Super-Fans Will Pay – Most Artists Don't Know How to Ask

01 /The Concept

Sesh is a platform for building what it calls "next-generation fan communities for musicians."

Fans join by clicking a community link that the artist posts on their social media.

Inside the community, the artist can run exclusive listening sessions, answer fan questions, and share content that never makes it to their public feeds. Fans can also connect with each other – because they already have at least one thing in common.

Sesh integrates with popular music apps, so every time a fan listens to a track by their favorite artist, they automatically earn points in that artist's community. Points also accumulate through any activity inside the community, showing up as badges on member profiles. The most active fans land on a leaderboard.

Every member receives a digital fan card usable as a pass to in-person events – and almost certainly destined to become a payment instrument as well, letting fans spend their accumulated points at the point of sale.

Artists can use the platform as a direct-message broadcast tool – sending general or exclusive updates, links to online or in-person events, and anything else they'd rather keep inside the community.

A built-in analytics dashboard lets artists track the size and activity of their community, including what types of content generate the most engagement.

Sesh launched in 2023 and has 250 artists using the platform to host communities. That sounds like a small number – but small enough that the startup just closed a $7 million seed round. So what are investors betting on?

02 /Why It Matters

Sesh argues that music listeners fall into three categories:

- "Casual listeners" – people who happen to hear various artists now and then, without following anyone in particular

- "Fans" – people who genuinely like a specific artist and start following their content and social media

- "Superfans" – people who don't just listen but actively want to express and deepen their connection to the artist

Sesh's goal is to help artists convert fans into superfans.

Spotify's 2023 research touched on the same group – calling them "super listeners" – people who play the same artists on repeat.

Super listeners average just 2% of a given artist's monthly audience. But they generate around 18% of that artist's total streams.

And they exist at every level of fame, not just for superstars. For artists with fewer than 10,000 monthly streams, the top 1% of listeners generate 22% of streams. For artists with 1–5 million monthly streams, 2% of listeners generate 16%. For superstars with over 25 million monthly streams, the top 5% of listeners generate 30%.

Super listeners generate a disproportionate share of streaming revenue.

And not only revenue. Those same 2% account for more than half of all merch purchases.

The enthusiasm also lasts. Two-thirds of super listeners are still actively streaming the same albums six months after release – continuing to generate returns for the artist long after the launch cycle ends.

So Sesh's task isn't only to convert fans into superfans – it's also to extend how long they stay in that mode.

The scale here is meaningful: superfans make up an estimated 15% of the US population.

A recent study estimates that if superfans doubled their per-capita spending compared to casual fans, it would add $4.2 billion per year to the music market.

A share of that could flow as commissions to the platforms that power those superfan communities – platforms like Sesh. And that's the bet investors are making.

The category is already forming: Weverse, one of the established players, had fans downloading tracks 150 million times in 2024. Warner Music is planning to launch its own superfan platform. Korean label Kakao Entertainment launched its platform Berriz for the global market in March of this year. Even Spotify is reportedly considering a dedicated fan subscription tier with access to artist fan clubs.

With roughly 11 million artists on Spotify alone, this market has room for more than one platform.

03 /Opportunities

The most direct play is building superfan community platforms for musicians – following the model Sesh and its competitors are establishing.

Spotify's own research even points to which geographic markets have the highest concentrations of super listeners: Chile, Mexico, Canada, Hong Kong, the US, Argentina, Colombia, Japan, Poland, and the Philippines – in descending order.

Zooming out from streams to the music market as a whole: according to Universal Music's CFO, "superfans are 20–30% of the music-listening audience and generate over 70% of total music market revenue."

Those numbers are striking – but they're not unique to music. A 2016 book, "Super Consumers," argued that superfans and super-buyers exist in virtually every market. They make up roughly 10% of buyers in any given category but drive 30–70% of total category sales – because they buy more frequently and spend far more per transaction.

Which points to a broader conclusion: community platforms for super-buyers can be built for any market. Each vertical needs its own specific flavor – the kind of content, tools, and status signals that matter to an obsessive buyer in that particular category.

Start there. You're almost certainly a super-buyer in at least one category – the platform you'd want in that space, one that gave you better information, useful tools, and a way to signal your commitment to something you care about, is probably the one worth building