Building Real Fandom in the Age of Algorithms

Jakob Wredstrøm

Get laggy but I'll get perfect quality at the end. Think that's doable. Great. Well, Rob, I will start in five seconds if you don't have anything else. Great.

Rob Abelow

Good.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hey guys and welcome back to the podcast. Today I have Rob Abelow in the studio.

Rob Abelow

Hey, thanks for having me.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Rob, I think you and I wrote and talked together around one and a years ago because you are an extremely intelligent person that knows a lot about the music industry. And for the people who don't know you, Rob, who are you and what do you do?

Rob Abelow

Well, it's a great intro calling me intelligent. Now have to live up to that. I am currently leading product at OpenStage, which is a fan marketing and loyalty platform. Previous to this, and still I write for a newsletter called Where Music's Going. And before that, I worked for a few different startups and managed bands and ran a record label for about 15 years. So was in the trenches at first, and then got into the… technology side of things.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And for people who don't know Open Stage, what do you guys do?

Rob Abelow

So we're fan data and marketing platform who basically helps artists consolidate all of their data that's across streaming, social, ticketing, merch, et cetera, and put it into 360 fan profiles so you can understand who your fans are, how to reach them anywhere, how to personalize and reward and give them better experiences. And one of the big things we do on that is that we really try to help artists create better experiences for their fans. Not just directly, but across their entire ecosystem. So that's usually by giving early or discounted or exclusive access to their world.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Let's start at the fundamentals here, Rob. There's a lot of talk about sort of this scattered data or the need to consolidate data to use it. What is the, like, why do we have scattered data in music in the first place?

Rob Abelow

Yeah, it's a great question. Basically artists are typically working on rented platforms. So social media, ticketing, streaming, and for many of these, the business model is that they understand how massively valuable the fan data is, how massively valuable the relationship with the end user for them, the fan is, and so they control that and don't want to give maybe any of that data up to the artist, or if they do, it's a limited amount of that data. It's anonymized. So the artist is left maybe understanding some metrics of what's happening on that platform, but it's very difficult for them to either get that fans... contact info so they can interact with them directly or piece it together into a larger profile to understand what that fan is doing with them across their entire business. And so in many ways, you know, the artist is kind of like disintermediated away from their fan and it makes it difficult for them to get the compounding value of that relationship.

Jakob Wredstrøm

But doesn't this go for sort of all, let's call it, influencer type careers? Maybe that's the wrong word, but that's sort of the younger generation, what they're associated to. There's a person with a face, and there's people who's interested in that specific person, and there's something to sell. Does that count for all of these situations, or in music in particular, like in a weak spot?

Rob Abelow

No, I think it happens with many of them. I think in music... it's particularly challenging because you're across, your music is consumed on streaming platforms, you sell tickets through ticketing platforms, you need to use social media to kind of have some interactivity and discovery, and you're across all of these different things. And so you kind of like need, most people think of that as a funnel to some degree of like your discovery to your kind of consumption to your monetization, and those layers are very, very disconnected, where in any other kind of e-commerce or other business, you would understand how you're moving people through that funnel and have metrics that are representative of it. It's much easier to create a business based off that. You're kind of flying blind as an artist and artist teams because you have no idea that what you did in social, what impact it really had at streaming and consumption and what impact that had... and the end result may be on buying tickets or merch or whatever else it is you're interested in. So I think the fact that artists are kind of more spread out and need to utilize all these different areas exacerbates the problem.

Jakob Wredstrøm

We'll go nerdy today, but I also have sort of the conversation have some sort of a soft start. So could you explain the funnel also when it comes specifically to sort of the how scattered it is and what it means to not have one direct funnel? Maybe even explain what is a funnel for people who don't know digital marketing that much.

Rob Abelow

Yeah, maybe worth, you know, I have some opinions on that. The funnel as we think of it maybe doesn't make sense for artists and we should move away from it. But generally speaking, you would think of the funnel as you have, you know, awareness and people who are now becoming aware of you and from an artist's point of view, your music. Then they're getting interested and maybe they're following you on social media and maybe now they're streaming you. And then they become a, they're converted into a fan. And then maybe they become a super fan and an advocate. I don't think that model works perfectly.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Sure.

Rob Abelow

Perfectly for artists compared to how that works for like a regular D to C business or something. But that is the way that most people think of it. I would point out, mean, and this comes from my point of view and Open Stage's point of view, is that... We think that the way the music industry is now actually has many amazing benefits to it, the ecosystem. Everybody comes from this very negative place of what streaming and social has done. But actually it's created an incredible environment for artists. There's more artists who have a slice of the business than ever before. Many that are making over a million dollars, half a million dollars, or at least something than ever before. Create, distribute market. But it's kind of created a very fragile success that many are having. And part of it is that... Artists are using now this top-down model, which is historically always worked and then now kind of looks like, okay, I'm going to try to start at the top and then hope things trickle down like that funnel. So I'm going to create for the algorithm. I'm going to chase reach. And if I get, you know, that moment of virality or whatever it is, I'm going to hope that some of that trickles down into fandom. And what's challenging here is like, how does that work? It's like, well, I send them from one rented platform like so. Over to another rented platform like Spotify or Apple Music and I hope they stream a bunch and eventually they come back to me and they become a fan and it goes from there. And you don't really even know if somebody jumped over or not. Once they're there, you've kind of lost them. You sent them somewhere else where they're immediately being moved off into other artists to approximate you. Like the goal is not for them to go deeper with you.

