I used to work with fan clubs back in the 90s, when they were a serious source of income for a lot of bands. The biggest one I worked with was the official Take That fan club, with over 100,000 subscribers paying around £10 a year. That is real revenue, real connection, and a direct relationship between artist and fan that actually meant something.
Fan clubs were not just merch fulfilment. They were the communications engine. They were a factor in getting signed. They gave artists a way to talk directly to the people who cared most, and those fans responded by buying tickets, spreading the word, and showing up when it mattered.
How artists lost control of their audience
Fan clubs turned into websites. Websites were expected to be free. Then social media arrived and artists were told the future was Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.
The problem is simple: you do not own what happens on those platforms. You do the work, but the platform controls the reach, the rules, and the audience data. The public scorecard became Likes and Views, which rarely translates into reliable income or a genuine relationship with your fans.
Meanwhile, the thing that actually worked, a direct line to your fans just disappeared.
Why fan clubs matter more now than ever
Fan clubs are not nostalgia. They are leverage.
A direct relationship with your fans is an asset you can build on for years. When you treat fans properly, they become your marketing engine, your early buyers, and your long term supporters.
Fan clubs never stopped working. What happened was social platforms took their place when they were all sweet and innocent. Now you can’t even reach those fans.
Why platforms keep failing artists
Every few years, another platform tries to solve the artist-fan relationship. They all follow the same model: put lots of artists under one roof, add some gated content or social features, and hope the network effect does the rest.
It does not work. And that is not arrogance, it is evidence.
Apple launched Apple Connect to build a social layer around music artists. It was shut down, relaunched, and shut down again over the course of a decade. Facebook introduced gated content tools to help artists earn money directly from fans. That failed too. If Apple and Facebook, with all of their resources, user base, and engineering talent, can’t make a multi-artist platform work for superfan engagement, then nobody can. Multi-artist apps are simply not something fans want.
A multi-artist platform is still a platform. The artist is a page inside someone else’s brand. The fan’s attention is split. The relationship feels like just another feed, not a fan club. And the moment it feels like a feed, you have lost the thing that made fan clubs powerful in the first place: the direct, personal connection between the artist and the fan.
That is why at FanCircles, we build individual apps for individual artists. Not a hub. A standalone, fully branded app where the only relationship that matters is the one between the artist and their fans. Anything that sits between that and dilutes the connection breaks the whole thing. In fact, you won’t find a FanCircles app in the app stores. We sit behind the scenes, making sure everything works. The only thing that matters in an artist-to-fan relationship is the artist and the fan.
Two products for two different stages
Not every artist is at the same stage, and the right tool depends on where you are. FanCircles offers two products that work together, but the entry point is the same for almost everyone.
PushPass: for every artist, at every stage
Fan Pass platform for creators gives you push notifications straight to your fans’ lock screens, with no app required. Your fans add a branded pass to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, and you have a direct channel to reach them instantly.
PushPass works whether you are playing 200-cap rooms or arenas. It is a pay-as-you-grow solution, so you only pay for the audience you have, and the cost scales as you grow. There is no big upfront commitment and no point where it stops making sense.
It is designed to be frictionless. A fan taps a link or scans a QR code and the pass is in their wallet in seconds. It lives there permanently, which means you are not competing with an inbox or an algorithm. Every pass also has a built-in QR code that fans can share or that you can print on posters, merch, or at shows, so your audience grows organically.
PushPass also includes a full loyalty system, so you can reward engagement and repeat behavior from day one.
PushPass is ideal when you want:
- A direct channel for announcements, drops, and ticket pushes that actually reaches people
- Fast onboarding at shows, on merch, or anywhere online with a QR code or link
- A lightweight fan club foundation you can build on without asking anyone to download an app
Learn more about PushPass or see how it works as a Fan Pass platform for creators.
SuperFan Apps: for artists filling 5,000-cap rooms and above
Once you are regularly playing to thousands of fans a night, a fully branded app starts to make serious sense. A SuperFan App is the full fan club model, and at that scale, the revenue it generates can be significant. Imagine a fan club at $99 a year, including a t-shirt or piece of merch. How many subscribers would sign up for that when bundled together with a SuperFan app? One example recently, this is not an exception to the rule, was an artist who plays venues of 10,000 capacity in the US. In 48 hours, they generated 8,000 subscribers at $65 per year, generating $520,000. That’s every year.
It is built for directly engaging with your fans
SuperFan Apps is a bigger investment than PushPass, but for artists at this level, it pays for itself many times over. It is ideal when you want:
- A fully branded home for your fan club with your name on the App Store and Google Play
- Subscription revenue from premium content and experiences
- Community features that keep fans coming back daily, not just dropping in when the algorithm allows it
Learn more about SuperFan Apps
Start with PushPass, grow into a SuperFan App
The two products are designed to complement each other. Most artists start with PushPass because it works immediately, it’s cost-effective, and it grows with you. As your audience scales and you reach the point where a dedicated app makes commercial sense, SuperFan Apps is there to deepen the relationship. You do not have to commit to everything on day one, but you should start owning your relationships with fans now.
If you want help choosing the right approach, get in touch.
Kevin Brown
CEO, FanCircles
