How superfans play into the future of music streaming

And how we grow the pie with Spotify, Apple, and beyond.

Here for my first newsletter on Substack and feeling excited about what’s to come.

I’m pretty sure the majority of people you know in music will all agree. Music streaming alone just isn’t the answer for artists. Streaming was sold to us as the future of music and in so many respects that’s true, but the big issue right now is the lack of innovation at the streaming platforms. No, Spotify, your AI DJ isn’t what we’re craving. That’s not the future. What’s happening is that we’ve failed to build commerce on top of music streaming and are asking artists to make their living on fractions of cents per stream, touring, and sync alone. We went from fans spending $10 on an album to this? There’s so much wrong with this. And I don’t buy this as the future of music.

I’ve been talking about the importance of superfans and community for years, I mean hell, The Wild Honey Pie built our entire business on the idea of building community around superfans and converting casual listeners from TikTok and Spotify to lifelong fans who will go to every show in their town and even remotely close by, buy the merch, and most importantly, tell all their friends that they absolutely have to listen to this artist. Influencers aren’t just people with a ton of followers on Instagram and TikTok. What’s missing in music right now and what is an easy change that can transform this world?

Like everything else, the power is in the hands of the very few - but in this case the much prettier reality is that these few are the superfans who are willing to spend more than the monthly subscription to Apple Music or Spotify to gain access to exclusives and community from their favorite artists and bands. Apple, Spotify, we want a fan club tier for our favorite artists, similar to platforms like Patreon. We’ll pay extra for dozens of unreleased demos, early access to new music, exclusive merch drops, meaningful updates, and intimate fan experiences - especially if we know most of that money is going to the artist. Please, take your 30% and let’s build new worlds on top of streaming platforms.