Rob Abelow

So that's a really difficult model to make work. It's kind of like the attention marketplace model. So you're all competing over this little slice of attention over and over and over again. And that slice of attention that you might get when you break through is just not really like that reliable or that valuable. And you kind of have to compete all over again. For that slice of attention tomorrow, right? So it's not like, I have all these fans here and I can reach them reliably. It's like, no, like my piece of content that I put out tomorrow basically has to repeat within the algorithm again or next month when I put out another song. And our belief is that breaking through and sustaining today, you have to have a really lean in fan base who cares about you, stays with you, talks about you and actually kind of like you grow from there.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Rob Abelow

So we advocate for more of an inside out model. Which is if you super serve your core fans and you really focus on whatever you want to look at that. You can think of it as the mental model of like, is my top 50 fans. I care so much about them and I'm gonna super serve them and I'm gonna give them what I think they're gonna love and I'm gonna give them a great experience. Think this one is gonna incentivize you to create a more idealized version of your world and who you are as an artist. A really good example of this is Chapel Rome.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Rob Abelow

Manager and I would say we do everything we do focused on our top 50 fans and what's going to please them. And when she made that shift from being on a major to doing things this way, it was when she started creating this amazing world that she had, right? And started resonating. So if you do that and you super serve those core fans and you kind of let it radiate outwards from there, that is going to end up creating a top of funnel for you that is way, way stickier when People do finally swipe and see your thing and your world because they see, there's something real happening here and this is something I want to join. So the way we look at that is you have to actually build a world and focus on the place that you own that matters.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Rob Abelow

You need to do everything you can to bring people into that. So like, yes, that's fan data and syncing things, but it's every single time you have an opportunity, a new song, new tour, new merch, you're making sure you're bringing people into your world, not just pushing them out to something else you don't own. And then every time you have something new to release, et cetera, you go to your fans first. And in some way that is first, better, more interesting, more exclusive, makes them feel recognized and rewarded, and then give away for everybody else to come into that. And if you can do that as a repeated model... we see artists having a lot more success and growing. It's hard to look at that as like a funnel. It's much more of a flywheel, but we find that it's far more effective.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I think flywheel makes a whole lot of sense. Practically, let's say you're a Nazis that have had a career but have not really taken the opportunity to know who their fans are from a data standpoint and they want to work with you, for example. What does it mean to consolidate data and how do you practically go about figuring out who their fans are?

Rob Abelow

Yeah, I mean, it's funny with some artists like Foreigner, for instance, who's a band who's been around for a long time, right, and doesn't feel like they know. It starts from like, you know, of physical pieces of paper that were fan sign-ups and bringing them into the system and getting started, right? And then it's saying, okay, what are the places we can connect into that we have integrations with or fan syncs with that we can start bringing in fan information from bands in town or ticketing partners? And how can we bring that and we can understand, okay, these emails match or these names and phone numbers match, we can consolidate this. What kind of campaigns can we start running? Online to try to get more people to want to buy into this world. So, I mean, something that's crazy, like, you know, let's take Radiohead, for example, right? So like we, you know, we did a big campaign with Radiohead last year and they're on open stage for their first tour dates in nine years, right? And they did European dates and the only way to get tickets to the dates was you had to register with the band. And give some information and we validate if you're a real person and then they had an algorithm that they created with OpenStage to decide who should get access to tickets. This is a band that's been around for many years and you're tripling your known fans in one or two days by running a campaign, by making everyone come through what we say your front door for something significant. So really for us, it comes out of that mentality if you say, like you have to be here. You have to have a relationship with me. If you want to get the first or the best or the most direct version of something, that really starts helping fans come into your world. And then you do that over and over and over again and try to make sure you're integrated into all your systems and we start piecing the puzzle together.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, because as you said, the incumbent platforms, their model has been to gatekeep this data. So there's not really a world where you effectively can, whatever success you've had with digital marketing, any sort of marketing before can translate that into something you can own and reuse. So it seems to be these sort of manual new initiatives really that makes it able to do this.

Rob Abelow

Yeah, think so. Listen, it's going to take some amount of... Every release we have, we take this fan first, then outwards model is going to start bringing people in here. You we look at it, you're gonna do a pre-save campaign, you come through this system, we're gonna make sure we get your information that way. We're seeing a lot of movement with ticketing providers. You know, it's on a case by case. There's no one blanket thing, at least with like the bigger partners and promoters, but we're seeing a lot more approvals than we were a year ago or two years ago for sure on saying, hey, listen, we're gonna give you definitely your registration data, but like we're getting a lot more purchaser data now. And I think we're moving... moving to a place where people want to start opening up because the way we look at it is that everyone wins. It's not the artist is winning over business that the platform would have had. It's that ... The artist is the only stakeholder in the situation who is uniquely situated to be able to bring in all of their partners and say, here's your slice or your view of the data in getting us to our goal. So we look at it from the view of for touring, the artist is the only person if we know everyone who's registered and ever gone to a show and all the actions they've ever taken with the band, you're the only ones who can really share that HQ with. Their agent, their ticketing provider, their publicist, their marketing team, their label in the appropriate ways. And by doing that, we've gotten a lot more buy-in from people.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. This is a general question, like, know, digital marketing and the worth of data, you know, it's been pretty well known, the worth of data, like let's say the last 15, 20 years. And, but the music industry seems to really just be catching up now. Like have, have we been sleeping on this for too long? Like what's, what is the status of the music industry and its relationship to data in general?

