Huh?
According to Luminate, entertainment data accumulator and analyzer, there were one trillion streams globally in three months this year. January to March. A trillion. A one followed by 12 zeros.
Super Fly Fan
Luminate definition of “super fan”:
“a music listener aged 13+ who engages with an artist and their content in multiple ways, from streaming to social media to purchasing physical music or merch items to attending live shows. More specifically, the super fans who were identified in the studies referenced in this report were participants that self-reported engaging with their favorite artists in 5+ ways.”
Seems that there is a lot of them in the U.S.: 15% of the general population 13 years old and above. Roughly 50 million.
How You Can Tell
A field guide to a probable super fan: “people who purchase CDs, cassettes, or vinyl, are more than 2x as likely (+128%) to be music super fans.”
Why Does This Matter?
“They also spend more than 80% more money on music each month than the average music listener.”
Physical Graffiti
Super fans like things that are more manifest than, say, NFTs (what has happened with them, by the way?).
Luminate describes them as “collectable-loving.”
As such, the vinyl boomlet, which, according to stats from the RIAA, has grown for 16 years running.
The RIAA found that in 2022 there were sales of $1.7-billion of physical musical media in the U.S., of which $1.2-billion was for vinyl. Which doesn’t leave a whole lot for CDs and the rest.
(“The rest?” you wonder. The RIAA includes music videos purchases, which accounted for $19.9 million, and “Other Physical”—CD singles, cassettes, vinyl singles, DVD audio, and SACD–that garnered $14 million.)
