Superfan monetization has become a defining strategic conversation in the modern music business.
On Universal Music Group‘s most recent earnings call, Chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge outlined superfans as a key priority for UMG and noted the company’s focus on “fostering a deeper relationship between artists and fans”. He characterized the segment as “massively under-monetized.”
The company’s own D2C business has grown to 1,600 online stores, generating “hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue” according to Grainge. He argued that this represents only the beginning of what is achievable from music’s most engaged listeners, telling analysts that he’s “very bullish about superfans.”
The world’s largest music company continues to invest in superfan initiatives amid broader optimism for the superfan space in the wider market.
Goldman Sachs, in its Music in the Air report, put the addressable superfan opportunity at $4.3 billion annually based on 2026 projections.
According to Luminate‘s 2025 Year-End report, 20% of US music listeners now qualify as superfans.
A central question for the music industry, however, is how to convert casual fans on the other end of the funnel into paying superfans?
Thom Skarzynski, founder of New York-based music marketing firm Happiness. Marketing, argues that the casual listeners who have yet to make that journey to superfandom are one of the most underserved target audiences in the business.
“Everyone is focused on superserving superfans,” he says. “Premium fan clubs. Direct-to-consumer platforms. And that’s great – those fans reward you for it. But what about how those superfans got created in the first place?”
“If we create moments where people feel something real around the music – whether that’s in a record store, a fan meetup, or even a small surprise moment – fandom grows naturally.”
Thom Skarzynski
According to Skarzynski, the distance between a casual fan and a superfan is often just one “unexpected human moment” — and creating more of those moments is a significantly underleveraged opportunity.
“Music has never had a fan problem,” he says. “It has a connection problem. If we create moments where people feel something real around the music – whether that’s in a record store, a fan meetup, or even a small surprise moment – fandom grows naturally.”
Skarzynski’s background spans two decades across the full spectrum of the modern music business. After starting in radio promotion, he moved into product management at Fueled By Ramen and Epic Records, working on campaigns for Paramore and A Tribe Called Quest, before joining Spotify‘s artist marketing group.
He went on to run the sales department at Epic where he worked on Travis Scott‘s ASTROWORLD, before senior roles at Atlantic Music Group, where he helped develop what would become Happiness. Marketing’s core offering.
At his new company, Skarzynski says he’s increasingly focused on what happens before and after the sale — the human touchpoints that turn passive listeners into active, paying fans.
“Every superfan started as a casual listener,” he says. “If we design experiences that invite fans deeper into the culture of the music, those relationships grow naturally — and they spread.”
To illustrate the point of making those artist-fan connections, he tells us that during his time at Fueled By Ramen in the early 2010s, he and his team had a simple practice: anytime an artist was in the office, they’d ask them to call or FaceTime fans who had just placed a merch order — just to say thank you.
“It spreads like wildfire,” he recalls. “Those fans go and tell other fans about what just happened” — posting it on fan accounts, Reddit threads, fan sites — “and the next thing you know everybody is hoping their phone will ring. That’s a moment that creates a new superfan.”
Most recently, through Happiness. Marketing, Skarzynski has been partnering with e-commerce and merchandise company El Famoso to explore new ways artists can build deeper fan relationships through D2C platforms and merchandise ecosystems — part of what he calls the emerging “superfan creation” business.
Here, Skarzynski makes the case that superfandom isn’t something you discover — it’s something you intentionally build — and explains why, in an era of AI-powered platforms and premium subscription tiers, the most powerful tools available to an artist may still be a handwritten note or a phone call to a fan who just bought their record…
You mentioned you’d recently encountered people who had never been to a record store. What did that tell you about the opportunity you’re building around — and about this generation of music fans?
It told me the opportunity is even bigger than we think.
For a long time, the industry framed physical music as “nostalgia” — something older fans were clinging to. But I started meeting younger listeners who had never even stepped inside a record store.
“The next generation of physical music fans hasn’t even been created yet. They’re waiting to be invited into the culture.”
When they did, it wasn’t nostalgia at all. It was a discovery.