Rob Abelow

Yeah, for fan data in particular, I think we've been sleeping because everybody was just so happy with the benefits you could get from where Discovery happened that there was no focus on, need to have this relationship. And it's become very obvious in the last few years as I think a big reason being is that social really changed from being a place that like you interact with your group of fans, even if you only reached a certain percentage to now it's basically just like broadcast. Content creator broadcast TV and community kind of happens somewhere else. And it's really, really dawned on people how much you need this. I'm seeing most of the big organizations scramble to some semblance of a data or fan data strategy. Even the biggest companies, I feel like, often not really articulate exactly what that is, except for the fact that they know that they need one and they don't have something yet. So I think in some ways it's a good thing though, because I think people have really shifted in understanding this is incredibly important. We need to understand how we get this data, how we make sense of it, and how we can kind of, how can we make sure we're compliant. And then how can we actually make use of it? Because the number one way people relate, listen, you know, the most important point is that I know your email or your phone number and I can reach you. A lot of people say I want fan data beyond that but then don't know how to put it into practice and I think now it's that next stage. Okay, if we know much more about these fans, how can you create a better experience for those fans?

Jakob Wredstrøm

You know, I think most people understand the concept of phone numbers and emails, but I'm sure that data on a specific fan would be much more than that. Could you break a bit down, like, what is actually a data on a fan? Let's say if I was a fan of a band and you had gathered, you know, a lot of data points around me, what would be those data points in general?

Rob Abelow

Yeah, I obviously there's demographic information. The thing that we find really interesting is just like, what's your history and kind of your nostalgia almost with this artist? So what is every single interaction you'd have with them on? What do you click on? What do you read? Where is your sentiment on things? What have you purchased? What shows have you gone to? And kind of piecing all of those things together, you can understand who are really your biggest fans, what are their biggest interests, where is their demand that we're not tapping into in a real way, who are the fans that should be hearing from me three times a week, but here are the fans that should hearing from me every six months when I have a major event that exists. And for us, and a big part of what we're working on now is... Aside from how does the artist make sense of this data and decide how they want to use it, it's how can they potentially make that visible to the fan in their progression and their relationship with the artist. Because it's very, very important for fans to feel like they're part of a thing, they're being recognized, with the right types of artists at least. So how can you kind of signal this information back to fans to show what their progress is with you as one?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. So to some degree, like they see the fan and maybe not directly, they know specifically who they are, but they recognize the pattern of consumption and presence they've had. And that sort of reflects in what's available to them. But is that dependent on like having a consistent... Sorry, go for it.

Rob Abelow

For us, generally speaking can see the fan. Something we're still, know, with Lewis Capaldi, how long was it ago? A year ago or so. I mean, for him, he would go through and say, who are my biggest fans are the ones who've been the most engaged this week and I'm gonna literally give them a phone call if they've opted into that right now to talk to them. You know, and he was doing that for a week into his album release, right? So like, there is the, I'm gonna use this to understand who the fans who want me to do this, who are the ones who've been most lean in and how can I kind of show them I care, give them this amazing experience that they're gonna share with everybody else based on all of that data.

Jakob Wredstrøm

But I guess that doesn't necessarily come from a monetary reason from some of these biggest artists. It's not because they're going to make more money because they call a fan. What is the motivation from them in general to be more engaging?

Rob Abelow

Yeah, we don't even, I mean, listen, you can obviously, you're using your CRMs and things like that in many ways to make more money. I think one of the big negatives I've seen from the focus on super fans in the last few years is that it's been so focused around money or monetizing those people. And yes, like there should be more monetization in that there should be more opportunities to give those fans value that they want to purchase. Absolutely. But our focus is not... hey, you should figure out who are the top fans, you should monetize and gouge them to death. We look at it always like, how do we grow the value of the artist-fan relationship? We view it, and if you go back to the inside-out model, it's we think this is the best way for an artist to grow. So if you have to constantly be nurturing and delivering value to the fans who are closest to you, if you wanna keep this thing growing, and some artists feel that way, some artists don't operate as much in that sense, But I think it's a really good framework to use.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Could you, this is sort of left the Senate question, but I do think it's relevant. Could you comment about the differences between, let's say, the Western approach and thinking fandom as you're describing now and K-pop, for example. Like K-pop has been, let's say, the leading experts last 15 years of fan engagement. How do you differ from that sort of consumption culture?

Rob Abelow

Yeah, yeah. The benefit of the kind of K-pop or like Eastern culture is that there's an approach towards like fandom or belonging there that is like, they're kind of willing to be part of the game, right? Where like, and like...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Rob Abelow

You know, the gamification of, you we want you to help us get to number one by doing all these things. And there's very much of like, you wear that on your sleeve and work together to like help make your favorite thing better than the other, you know, number two artists. I advise for a company called Station Head who... does social streaming and like there's some element of that baked in right where it's like in each station. There's a goal that you're trying to hit in total streams and all the fans are in there like trying to stream and get to that goal. In the Western space, especially if you get into like indie alternative types of artists, mentioned one with Radiohead, you know, there's not as much of that approach. People don't want to feel like they're being gamed or told to do something, right? But they do want to feel like they're being seen. And they're being rewarded and they're getting an experience that's different from somebody else. So, you know, I've been a fan for 10, 15 years. Like, why am I being sold the exact same thing? Why don't you know anything about me to give me something that I'm more interested in? Why don't I ever get to the front of the line, especially if it's me versus, you know, bots and scalpers trying to get tickets? How can there be some sort of representation of the fact that I have a history with you? You make that meaningful.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. Is, you know, this might be stated harsh and I just can't find a better angle to it. But do you think that Western fans in general come more from an angle of entitlement or like wanting to be privileged above anyone else where maybe the East is much more about? The artist or the game or the brand or the world to some degree belonging to something rather than you deserve something. Maybe that's putting a bit on the edge.

