Can Superfan platforms solve the musician income crisis?

Can superfan platforms solve the creator and musician income crisis? As the industry embraces superfans, a look at the potential and limitations of superfan platforms to help creators earn a living.

Can Superfan platforms solve the musician income crisis?

by Glyn Moody from Tech Dirt

“Services like Patreon provide a way for true fans to support the artists they love,but they don’t help creators find those true fans in the first place.”

Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) concluded with a look at “true fans,” an alternative way of funding creators that avoids the main problems of the current copyright system. The approach is based on nurturing the connection between artists and their most dedicated fans, allowing the former to generate extra revenue by providing the latter with tailored offers.

When the book appeared in 2022, the idea of “true fans” was not widely known, but since then, the idea has been gaining currency and supporters. One of the best-known names in the world of fan-supported creativity is Patreon. A couple of months ago, it published its “State of Create 2025” report, which surveyed over 1,000 creators and 2,000 fans to learn more about both and their interrelationship.

According to Patreon’s research, “over half of the $290 [billion] that encompasses today’s creator economy comes from direct-to-fan value like ticket sales, courses, livestreams, and paid memberships.” Moreover, it’s not just financial support that true fans – or “core fans” as Patreon calls them – offer their artists:

Core fans are more likely to energize the rest of a creator’s community by engaging with other fans. In doing so, they can help snowball the fandom into a community that generates value on its own, even when the creator is not posting new work.

Not only does this added value make the community even more appealing for newer fans to want to join, it also takes the pressure off of the creator to be constantly creating.

As a result, Patreon believes:

Creators are overwhelmingly seeking out more ways to deepen connections with their biggest fans. That’s not to say follower count isn’t important to creators – it’s just not the only end goal any more. The new driver motivating creators to build a large follower count is to have more chances to turn followers into fans, and fans into core fans.

According to Patreon’s research, 74% of creators want more fan interaction, and 87% of them value the importance of having a fan community around their work. Of course, Patreon has a vested interest in promoting the idea of true fans and their value to creators, since it makes its money by acting as an intermediary between them. But it is striking how even the biggest and most successful media companies are joining the true fan fan club.

One big name that embraced the direct-to-fan approach some while back is Universal Music Group, as Walled Culture noted last year. There is no sign of any diminished enthusiasm for the idea in Chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge’s annual New Year note to UMG staff, where he writes about the company’s “superfan” strategy:

In 2025, we’ll also be reaching out in new ways to engage fans. In addition to listening to their favorite artists’ music, fans want to build deeper connections to artists they love. Last year, in accelerating our direct-to-consumer and superfan strategy, we formed a strategic partnership and became an investor in NTWRK and Complex to build a premium live-video shopping platform for superfan culture. This year will see us expanding our product offerings to fans, as we continue to redefine the “merch” category and create superfan collectibles and experiences.

Weverse is another established “superfan” platform, one that comes from the K-pop giant Hybe Corporation. According to Weverse’s 2024 Global Fandom Trend Report:

the platform’s user base grew consistently across all continents, with an average growth rate of 19% last year.

Sixteen separate global artist teams joined Weverse during the year, with high-profile international stars like Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa, Megan Thee Stallion, and Conan Gray driving double-digit user growth across North America, Europe, and Asia.

Other well-known industry giants are planning new offerings for true fans. Warner Music Group is building a “superfan app”, and Spotify is working on something called “superfan clubs”. Meanwhile, true fan business models are thriving in China, reported here by Music Business Worldwide:

Tencent Music Entertainment, China’s largest music streaming company, is also banking on superfans to grow its business. The company recently reported a significant surge in its paying user base and improved average revenue per paying user (ARPPU), which was partly boosted by its ‘Super VIP’ (SVIP) tier.

As this indicates, the true fans idea has entered the mainstream now. That is good news for artists seeking to connect with their fans, and to generate extra income from that deeper relationship, but there’s an underlying problem, despite this embrace of the idea by big names. In an excellent discussion of the Patreon “State of Create 2025” report on her Posting Nexus blog, Julia Alexander points out a fundamental challenge facing the true fans model.

Finding True Fans

Services like Patreon provide a way for true fans to support the artists they love, but they don’t help creators find those true fans in the first place. For that, big platforms like YouTube and TikTok are needed, but they make it hard for people to move across to true fan sites in order to support artists directly. As Alexander writes:

If the Instagrams, YouTubes, and TikToks of the world want creators to continue putting in the effort of full-time labor to produce videos, they need to make it easier for those creators to survive off of smaller audiences. That only happens by encouraging core fans to follow their absolutely favorite creators to third-party websites where those creators can maintain a stronger direct-to-fan relationship rather than the simple direct-to-consumer one that isn’t working as the creator economy grows.

What that means is that these platforms need to understand that it is in their own interest to make it easy for visitors to become true fans using established sites like Patreon and the new ones that are being launched. Making it hard to do that in a misguided attempt to maximize the time that people spend on sites like YouTube and TikTok will ultimately harm the creators they depend on. Whether they are called true fans, core fans or superfans, they are vital for the future of creativity, not least in a world beyond copyright.

MORE: Sesh superfan platform adds $7M, innovative Member Card