How brand building freed Fred again.. from the song economy

How brand building freed Fred again.. from the song economy 

The ruthlessly competitive, track-focused music streaming landscape has pressured music marketers to focus on song campaigns above all else. Meanwhile, in part driven by these same dynamics, music consumption has become increasingly passive. To turn things around, music marketers must reframe music consumption itself. This means building artist brand success, which will lead to song success — not the other way around. 

British producer, singer and songwriter Fred again.., born Fred Gibson, exemplifies a successful artist brand campaign that built fandom and led to streaming success. Gibson is no music industry outsider: mentored by Brian Eno, he has co-written and produced hits for artists, like Clean Bandit and Ed Sheeran. However, it was circa 2019, when he began working on the first album of his now three-part Actual Life series, that Gibson began cultivating an artist brand focused around friendship and authenticity, which has helped drive his success today. 

Gibson titles each album with a timestamp, uses selfies as cover art, often samples voice notes from friends, and does not stick to the music industry’s standard Friday release schedule. All this gives his music the feel of reading a continuous stream of journal entries, and makes Gibson feel like a friend. His real-life and digital activities echo this sentiment: Gibson is known to host bike-ride listening parties for fans in London, and has an official Discord server where he has invited the most active members to host official listening parties of their own. On Instagram and TikTok, he frequently shares bits of his creation process and the stories behind the voices sampled in his songs. All this helped Gibson cultivate a core fanbase, whose fandom functions as an expression of their own, similar values. These fans have become evangelists, especially on TikTok, where fans share clips from his vibrant live shows. Streaming success followed, and Fred again.. now has 14 million monthly active Spotify listeners. 

This kind of brand building takes time and effort — perhaps more than creating a streaming hit. But the payoff is artist longevity and deeper fandom, all of which will result in streaming success anyway. These efforts also chip away at a larger goal for the entire industry: reframing music consumption as engaging with an artist’s story, not just passively playing their songs.