Rob Abelow

No, I just don't know if I would know enough to necessarily say that, to go out and say it. It's an interesting hypothesis to go out and research a bit more. I think there's a little bit more of just like the individualistic. Sense where it's just like I want to fight the crowd a little bit to some degree. I mean I think we are seeing some of the influence happen though I think more with the pop stars here in the US you are seeing more of that K-pop element like there's real competition between like you know Sabrina fans and you know Olivia fans and things like that it feels like newer to me than it was previously.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

One question I wanted to ask, but we sort of went away from that, but I do want to ask it again. When it comes to understanding who the fan is and when comes to their track record, is it as basic as, you know, they just need a common email from all these interactions or are there more advanced things in play that can sort of locate a person across different profiles, emails, phone numbers? Like, how does that process actually go down?

Rob Abelow

Yeah, mean, email is usually our core element. Sometimes we're without it and we need to utilize SMS or like a main social profile, but we use email as our main identifier. There's all sorts of things we try to do to like de-duplicate fans so that you don't have them across multiple emails or multiple profiles and things like that. I say one of the most important things we do coming in is just validating that this is an actual person. Because the bot problem is a really big problem and becoming a much, much bigger one as time goes on here, especially when you are an artist of any real size and you're giving out any opportunities. So a really big part of what we do is kind of validate that this person has an actual identity. So... There's different two-factor authentications things we're doing there. There's a lot of like anti-scripting tool stuff we're doing there. And then we're really look, the more fan behavior we have, where we can see what you're doing with the artist directly. We can see what you're doing at a streaming platform. We could see what you're doing in their merch store. We start to get a sense of... Is this person real? Is this person not? And then you also try to get a sense of what type of fan is this? Is this somebody who bought two tickets for their daughter because they're really, like they love that artist and then they're only gonna come back maybe next time there's a tour if at all? Or is this someone who maybe doesn't have a lot of money to spend on things but they're a massive advocate and they're gonna talk about you constantly on social media and trying to make sense of that information.

Jakob Wredstrøm

It's interesting, I can really imagine the butt thing. I'm fairly technical, obviously since Cloud Code came out, I've been doing a lot of late nights and stuff, and I've been building this hobby project, which is a running app I run quite a lot that I'm releasing soon. I was doing some QA and there was a messaging service I have in the app. And instead of like actually go do it myself, I just set up like two clock codes and say, can't you just interact with each other? So just wrote each other all night. Created their own users, made their own connections, invited themselves and then did the QA by chatting back and forth and trying sort of things. And for me, like, okay, we've come into the world now where I as a human can just set some computers to start interacting, like people to find all the mistakes. So I can imagine like if, if like, know, low technical people can do that if you have people at scale that wants to do fraud, like botting is getting quite easy to set up, guess. And what is even the purpose of botting in this instance?

Rob Abelow

it's-

Rob Abelow

The main reason we see for us is that there's going to be access given to tickets that are scarce. They could be resold. So now we see random bot attacks on artists that is not a thing. And we find that it's just like randomly they're finding a place where you can sign up to something that maybe doesn't have 2FA on it. They just attack it and try to get a bunch of emails. It becomes a problem when you're just maybe you're gonna like catching a stray essentially as an artist. But if the platform you're working with isn't doing a good job to understand that these are bots and the platform in many ways can incentivize to have more fans sign up, right? You know, they may charge more money or if you start messaging these people, they're going to charge you money for it. For us, it's really important for you to understand like what are the actual metrics of your fandom and how you're progressing and what's important. And then of course, higher spending. So eliminating those kind of suspect accounts from your database is incredibly important. But yeah, it's becoming easier and easier and it feels like an arms race.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Rob Abelow

We have a new API that's more open that we're launching, but that brings in so many more questions into how bots can get into people's databases. So it's just been a massive project for us to make sure there's defense on it.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, and back to the coding, like the amount of time I've needed to spend on just like making things secure is, sorry.

Rob Abelow

I lost your audio for a second there.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I'm back. Yeah, we'll just edit that out. Talking about security, again, back to the app I'm coding, the amount of time and energy I've spent on just setting up the security around this, rate limiting and protecting the APIs and all that kind of stuff is crazy because this is becoming a huge thing. Okay. One question I have, which is often hard to really answer is, in general, it seems like the music industry is selling something that is subpar monetization value than many other industries. How do we actually make good money from music? What's your take on that?

