Why Fan Engagement is Crucial for an Artist's Success
From a fan's perspective
There’s a negative stigma surrounding the phrase “fan girl”. Why? The music industry is alive because of fan girls (and boys), so why do we get called crazy and obsessive? I’ve been a fan girl for as long as I can remember and, of course, it started when One Direction was formed and went on to become one of the biggest bands to ever exist. I’d say this is where my love for the music industry started and a big part of this comes from the way the artists interact with their fans. I’ve been through many fandoms since I was 12 years old, some of them are One Direction, 5 Seconds of Summer, Shawn Mendes, and many more. But what stands out from all of these fandoms is that they have such huge fan bases because the artists give the fans what they want and interact with them constantly.
Let’s take 5 Seconds of Summer as an example. The band was formed in 2011 by its four members, Luke, Calum, Michael, and Ashton. A few years later, they were discovered by Louis Tomlinson, one of the members of One Direction, and joined the band as the openers for their tour in 2014. From this moment, the band quickly started to gain traction and get thousands of followers, the question is, how do you keep your fans interested so they don’t move on to another band? Here is where fan engagement comes in. Since the beginning, the four band members used to film everything they did, whether it was being in the studio or going on tour, as well as doing live streams. While the band was on their Meet You There tour, they created tour video diaries and “Cocktail Chats” which are both video series available on YouTube that allowed fans to get a glimpse of what happens behind the scenes (and also gave them meme worthy content).
When the band released their next album, CALM, we were in the middle of COVID, so they were forced to come up with new ideas to keep their fans tuned which led to them going live on Twitch to listen to their new album and play games while the fans could comment in the chat of the stream. Since the first stream was so successful, they hosted another one which was full of laughs and banter that made you feel as if you were on a video call with your friends.
For their 10 year anniversary, the band created the 5 Seconds of Summer Show in which they did performances and acted out plays that involved inside jokes between them and the fandom from years ago. When they were finally able to go on tour after the pandemic, these skits were played before the concert started to keep fans entertained while the band got ready to go on stage.
You might be wondering, what’s the point of me telling you all of this? Well, 5 Seconds of Summer has had a huge fan base that only keeps growing since they first started and it’s all due to wanting and knowing how to interact with their fans. As a fan you’re obviously there to listen to your artists music and support them, but there’s this amazing feeling that you get when your favorite artists release content from behind the scenes because it gives you a glimpse of their personality and allows you to feel more connected to them (because, in the end, don’t we all want to be best friends with our favorite artists?). To finish this, my point is that without fans, artists would be nowhere, because if you don’t have a loyal fan base to stream your music, buy your merch, and go to your concerts, then who will?