy it once, own it forever. No subscription, and no algorithm deciding what comes next.
Each release is a “Lume,” which works like a digital loot box: the full album plus whatever extra totems the artist chooses to include. Liner notes, demos, voice notes, and often a “more coming soon” that taps into a generation raised on blind boxes.
I like the bet because it leaves the breadth war to the streaming apps and competes on depth, which is where devotion lives.
Three Fan Engagement Plays for Music Brands
Whether you’re an artist team, a label, or a music startup, these are the mechanics I’d test first. Each one is already working somewhere else in the fandom economy.
1. Make ownership showable
At Twitch, I watched this up close. Subscribe to a streamer month after month and a loyalty badge sits next to your name in chat, leveling up the longer you stay. Stick around long enough and you unlock emotes only real fans have. Devotion becomes visible.
Music fans need the same thing. Profiles that display what they own and how long they’ve been there. Badges for being early. Status that other fans can see. When ownership is visible, every owner becomes a recruiter for the next fan.
2. Add friction (the good kind)
Getting my CD was work. Drive to the store, find the album, wrestle it out of the security sleeve, get home, and use my mom’s car keys to rip the wrapper. That friction built anticipation and turned one album into an all-day event.
Frictionless delivery is great for utility. For fandom, a little ceremony goes a long way. Build a real first-listen experience. Design an unboxing (sports collectible platforms have nailed this). Release liner notes and extras one piece at a time. Make buying an album feel like an event again. The effort is part of what makes it sacred.
3. Turn discovery into a hunt
My generation assumes the next one only cares about the prize. They care about the hunt just as much. The mystery of not knowing what’s inside is half the fun, which is why Labubu blind boxes and sports card breaks are everywhere right now.
So make releases that keep revealing themselves. A demo that drops next month. A voice note buried in the files. A hidden track that unlocks on your tenth listen. The fan still owns it forever. The hunt keeps them coming back, buying more, and telling their friends.
How to Measure Fan Engagement Beyond Streams
Streams measure reach. Superfans show up in other numbers:
- Repeat purchase rate across releases
- Direct-to-fan revenue per fan, including physical, digital ownership, and merch
- Depth of engagement, like completion of extras or unlocked content
- Referral and share rate from owners to new fans
- Retention over time, the music version of Twitch’s loyalty badge
If your dashboard only shows monthly listeners, you are measuring consumers and calling them fans.
Takeaways
- Streaming optimized for breadth, which made it harder to become a superfan.
- Superfans are about 15% of the US population and spend about 80% more on music.
- Superfans need totems: something they own, can show, and fill with their own story.
- Three plays to test: make ownership showable, add good friction, and turn discovery into a hunt.
- Measure depth, not just streams.
The question I used to dread, “What’s your favorite song?”, turned out to be a question about love. Did I care about something enough to have an answer?
I’m waiting for a music brand to sell me something bigger than a product: the kind of fan I want to be again.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a music superfan?
A music superfan is a listener who engages with an artist in multiple ways beyond streaming: buying physical music and merch, going to shows, and following the artist across social channels. Luminate found that about 15% of the US population are music superfans, and they spend about 80% more on music each month than the average listener.
Why does streaming struggle to create superfans?
Streaming is built for breadth. Recommendation engines keep serving the next new thing, and access never feels like ownership. According to David Hampian, who helped build Pandora’s growth engine, streaming optimized for consumers instead of fans: it made listening frictionless, but devotion needs something a fan can own, show, and pour meaning into.
How big is the superfan opportunity in music?
Goldman Sachs estimated in its 2025 Music in the Air report that superfan products could add about $4.3 billion in annual revenue, assuming 20% of paid streaming subscribers are superfans willing to spend twice what an average subscriber spends.
What is a totem in fandom?
The idea comes from sociologist Emile Durkheim, who described a totem as an object a group gathers around and fills with meaning until it becomes sacred. In fandom, a totem is a signed vinyl record, a ticket stub, a jersey, or a badge: something a fan owns that carries their story with the artist or team.
How can music brands increase fan engagement?
Give fans something to own and show off, add meaningful friction that makes buying and listening feel like an event, and build in discovery over time with hidden or unlockable content. These mechanics already drive fandom in sports collectibles, creator platforms like Twitch, and blind-box toys.
Building a music or fandom brand and want deeper engagement than streams can give you? Book a strategy call and we’ll look at where your fans can own, show, and hunt. As a fractional CMO for music and entertainment brands, I help teams turn listeners into fans who stick. For the longer read on how creator and fandom markets concentrate, see The Superstar Tilt.