Rob Abelow

Yeah, mean, it's the consumption layer is priced, but not at much and you need massive scale and you need, even if you get it for most artists, it takes a long time for it to really roll in. To me, it's a challenge because you could say, you know, we're going to sell records and we're going to sell merch. The issue is those are like episodic, you know, things, but I think, you know, I am amazed at how many artists are not. Effectively selling physical records or physical merch to their fans. So like there is still a big gap there. You know, we're playing with things like paid memberships and you know, it remains to be seen just how successful it could be. I think it could be very challenging, especially for larger artists. To say, want to charge my fans what amounts and feels like patronage. And then I also think it could be very difficult to say, hey, you need to go manage all the work that you have to do, which is, there's already way too much work for an artist and their team to do. And now you also have to have this separate paid fan club or something that you do. So the way that we try to bring paid memberships in is just as a layer on top of the way you're already talking to all of your fans. We have a bunch of things launching soon on that, but I'd say that those are still very much experiments for us. I think the access model though is really interesting. We have a record coming out, there's a pre-order. Some early access to all these things in that campaign. There's the tour, there's upgrades and early access to that. Are there different monetization levels? What we're really hoping though is by having artists be in control of all of their fan data and all of those relationships that there's net new revenue streams that have really never been accessible to the artist before. Especially once you have a network...

Rob Abelow

of artists and fans in one location. Can we create marketplaces for brand and sponsor deals at scale based on the fact that you know all these things about your fans and you find the right way to incorporate that into your world? You sell a ticket to something. You know which fans are traveling now because of all the data that we have. From Philadelphia to Austin, Texas, you have a thousand people that are making that trek. You're creating so much additional revenue as an artist in these economies around you that you're taking nothing from or have no way of taking a chunk. Is there a way to bring that revenue into the artist team so that they can see a share of it and the fans get a better experience as well? So that's big picture for us. It's like how do we create that world for artists and fans? Because that's to me is like a true pie growing thing rather than, let's move things around a little bit.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. Could you try to comment on the concept of premium to some degree? Like again, let's say someone sells a tour, right? They go play 30 shows and they make a revenue associated to that. That does not necessarily mean that it's a profitable tour or that's just for seeing money. But then you can have... You can have products and services that doesn't necessarily have an infrastructure cost associated to it, and that's something that could pocket a lot more. How do you guys think about premium experiences or premium things you sell that doesn't have these very expensive infrastructure size to it?

Rob Abelow

I mean, as long as it has real value attached to it, I think that the challenge could be how do you scale it? So touring is a good one though. I mean, it's like, is there actual VIP that you're offering? The thing I always found fascinating was like, when you do pre-order campaigns, Back when Pledge Music was a thing, I don't know you're familiar with Pledge, but it was like, what is the highest value thing a fan is gonna have in buying the pre-order? Was typically something that had zero cost except for maybe the artist putting some time effort in. So like a signed lyric sheet or some physical item from the tour, it's like found value that you could deliver to the artist, to the fan. The question is how can you do that at scale? Premium VIP things along tour are really interesting. Think how can you have early access with the artist involved on all of the things that come out and are people willing to spend to be part of a paid club to join that.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. So explain to me how the VIP economy works because, you know, course, promoter deals and torn deals are all very different, but generally speaking, someone pays for the shows and they need to make some money. And then an assist has a split of that in some sort of mathematical format that can be very different. But how does Freeman usually work? Is that usually in the favor of the assist or what's the dynamic there?

Rob Abelow

I think it's, and I'm no expert on this, it definitely depends who the promoters are, right? And often that will be part of what they have in their packages, right? So like it's gonna be owned by Live Nation and Live Nation is kind of like VIP premium company they own, which I'm blanking on the name of right now. Also very often artists do deals with like VIP or premium... touring companies who like set up the whole VIP and travel package as the add-on and that just has to be worked out with the promoters. Think ideally if the more that artists can be owning that and doing that directly like there's an incredible amount of value there. It's just always, know, I'm the promoter. I'm putting up 10 million dollars for this tour. How are we gonna make this happen? The more you can you can do those deals before the ink is dry.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Rob Abelow

to put in your favor the better. But we really, found with a lot of the scalping stuff, because we've done some of these tours that have ...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah. That makes sense.

Rob Abelow

We're gonna have crazy demand, not enough supply. And what's gonna end up happening is the artist doesn't wanna feel like they're fleecing their fans, right? And they know I'm gonna put this ticket up for $100, and the first people there are gonna be bots and scalpers, and then there's gonna be a secondary market where it goes for 500 to 1,000 bucks. And that means for 400 to $900 in every ticket that if fans were willing to pay all this money that is being put into the system isn't even going into the music. Industry. It's being taken away by people completely outside of it. How do we find a way to like at the very least like if we don't capture it at least it's like being held in their pockets and can be spent somewhere else right so they're not being screwed over but is there a way if we can control this access system where now we can understand okay there is this on you know unspent demand can we have premium you know obviously Live Nation is doing dynamic Pricing which in some ways gets a bad rap Understandably because it's a bad fan experience, but it's trying to solve this problem, right? Saying like there is this extra demand out there. How do we make sure it gets in the pocket of the artist and their teams? It's much more of like there's a fair price, but then how can we tier our ticketing or experiences the people to find the You know one to ten percent that are going to be willing to spend on that

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

That's really interesting. But how do you create this sort of equitable opportunity for fans that are die-hard fans but maybe don't have deep pockets? Like, what is the solution for that?

