The A, B, C's of Fan Demographics

As an exercise, take out a list of your fans (maybe an email list, or a facebook list, etc) and see if you can break your current fan base down into three basic categories: “A”, “B”, and “C” fans. This will also help you define your target demographics.

Your “A” fans are your musical evangelists. These are the people who tell everyone they know about your music, show up to your concerts early with groups of their friends, and buy everything you sell. 

Your “B” fans are people who love your music, but aren’t necessarily as loyal or committed as your “A” fans. They might come to most of your concerts in any given town, buy some of the things sell, and be fans on your social networking sites, but they don’t necessarily go around telling everyone about you. 

Your “C” fans are there only when convenient for them. They might listen to your music from time to time and come to your concerts with their friends who are “A” and “B” fans - and they might follow you online, and even occasionally buy something - but that’s about it. 

Do you have an idea of who might fit into each of these categories? Knowing who your “A”, “B”, and “C” fans are will help you figure out how best to approach your career and who to market to. For example, if you know that most of your “A” fans are college students (say, particularly female college students), this might be a good group (demographic) to target in your marketing efforts. Of course, you might have many different fans in different demographics, but the purpose of this exercise is to figure out who, in general, responds most strongly to what you do. When doing this exercise, remove any outliers (such as parents, boyfriends/girlfriends, etc.) and try to focus on people who are only fans of your music first. 

Next, given the information you have, identify your primary demographic. This is the demographic you’re going to put the most effort into reaching. For example, if your music gets the best response from American female college students, then you might consider targeting a primary demographic of educated females, ages 18-22. In this case, any concert opportunity that helps you reach that audience will take priority for you. In general, marketers love the younger demographics for music, because kids in high school/college usually have disposable income, so if this is the crowd that truly appeals to your music, great. If not, it’s more important to pursue YOUR audience than it is to pursue a popular audience.


If you have trouble with this idea, think of an artist you sound similar to and analyze his/her primary demographic – what age and background are most of the people who go to this artist’s concerts? What is their financial background? Religious background? If you do something that becomes popular, it is likely that people of all different ages and backgrounds are going to be attracted to your music eventually. But it has to start with a consistent primary demographic, and consistent marketing efforts.


One thing to think about is something I call the “Hometown” Principle – the idea that people like to support their own. An artist usually has the biggest following in his or her hometown, because there’s this sense that he/she is “one of us.” This works in many different respects. If you’re a Christian or Jewish artist, zeroing in on church or synagogue events might be a way to get in front of a crowd who will understand and respect what you’re doing, and do everything they can to help grow your career and share your music. If you’re in a fraternity or sorority, visiting that frat or sorority house in the different towns you play will probably earn you more loyalty in that community.