India insight – every month, music business journalist Amit Gurbaxani shares his expertise, insight, and analysis on key stories from the exciting, exploding market of India.
This month: Amit explores superfandom in India’s unique music fan environment – and finds some possibilities that touring artists may be missing out on…
At last year’s edition of All About Music, India’s largest music industry conference, the word dropped the most was “superfan”. Speakers and panelists talked at length about how the time was ripe to harvest the fruits of the massive listener bases artists have garnered domestically, numbers that rank among the largest in the world.
While several Indian and international acts can boast billions of streams in the country, historically, the territory has been substantially under-monetised. This is slowly but surely changing, say industry execs.
Fan spending is on the increase
For one, fans are increasingly willing to pay more to watch their favourite artists live. “We’ve been able to increase the average ticket price (ATP) from Rs500 (US$6) to Rs1,800 (US$22) today,” says Aayushman Sinha, the founder of artist management and entertainment company Represent whose roster includes chart-topping singer/songwriter Anuv Jain.
“The goal is to be able to open up more creative formats of ticketing and grow the ATP to Rs4,000 over the next 18 months to match the global US$50 standard.”
That benchmark has already been breached by foreign touring acts such as Ed Sheeran who tallied the highest-ever attendance figure for a concert by an international artist when his Mumbai show in March drew a crowd of over 50,000, most of whom spent Rs9,500 ($115) for a general admission ticket.
While that record-breaking sum included several casual fans who only know “Shape Of You” or “Perfect”, the merch counter, at which T-shirts were tagged at Rs1,500 ($18), reportedly sold out by the end of the night.
Superfan upselling
Thus far, however, the most successful way for Indian acts to upsell to superfans has been the meet-and-greet. Sinha says that on Jain’s recent ten-city tour, they sold 300 tickets at an ATP of Rs10,000 ($120) resulting in about Rs3,000,000 (US$36,000) in additional revenue across the trek.
These fan-driven VIP experiences have been unexplored by international acts, most of whom are either too time-strapped or too unsure of the response to execute them, says Amarjeet Singha, president of festivals and touring at ticketing platform and concert promoter Skillbox.
Singha said that last November, when guitar legend Steve Vai sold a premium package that included a Q&A session, access to the soundcheck and signed lanyards at a price 5X that of a regular ticket, sales were “pretty good in Mumbai, decent in Bengaluru and lukewarm in Kolkata”.
The most successful way for Indian acts to upsell to superfans has been the meet-and-greet.
Singha feels that the proclivity to spend varies across demographics, with younger audience in the 18 to 27 age group more likely to wear their fandom on their sleeves. “K-Pop kids buy original merch for as much as Rs30,000 ($360),” he says.
Skillbox mounted the K-Wave Festival in Bengaluru last year to “capitalise on the Hallyu or Korean wave” that’s been sweeping through India over the last five years. The event included a fan meet with singer and actor Kim Woojin for which attendees could choose between ticketing slabs offering perks that included group photos and a hi-touch or high five with the star.
While not everybody might be ready to shell out the extra dough for an exclusive audience, according to Jay Mehta, the managing director of the Warner Music Group for India and SAARC, it’s now easier than ever to identify an artist’s superfans by looking at engagement not just on DSPs but also across communities such as Reddit and gaming. “Data like the cities where they have the highest number of engaged fans becomes an input for where they could sell merch,” he says.
Merchandise and brand partnerships
Over the past couple of years, Warner has successfully experimented with developing merch lines for two big artists on its roster. After launching a set of T-shirts and tops for H&M, hip-hop heavyweight King – who was already selling his own perfume brand Blanko – released a line of shoes for sneaker brand Campus, which subsequently sponsored his tour.
Similarly, says Mehta, denim and streetwear brand LoveGen were encouraged by the sales of the tees and hoodies they created for pop star Darshan Raval to back his national tour, and offered customers different categories of complimentary tickets based on the amount they spent.
“We try to identify what fans see value in, and what kind of merch can be an extension of the artist’s personality,” Mehta adds. “For instance, in the hip-hop community, sneakers are an integral part of an artist’s [look], so Campus was a natural [fit] for King.”
An artist’s reach is limited by a brand’s distribution network… concentrated in metropolises like Mumbai.
The challenge, he says, is that an artist’s reach is limited by a brand’s distribution network, which tends to be concentrated in metropolises such as Mumbai and Delhi while their devotees are spread around the country including in Tier-II and Tier-III cities.
What’s abundantly clear, he concludes, is that “the myth that Indian fans don’t have money has been broken”. Says Mehta,“if you create enough value, they will pay.”