Rob Abelow

Yeah, I think for us, like what we've tried to do is say, ultimately the artists are the ones who decide like who's gonna get to the front of the line. We've seen overwhelmingly though, at least the artists have used the open stage, that it has not been who is willing to pay the most to go to the front of the line. It's like who is a real fan. Let's make sure, first we kind of cordon off this like you're most likely not a bot. Scalper. And then it's like, we're either going to do a lottery to these people, or we're going to use some kind of algorithms, or maybe it's like, you've been here the longest and they'll put you in front. And really they're weighing just who you've been in this fan base more so than you spent or you can spend a ton of money. And I think in most cases, like by default it almost does prioritize those people. Because if you have, person who's willing to spend an incredible amount of money because they just can after it's on the secondary market to go see some of these artists are generally not the ones who are gonna be like, you know, creating an account with the artist and doing all this interactivity. And so by, by putting like the first in line for 90 % of the tickets, the people who've been with you and, and been active, you are going to prioritize kind of that true fandom. But there is definitely opportunity to understand, know, who are the fans who would like to spend more money on a bigger package of some sort? And how could you build that for them?

Jakob Wredstrøm

That's really interesting. But what's... What do you believe is the biggest problem with fandom that you would like to see and solve at scale?

Rob Abelow

Interesting. Yeah. The biggest problem is basically that you're getting these kind of... How do I say this politically? I think a lot of the super fan fandom products that I even see getting as a fan feel very insincere and are very obviously coming through a third party... and just trying to milk me for money. To me, I think we need to set up situations that help, instead of just trying to monetize fandom, help try to create more fandom and super fandom. And so basically, we just need more places where there's that incentivizes high intent interactions between artist and fan. Or fan and fan. So it's like, how can we create more apps, more platforms, more universes? So that could be anything from the artist world in and of itself, or the artist, or just fan to fan communities where you want to go deeper, you want to go deeper with other people. And that's the incentive is there for that, regardless of, I'm gonna make 100 bucks off you.

Jakob Wredstrøm

So to paraphrase that, it's actually having almost a pure intent of this deeper engagement rather than I need to make some more money, which might be very true and real and justifiable statement. But like where it comes from, it's tangible to feel that difference, I guess.

Rob Abelow

It's to, mean, people see like. See through things so quickly, right? And if the second something's inauthentic, that's kind of one of the issues with this. Hey, do this with your super fans. And it's like, well, you've worked so hard to make these people your super fans, and that is such a special thing, and they're so important to you and your business continuing and continuing forever. And the second you turn off a critical mass of those people, it could be lights out for you. So the idea that I'm just gonna go to these people through any third party and try to milk them, I think is, is it's not even just, don't think someone should make money. They absolutely should. I just think it's bad strategy, right? Whereas if you go with, I'm going to give and give and give and give to you, you're going to get so much more out of it. I you could look at it as it's greedy, right? You could, you could look at this actually as, know, my belief is the better experience you deliver is the longer they'll stay, the more they'll buy, the more other fans will bring it.

Jakob Wredstrøm

me.

Rob Abelow

Right? And so, you really need to spend your time focusing on that. And like, sure, you're gonna sell the things. Ultimately what ends up becoming most of the direct-to-fan strategy for people is like, okay, I'm gonna get all these people on my email list, and then six months later when I have something to sell them... I'll tell everybody else on social media first that I have this new thing and show them the behind the scenes, do all this, but the people on my email list, they're gonna get the full price, go buy the thing. It's almost like they treat the fan worse than the new potential fan, which is a very backwards approach.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm, you already covered it now, but if you were to make it even more simple and talk about sort of brand loyalty 101 when it comes to approaching the fan-assist relationship and I'm gonna say it the money cessation in between What would be a good strategy a good way to think about it?

Rob Abelow

So kind of what is the loyalty 101?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, the brand loyalty one-on-one from an artist to a fan or someone who wants to build that brand and that ownership of that fan base.

Rob Abelow

Yeah, I mean, think it's one way I say build your world, which really means you really have to understand what your identity is, right? And who you are, what you are about, what you are for, what you are not for. And then unapologetically, always be speaking that out consistently. And always be prioritizing the people closest to you, first and foremost. And everything will follow from there. And from a strategy piece on how do I consistently make this happen. It's just, we always say, how do I make sure everybody comes through my front door? So if you want the first listen, first crack at tickets, the exclusive access, the discounted code You know the direct experience. It's like you better come through my front door And while that creates some might feel like it's creating some extra friction ultimately like you are selecting for more high-intent people and bringing them into a world with you and others instead of Setting them off so like if you just use that one kind of central thing over and over and over again That is how you can use this to compound

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm, I guess that's you know, the music industry has been Famously really only working with things that compounds if that's IP or streams or whatever but this is one of the Few ways of something that can be recurrent that actually has monetary potential like you can streaming. Yes, really at big scale, but you know Sometimes it feels like that's sort of more lock-based or sort of trend-based than actual relationships and what people... Yeah. And that sort of part of music is dying out if not already dead. Like it's really hard or impossible to make a strategy based on something being exposed.

Rob Abelow

So I think that's the great point, right? So I think, you know, I'm not as big of a believer that you know, that viral article recently, like that streaming is streaming platforms are dead, right? Like I don't, is doing quite well, right? And they could change tomorrow, but they're doing quite well and they serve.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Rob Abelow

