{"id":93836,"date":"2024-07-26T12:06:45","date_gmt":"2024-07-26T16:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2024\/07\/26\/what-bruce-springsteen-can-teach-the-music-business-about-superfandom\/"},"modified":"2024-07-26T12:06:45","modified_gmt":"2024-07-26T16:06:45","slug":"what-bruce-springsteen-can-teach-the-music-business-about-superfandom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2024\/07\/26\/what-bruce-springsteen-can-teach-the-music-business-about-superfandom\/","title":{"rendered":"What Bruce Springsteen Can Teach the Music Business About\u00a0Superfandom"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tAs a music journalist, I tend to look at fan armies with only professional interest \u2014 what they mean for the industry and how I can make sure they won\u2019t figure out where I live. Last week, however, I suddenly had to face the fact that I\u2019m in one \u2014 and I have been for the last 35 years. And I realized that many creators might need to change the way they think about cultivating and keeping superfans.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Bruce<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tBruce Springsteen Returns to Stockholm With an Energetic\u00a0Show\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\n\tI went to Stockholm last week to see Bruce Springsteen<\/a>, one of my favorite artists, for what must be at least the 30th time. I stayed in a hotel close to the venue, which was full of people like me \u2014 by which I mean Springsteen fans of a certain age (ahem<\/em>) who wanted to see the concert enough to travel from all over Northern Europe and, in some cases, the U.S. Many came with spouses or children, and some planned on seeing a few shows \u2014 or even a couple of weeks\u2019 worth. One couple said that they were happy Springsteen now gives himself a couple of days off between shows, since it gave them more time for sightseeing during the vacations they organize around concerts.<\/p>\n

\n\tThese people don\u2019t think of themselves as part of a fan army. They don\u2019t have a nickname or collect different versions of the same CD. I don\u2019t, either. In fact, I feel a bit sheepish saying that this concert was one of the highlights of my summer, or that I spent a few hundred dollars to go, but it is and I did, and it was totally worth it. After the show, about two dozen people gathered in the lobby after the show to talk highlights and trade war stories, and some of them gathered again the following night after cancelled flights left them stranded in Stockholm. I feel even more sheepish about how much I enjoyed that.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhatever. From a music business perspective, this is just what superfans do<\/em>. One difference between his and most is that Springsteen built his audience the old-fashioned way \u2014 with unforgettable live shows that convinced fans to come back and bring friends (and, these days, kids). The people in my hotel are obviously the exception \u2014 I\u2019m talking about a few dozen people in a venue that holds more than 50,000 \u2014 but at this point I think Springsteen concerts mostly draw serious fans. (Springsteen opened with \u201cSeeds,\u201d which he only ever released as a live performance on a 1986 box set, so I assume he thinks the same.) And although it\u2019s hard to be sure, I think most of them were won over by his concerts.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Grateful<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tWhat\u2019s the Secret to Selling to Superfans? Ask the Grateful Dead \u2014 Or a K-Pop\u00a0Act\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\n\tThese days, music executives focus less on live acts \u2014 how live are most pop performances anyway? \u2014 and more on hit singles. Fan armies are built online, usually around the shared experience of hoping a song will go to No. 1 or buying extra copies in order to boost it. But how long will that last? The music you love when you\u2019re young tends to remain in your life, but going to concerts might have more appeal over time than trading gossip about chart position online. Cultivating an audience devoted enough to keep coming back year after year can be much harder \u2014 but it can also be more effective.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe problem is that this part of the business is hard to see in data. Industry executives often talk about how much superfans are worth in terms of the CDs or tchotchkes<\/em> they buy, but it\u2019s harder to measure the effect of fans who keep coming back over the course of years. I saw one Springsteen show this year and two last year, which doesn\u2019t really move the needle. The 30-or-so shows I\u2019ve seen would, of course, but those were over a period of 36 years \u2014 starting with, if you\u2019re curious, the Tunnel of Love Tour in May 1988. (I was already enough of a fan to attend two of the five shows \u2014 and then I was really <\/em>hooked.)<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat keeps me coming back \u2014 and I think what keeps most fans coming back \u2014 is that Springsteen delivers shows that are both consistently great and fairly different. If he\u2019s had an off night, I haven\u2019t seen it. At the same time, he makes every tour different and varies the set list every night, with moments of genuine magic \u2014 in Stockholm he delivered a haunting \u201cRacing in the Street\u201d and pulled a kid up onstage to sing the chorus of \u201cWaitin\u2019 on a Sunny Day.\u201d Others keep going back to hear rare favorites \u2014 seeing Springsteen play \u201cJole Blon\u201d in September 2012 was a profound experience for me, even if most of my friends had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Audience<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tEveryone Wants to Reach Superfans. It Won\u2019t Be\u00a0Easy\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\n\tYou could say a lot of these things about a lot of rock bands \u2014 there was a time when playing a different set every night was the rule instead of the exception. And it does seem to draw people in. Fans love a curveball of a cover, and some even appreciate the flubs \u2014 there\u2019s so much more at stake without the artificial perfection that comes from a click track. Communities are built from appreciating, comparing and, yes, griping about difference performances. Just read the New Yorker<\/em> story<\/a> about Dead & Company<\/a> <\/strong>to get the idea.<\/p>\n

\n\tLike any true fan, I\u2019m going to say Springsteen is different. More than any other current artist, he believes \u2014 and gets concertgoers to believe, at least for the time he\u2019s onstage \u2014 that rock actually matters, that there\u2019s more at stake onstage than entertainment, that this kind of music can actually sustain you. As I get older, with less time to drive down an empty highway for no reason at all, it gets harder to believe that. But I\u2019d like to. Maybe in some way I need to \u2014 so much that I\u2019ll be back next year and probably again the year after that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Aller \u00e0 la source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a music journalist, I tend to look at fan armies with only professional interest \u2014 what they mean for the industry and how I can make sure they won\u2019t figure out where I live. Last week, however, I suddenly had to face the fact that I\u2019m in one \u2014 and I have been for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musique","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}