Insights on Musician/Artist Fan Clubs in the U.S.

• In major concerts, fan club pre-sales usually represent 8% -10% of tickets.
• Before social media, fan clubs were the primary method in which consumers stayed connected to their favorite artists, for a low fee, often paid monthly, giving them access to exclusive content, pre-sales, and even music.
• Fan clubs would often be organized by those who consider themselves superfans of the artist and not by the musicians themselves.
• This engagement has changed over time with the advent of social media as everyone has access to every artist they like.
• The fan clubs approach is making a come-back, and in this new model, fan clubs are driven more by the artists (not by fans).
• Fan clubs are one of the new direct-to-fan artist engagement models that musicians are adopting to connect with their fans.
• Musicians often create a mailing list which helps with publicity, marketing, and helping to draw participants for live shows.
• Some musicians have a subscription-based fan club. For example, Neil Young announced he would quit Facebook and instead engage his fans through his archive website. Fans can access his archives by paying a membership fee of $1.99 per month to access his entire catalog and have the ability to pre-order concert tickets.
•  Another example is "The National," a popular indie rock band that also recently launched a fan club of its own with a subscription fee of $50 per year for fans to access exclusive merchandise, exclusive content, priority ticketing for concerts, and annual collectible vinyl.
• Other musicians have created private communities free-of-charge, like Taylor Swift, with her app, "The Swift Life.”
• Among the more well-known musician fan clubs in the U.S. is The Warehouse, The Dave Matthews Band online fan club, which was reported to have more than 80,000 members, with annual subscriptions creating more than $2 million in revenue for the band in 2002. Unconfirmed records show that the number of members stands at about 3.39 million people.

Summary of Findings