There is a growing disconnect between fan engagement and fan monetisation.  Facebook and YouTube took artist-fan engagement to the masses, but music spending is still falling.  Aficionados, the super fans that drive most revenue, are both being taken for granted and reducing their spend, trading down from multiple albums a month to            subscriptions.  A new generation of music products are needed, built around interactivity, multimedia and artist subscriptions. Products that will be radically different from their predecessors, and that will, crucially, be artist-specific, not store or service specific.  Rights’ owners will have to overcome some major licensing and commercial issues, but the stakes are high enough to warrant the effort.  At risk is the entire future of premium music products and of safe guarding the spending of the super fans, without which record music revenues will dwindle into insignificance.

Companies mentioned in this report: PledgeMusic, Kickstarter, Bandpage, Paetron, Disciple Media, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Wikipedia