They weren’t returning to something they’d lost — they were experiencing something entirely new. Walking through bins, talking to staff, holding the music in their hands, even the smell of a record store. All of it eventizes the experience.
That’s when it clicked for me: the next generation of physical music fans hasn’t even been created yet. They’re waiting to be invited into the culture.
You say for younger fans, physical music feels like discovery rather than nostalgia. How does that shift the way you think about product and experience?
It changes everything.
If physical music is nostalgia, you design products that remind people of the past.
But if it’s discovery, then the product becomes a gateway experience.
“There are plenty of people who are fans of an artist. My job is often to make them fans of the artists’ latest album — and the way to do that is by bringing it to life.”
That means packaging that feels collectible, surprise inserts that reward curiosity, and experiences around the music that make fans feel like they’ve stepped into the artist’s world.
There are plenty of people who are fans of an artist. My job is often to make them fans of the artists’ latest album — and the way to do that is by bringing it to life.
We’re not selling plastic. We’re giving someone a reason to go deeper.
The whole industry is talking about serving and monetizing superfans right now. But you’re saying the bigger gap is actually creating new ones. Why does that side get overlooked?
Because creating superfans takes patience.
Monetizing superfans is easier to model.
The data is already there.
But creating them requires emotional thinking, not just analytics.
“Every superfan started as a casual listener.”
Every superfan started as a casual listener. Think about that.
Somewhere along the way, something happened — a moment, a memory, a connection — that made the music matter more.
The industry spends a lot of time optimizing the end of that journey, and that’s fair — that’s where their money lies at this very moment. I’m more interested in the beginning of the journey.
You talk about “one unexpected human moment” being the thing that tips someone over from casual fandom into superfandom. What’s the most powerful version of that you’ve seen play out?
The most powerful ones are always the simplest.
A handwritten post-it note inside a record. A store owner telling a fan why the album matters. An artist recording a quick thank-you video for a specific fan.
“Once fandom becomes personal, everything changes.”
Those moments feel small from the industry’s perspective, but for the fan they’re enormous. Suddenly the relationship feels personal.
While everybody is touting AI and what it’s going to do for the music industry, they’re forgetting that the thing AI can’t do is provide a human experience.
Once fandom becomes personal, everything changes.
If someone’s a casual fan today, what’s the first product, experience etc you put in front of them to start that journey toward becoming a superfan?
I want to give them something tangible that makes the music feel real.
My favorite items to have made are journals/zines/whatever you want to call them. I always encourage artists to engage by not just putting things like photos inside, but also handwritten lyrics and — believe it or not — just having doodles in there creates something that fans bask in; a piece of the artists’ subconscious mind turns into a piece of memorabilia for a fan.
The key is that the experience has to reward curiosity. If someone leans in even slightly, the artist should be ready to meet them there.
Phone calls, handwritten notes, surprise inserts — those are nice touches. How do you scale that without losing what makes it work?
You can’t scale a moment, but you can scale the philosophy that makes it possible.
If you try to automate authenticity it stops working.
But you can design systems that make human moments possible more often.
For example, fan ambassador programs, record store activations, community-led listening events.
Those allow thousands of fans to experience something personal, even though it started with a single idea.
This all makes sense for an artist with an existing fanbase. But what does it look like for a mid-tier or developing act who doesn’t have that built-in audience yet?
That is actually where this works best!
For developing artists, the goal isn’t scale — it’s depth.
If you can create a hundred real believers in ten different cities, you’ve built the foundation for something much bigger. Those early fans become ambassadors for the music.
The fan community speaks to each other. They like the human connection, too.
In any case, you’re not just building an audience — you’re working on building a community.
You’re making the case for physical, real-world moments. But for a generation that lives online, does the “human moment” have to be physical — or is there a digital version of it?
What I mean by that is the moment has to come from something authentic enough that people feel compelled to share it with each other. Digital is incredibly powerful for spreading that moment, but it rarely creates it on its own.
When a fan discovers something that feels meaningful — a listening party at a record store, a surprise insert inside a record, a handwritten note from an artist, a moment of connection with other fans — they bring that experience online. The internet becomes the amplifier.