Need I think what you just pointed out the strategy has changed so much because you know things are so much the algorithm is the gatekeeper now more than anything so these strategies you try to come up with. You know, it's it for editorial play listing just doesn't matter as much, like the way you nurture on social media doesn't matter as much. Mean, these things are, if you over-index on trying to directly control for them, it just feels like you really have no strategy. And in fact, I think if you want to actually cultivate these things, focus on the things that you can compound and grow. And make sure you're have reliable, consistent impact. And when something does spike, just, okay, great, make sure you're taking more of that new growth and visibility into your world. But I do think you can actually reliably create attention through your fans. Like, know, Fredigan is obviously like the maybe overused example of like a lot of this approach, but it's a really healthy one, and it's... you know, if I want to have like an influencer strategy, it's not that I'm gonna go out and get like these big influencers to pay to talk about Freddie again, it's that I'm gonna create an amazing experience for 30 people or for 300 people. I'm gonna, at this LA Coliseum show, I'm gonna find 100 people that came to my first LA show and I'm gonna bring them there and I'm gonna play them new songs and hand out tea and they're all gonna have their phones and we're gonna have our video and we're gonna put that out and that's gonna, maybe it goes viral or even just gets some attention, but I call it fan-led growth, and it's so much more reliable. Every impression that it gets has so much more impact than the kind of empty virality that you're chasing in some other ways. And so you can kind of take that. I feel like a lot of the campaigns of late have been similar. So All American Rejects came back after however long they were away. And the way they came back was by putting up the fans that they were going to play, pop up

Rob Abelow

College parties at people's towns and you to put your phone number in and the day of the show they would text everyone in the town they were in like this is where we're gonna go play a house party and then everyone would go and share all the viral like the footage and their phones and like they went they got the attention not by a strategy from a team being like what's our press strategy and like what influencers are we going after and what playlist are we going after it was just like How do we over deliver for people in a way that can create visible fandom? And that, and everyone's talking about it. It feels real and it feels cool. And those things are not like eminently repeatable, but I think they're like, they're really good like symbols of that. You go, if you go, you kind of super serve. And also the idea of like, if you super serve, it's not about like monetizing that person. It's about like, this is gonna be the best engine of your growth if you do this in a very real and cool way.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I haven't had the experience in labels the way that you've had, but I've dabbled in many different sorts of music companies, being publishing or labels or management and different company structures. There's one thing I regret so badly when I moved to Norway six years ago, I helped a small local group set up a label and a music company and we ended up becoming like the largest in the region of Norway, this area. We spend three years trying to chase a hit, if that makes sense, like, you know, radio streaming. And I think released 130 songs and that was like the pursuit. We did we did get a lot of radio plays like maybe we got like maybe 25 songs on radio. So like To some degree we succeeded in that but nothing has come from that but then on the flip side We were also doing a big bit of booking and we had these like new young asses that could sell out like 400 cap capacity venues We have an asses on a roster that sold out a 1200 capacity show, but we never really thought about that as the pursuit We were like, for those 130 releases, we're like, let's get that radio hit. And we ended up closing the company. I'm like, okay, we didn't succeed. And then like me, like that's three years past now. Like freaking hell, like that we had it, we had it. We were just like, we were just so blind to what we were pursuing, which was this. Top of funnel, like we had actually young seven 16 year olds selling 400 capacity venue shows and selling out. Like why, why did we focus so weirdly? But I think.

Rob Abelow

Something about the numbers and the scale has, you know...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Rob Abelow

Really kind of blinded us to things because when you're so used to seeing this as a hundred million, you know, views or impressions or anything that isn't in the like, you know, many zeros after it starts feeling inconsequential. But the reality is like a 400 people care enough about you to come to a show. It's worth so much more than, you know, these other numbers that can be there. And also so many of these numbers are like driven by things that are like passive anyway. And so like how real, how sustainable are they? Are they? Listen, the reality is need both to some degree, right? Or some mix. Every artist is different. One of the kind of like core, like initial artists on Open Stage, like to really prove out so much of the model, was an artist called Only the Poets. And they're now on a major, and the result has been incredible because they just put out their debut record, which was top 10 in the UK. And the entire approach was they had these like really dedicated fans in a few cities, and they ended up going on tour with Louis Tomlinson and they did so much work to make sure every fan who was at those shows signed up with them and told them if they would come back to come see them again and where they lived and where. And they took all of that data to go book more. Their own solo shows, and continued hitting those fans up, getting them to buy and come in and buy in. And they've just interacted so much with these fans. It's constant, how much they're segmenting and talking to everybody and giving value back to them and doing pop-ups. It's been incredible, and they've of rode that from five markets where 200 people cared into worldwide having a fan base, and more so in Europe than anywhere else, but in a top 10 record almost entirely based on fan engagement being the core thing. And not every artist is gonna take that exact same approach, they were, the manager is really smart young guy, Sam Jackson, and he just had that, and the band, very much they're like, this is the signal.

Rob Abelow

For us, right? It's like these people I could see at the show who care and love it and want to come back, it's like that's what we need to create more of and they're the people to help us create more of it. We're gonna put out songs, we're gonna do all those things, all the normal things, but this is where we should be focusing.

Jakob Wredstrøm

This might be a bit sort of wrong to make that statement, but if I were to look back to sort of my childhood or youth, my association with the Nazis, especially if they're large, is they're iconic. But now it sounds more like the icon status is less so how artists must and usually do sort of show themselves to the world. Could you comment a bit on that?

