Knowing the listeners better, selecting the most passionate ones and obtaining the most economic benefit from them, this is the path that the music industry has traced in search of the superfan, the nickname with which the fan of an artist, willing to buy, is identified. all their albums, buy their t-shirts and attend as many concerts as possible. A figure as old as the fans who screamed at Elvis Presley concerts who now want to boost themselves to increase streaming listening and earn more money, up to $4 billion according to a Goldman Sachs study.
On this path are two brothers from Barcelona, ??Arnau and Homer Bosch, who next June will launch SoundStorming, a platform that will put artists in contact with their followers, opening the doors to the musical creation process and allowing them to contribute their opinions. making them participate in something as precious to a fan as the songs of their most beloved artists. The process ahead of the final result, following the sign of the times.
“Fans want a deeper relationship with artists and their communities,” explains Arnau Bosch, who for the last few years has been Apple’s global creative director for music. From his experience in tasks such as the relaunch of Apple Music, Bosch detected the difficulties so that the numbers of followers that artists have on social networks later become listeners of their songs. “The campaigns are done a month before the release of the song, you put in a lot of money but the hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers become thousands of plays on Spotify, and you don’t really know where the communities are that support you creatively and will spend the money on concert tickets.”
The solution they have found to identify this more proactive audience is to open the creative process. “In the rooms where we sat with the artists and talked about the release, I realized that demos, beats, melodies and small jam sessions were coming out, exclusive moments that if opened to fans create a channel that does not exist in the industry today in day”.
This is the objective of the Soundstorming platform, which has the support of the Universal record company, and which will be presented at the next Primavera Sound with nine artists who will complete the recording of as many songs in front of their fans. “Fans will enter a studio where artists will show how an unreleased track is created from scratch,” describes Homer Bosch, a marketing expert who has worked with brands like Monster Energy.
This project, which has an initial capital of half a million euros, has attracted the interest of John Maier, CEO of Bose, and investor Chris Bower, and has the support of the founder of Jon Kraft, founder of Pandora, the former director of Apple Steve Turner or the musician Dave Kushner. “Through Soundstorming, artists can share ideas, ask for opinions, and fans can vote for what they prefer with live audio channels where the artist explains what the process is like so that the fan can be part of this very closed ecosystem. ”. A process that will conclude with meetings with the artist in small communities and at high prices, “that is where the artist can really monetize it.”
Until we reach that point, the process will be free and takes advantage of practices that many artists already carry out through social networks. “If you involve fans for months in the release of a song, views triple or quadruple.” The objective is to capture a segment of the public, the superfan, who according to studies such as Luminate’s spend 80% more money on music than the average listener. These superfans make up 15% of the total population and act as musical prescribers, they want to be the first to discover new music, they go to concerts, buy merchandising and listen to more songs through social networks. According to Spotify data, 20% of an artist’s streams are generated by 2% of listeners.
For the artist, this new way of working involves opening his sanctum sanctorum, the place where music originates, in a striptease that not everyone is willing to accept. “When we spoke to some traditional artists, they told us that they did not want to open their process, but as the market evolves you realize that it is no longer about what they want, but what the audiences want, they are the ones.” that define how artists release their music,” says Arnau. In the case of younger audiences, “they want to get involved”, that is why the platform looks for artists who create in this process such as BB Trickz, the artist from Raval who counts Rosalía, Bizarrap or C. Tangana among her followers, so that they can share a content that they save on their mobile phones. “The musician does not have to think about the content for the platform, he already has it in his work tool,” says Homer to downplay the importance of the process. “We stay away from the artist’s private life,” adds Arnau, “there are no videos, only the profile photo, a very analog environment.”
In the medium term, Soundstorming’s objective is also to create a database to observe market trends. “In five or ten years we want to turn the concept around: the song is the least important thing, the interesting thing is being part of the process, feeling like a participant and having access to an exclusive space.”