“The most powerful campaigns create something human first and then let the digital ecosystem carry it outward.”
What we sometimes get backwards in the industry is trying to manufacture the moment inside the algorithm. Algorithms are incredible distribution systems, but they’re not great at creating emotional gravity on their own.
The most powerful campaigns create something human first and then let the digital ecosystem carry it outward.
So the answer is: the human moment can absolutely exist online — but the ones that last almost always originate from something that felt real enough for people to talk about.
You’ve said listening parties shouldn’t just check a box. What separates a great one from a forgettable one?
The difference is intention.
A forgettable listening party is just music playing in the background. A great one feels like a celebration. It feels thought-out. It feels artist-curated.
It involves an artist recording an intro for the listeners at the beginning of the album experience, and an outro for the end of the experience. Acknowledge that people are gathered to hear your new music.
The store could be decorated, the staff will be excited, the fans feel like they’re part of something.
Often I’ll reach out to local food trucks or restaurants and see if they’d be open to giving fans with a listening party wristband a discount.
We’ve invited local press out to these. We’ve invited radio. We’ve given radio stations wristbands that listeners can win and be a part of a separate, special listening party.
It becomes a moment instead of a promotion.
When we last spoke, you described indie stores as “community hubs and cultural validators.” How do you actually build a relationship with a store owner so they’re genuinely invested in a release, not just stocking it?
By treating them like partners instead of outlets. I’ve spoken to hundreds of stores over the past year, and the thing most have in common is they’re real, hardworking people who just want customers to be excited about music.
But really, record store owners are cultural curators. If they believe in a project, they’ll champion it to their customers.
That means communicating early and giving them tools to make the release feel special in their store.
Give them an artist-branded image that they can use to replace their current online profile photos.
Give them customized tools that they can post online.
Give them things that they can hang on their windows — not because they’re being paid to do so, but because they enhance the listening experience.
The relationships have to be genuine, and it’s difficult to do that at scale — but it’s possible.
They’re looking for a “human” moment, too; they live in human moments. So meet them where they are.
What’s your pitch to a label head or manager who looks at their streaming numbers and thinks things are working fine? Why should they be paying attention to what you’re doing?
Streaming measures awareness, but fandom is measured by behavior — showing up, collecting, participating.
The healthiest artist businesses have both.
Streaming introduces the music to the world, and fan culture turns that attention into something lasting.
Happiness. Marketing has always operated under the motto that “streaming is secondary” to us; the numbers that come in from SEA are just an added bonus to our campaigns.
To be honest — it’s because I don’t know how to get millions of people to stream an album dozens of times in a week. I don’t have that superpower.
Certain artists and genres simply don’t stream what others do; it’s something I’ve witnessed across some of the largest touring acts in the world.
If you believe that relying solely on streaming numbers is how to measure an artist, you’re way off.
You said when we last spoke that you wanted Happiness. Marketing to be known for long-term artist businesses, not just big first weeks. Talk me through what a campaign looks like after release week is over and where does the superfan work actually continue?
Release week is just the opening chapter.
That’s when the real superfan work begins — limited drops, capsule collections, holiday campaigns, touring announcements, fan events, new content tied to moments in the artist’s career.
The best campaigns shake things up every few months to keep the urgency, scarcity, and demand going strong. Some artists clearly do it much better than others.
The goal is to keep the story alive so fans have reasons to stay engaged long after the album arrives.
You talked about D2C becoming an “operating system for fandom.” What does that look like when it’s working properly?
When D2C works properly, the artist’s store isn’t just selling products.
It’s where fans discover new experiences, access exclusive items, and feel connected to the artist’s world.
Let’s face it — most artist stores aren’t a consistent online “destination” for people, but if you’re the type of artist who believes in keeping things interesting the store can become a hub for the fan relationship.
What’s the one thing you want a label exec or manager to take away from this?
Every superfan started as a casual listener.
If we design experiences that invite fans deeper into the culture of the music, those relationships grow naturally and they spread.
Once someone becomes a superfan, they bring others with them.Music Business Worldwide