Rob Abelow

I think that's a generally true statement. I think every artist is a little different, right? And every artist has to go about how they're engaging with fans differently. I think doing more with your fans doesn't always have to mean like letting them into everything. And it also can be your team doing a lot of things. But I think what you're pointing to is true. I think it's... The ability for an artist to be very mysterious and to go away for two, three years without doing anything between releases is much more possible for the artist who've previously established stardom than it is for somebody new who's on their way up and needs to get that traction. And I think it's kind of like in the examples of the artist who've... kind of exploded over the last few years or five years, right? I think the counter to that is what's so challenging for artists is they feel like they have to constantly be delivering content. And what I would think is, yeah, maybe there's a little bit more of Always On, but you should be thinking more I'm creating for my fans than creating for the algorithm. And if you can kind of change the incentive a bit. I think you don't have to be quite as frequent with posting and putting things up as long as you just kind of are in conversation more consistently. I think it helps you stay true, again, to who you are and what you are rather than just chasing 10x more impressions on the next thing you're doing.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. Think, you know, one example that sort of struck me as brilliant here lately is sort of Benny Blanco and Dave's new show, which is basically a podcast where they're just filming their house, having conversations with guests. Like, for me, this sort of signal is like a really new wave of content, of letting people in, but without it being fake and necessarily, you know, very tiresome, but it's like, it's a format which is open and honest still, like it's performative, but like it's a totally different way of presenting content, but also for people to consume content, if that makes sense.

Rob Abelow

I watched it yesterday. I watched like a 25 minutes with Ed Sheeran, which was mind blowing by the way. Like just the level of talent in like songwriting between him and Benny was like, and it's funny thing about like the magic. It almost took some magical way too, where I was just like, man, like they could just pump out a song that feels like it has so much depth to it, but like it almost didn't. Cause it was just like prompts happening and just like.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yep.

Rob Abelow

It was two masters at their game. But by the way, what a cool, like no editing, right? And this was like huge stars letting people into their process and their world. And like, I am now have more affinity for everybody who was involved in that, right? And wanna go, like now I wanna just keep watching it. And I think some of it just speaks to like in general, think we're all, I think even though the way I saw it shared by somebody was like, This is like the non-AI slop content that I dream of, right? And I think it's like there's gonna be so much stuff that succeeds with new AI and new tools that we have. Like there are gonna be many winners in that department. Maybe some just because it's more efficient, whatever, but some for creation too. But it also is gonna create this desire from a percentage of people for like even more authenticity, what is real, you know, what is... something, a world, a community I want to be a part of, which is why I think for so many artists, it's like you have to focus on essentially that community building. There's a loaded term these days, but that community building aspect of what you're doing and that authenticity aspect of what you're doing. And it has a human face to it, and it's not just a flattened piece of content alongside a brand on a platform. How can you personify the thing?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. I think what's extra interesting about that sort of podcast or whatever they call it is sort of traditionally speaking, the way that I've received content, especially how artists can present themselves are either, like this very produced world, that can be music videos or anything instead of that direction. And then there's this like almost influencer, like selfie cameras speaking to the assets type scenario and both of those, like maybe the music production. Kind of scenario can be quite, not called fake, it's something that's really produced and created, where the other one can feel way too personal, almost maybe like tiresome, or even fake to many people, where there's this sort of middle ground now of content that's sort of, it's produced, but it's like a third party expert that's themselves as an observer and sharing that, which I think is really interesting because I can imagine that format is...

Rob Abelow

Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Would feel like less of a compromise for many artists as it is basically what they're doing on stage, but just in a different setting. So I think this is really.

Rob Abelow

It feels less like try hard. It's not, hey, I'm face to the camera, whatever it is. I don't think Ed acknowledged the camera the whole time. And he barely even said anything besides singing. It was just like, yeah, most artists would really prefer that approach. Now, obviously we're talking about stars. But I think it's really interesting thing.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Anyway.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

Rob Abelow

This band Goose, do you know them? They're like the new big jam band and my friend has been their agent from the beginning and he was telling me how...

Jakob Wredstrøm

I know that.

Rob Abelow

He felt like they really kind of blew up and it was like similar to that like they would just record like video of all of their performances like I think it was even just like one camera wide pan and there was like a bunch of them like you know thousand views 500 views thousand views and there was like some festival maybe in Virginia they played we're just like out of nowhere it exploded and but and they consist I don't know if we're still doing it but like they consistently did that for like every single performance was just like that was the model right and it was just like okay went from one camera to three or probably whatever, but it required it was like them. This is who we are. This is what we do best. This is what's authentic. We don't have to like change or try hard to do something different. Like this just piggybacks us and the best thing we do. And let's just put that out into the world. Like that was their way of creating lots of content. And you know, every artist kind of needs to find, mean, Volfpect did a similar thing that it incredibly well. So yeah, that's an interesting through line to this new podcast.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah. It's been a brilliant conversation and I definitely feel smarter when it comes to understanding fandom, how to utilize it and especially what OpenStage does. What is the next step for OpenStage? Like what are you focusing on as a company?

Rob Abelow

Yeah, so we got a lot of things coming in the next few months. I don't want to go too much into that, but the biggest thing for us is how can we help artists really grow what that world is? And how can we make sure that all of the efforts that they're putting in are not just going into a silo? Like you put all this effort into your kind of direct to fan approach, but then it's just emails into an inbox or something like that where they go to die with just that fan. How can we help it so that becomes like part of that growth mechanism for you? So we'll have some really exciting things coming out in the next few months. On that. And then also how do we just make it much easier for many more artists to use? So, you know, right now there's a minimum price at OpenStage that maybe prices out some more developing artists. How do we give them a way in and how do we make as many of these practices as possible just simplified in the product so that if you don't have, you know, our team or your own team helping you with audience development, it can be very easy for anybody to get started with and get going. So we're excited about these new moments coming up.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Amazing. Well, Rob, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for being on and yeah, thanks.

Rob Abelow

Thanks for having me.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Cool, thank you.