SXSW: How Superfandom is Reshaping Music Streaming's Next Chapter

Streaming executives from SoundCloud, Audiomack, and Tuned Global say the future of music platforms lies in community, local scenes, and giving fans meaningful ways to participate, create, and shape what comes next

Streaming has been the dominant format for music consumption for more than a decade, and in that time, the focus of many conversations in the industry has largely centered on catalogue size, subscriber growth, and personalisation algorithms.

At SXSW Austin this year, a panel of music streaming leaders suggested that the next phase would look quite different. The focus is shifting from passive listening to active participation, from global charts to local scenes, and from broad audiences to the small group of deeply engaged fans who drive most of the revenue.

The session, titled The Future of Streaming in the Superfan Era, was moderated by Janishia Jones, CEO and Founder of Encore Music Tech Solutions.

Jones was joined by Con Raso, CEO and founder of music cloud platform Tuned Global; Brian “Z” Zisook, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of Global Operations and Head of Artist and Label Services at Audiomack; and Jordan Pettinato, Senior Director of Business Development at SoundCloud.

Industry research suggests that roughly one in five listeners qualifies as a superfan, and that that group accounts for the majority of music spending. Jones opened the discussion with this number and asked the panel to define the term, given how often fans, followers, listeners, and audiences get treated as interchangeable.

“We often conflate words like fans, followers, listeners and audience as the same thing, but they all actually mean something different,” said Audiomack's Zisook.

"Someone could follow an artist, but that could simply be for timeline entertainment. They have no vested stake in that artist. They might not even know that it is an artist. They might find them to be funny.

"Superfans are an extension of that, meaning that they're supporting [an artist] with [their] time and money. So, beyond just whatever it costs per month to subscribe to a DSP, they're going out of their way to purchase merch.

"They're going to see you when you are performing in their city. They're joining your fan club. They want to buy a physical version of your album so that it's tangible and they can hold it."

Platforms are giving superfans more ways to spend, engage, and express

If superfans are defined by what they do beyond pressing play, the question for streaming platforms is what they offer to fans prepared to engage more.

The panel repeatedly returned to the idea that superfans are not just consumers but active participants in the ecosystem through remixing, playlisting, promotion, collaboration, and content creation.

Raso also referenced Tuned Global’s Social Radio solution as an example of how streaming experiences can become more participatory and community-driven. The format allows listeners, artists, and DJs to become creators themselves by hosting live shows that combine music mixing, commentary, and audience interaction.

In that sense, streaming platforms are increasingly evolving from passive listening services into participatory communities.

Each panelist works with a different model, but the common ground is clear: badges, leaderboards, and patronage features that give fans a way to publicly back an artist and unlock something in return.

Tuned Global’s Con Raso, whose perspective draws from powering streaming services across different markets and use cases, framed the question as one of community rather than commerce. The most useful thing a platform can do, he argued, is enable communities to form organically, with superfans driving those groups, rather than platforms trying to manufacture them. He called out Line Music in Japan, one of Tuned Global’s music backend clients, as an example of how these engagement mechanics can work at scale.

"Line in Japan is like a WhatsApp of the rest of the world, and Line Music is their music streaming service, which is very successful in that market," he said. "In that case, it's more about providing badges to superfans.

"So first of all, superfans can elect to be a super fan of someone, but in their scenario, you can only elect to be a super fan of so many people. So you're going to have to choose who you are really being a fan of. And then badges [displayed on your profile] represent the amount of your fandom."

Line Music has a dedicated team that manages benefits for those superfans, including merchandise and meet-and-greets. Raso noted that the badges serve a social function as much as a transactional one, signaling fandom not only to the artist but to the rest of the community.

"There's this real engagement that's occurring between the artist and the fan, and the fan really just wants to not only use that badge to show their fandom to the artists themselves, but it really is about community. So they want to show that badge to everyone else in the community and really vie for that as well," he said.

Audiomack runs a parallel system through its Supporters feature, launched in 2021. Zisook described it as a patronage tool that lets fans purchase a support badge priced from 99 cents to $25, with the revenue sitting on top of standard streaming royalties.

Artists can offer extras in exchange, including merchandise discount codes, unlisted YouTube links, and presale ticket access.

"This is revenue that is bucketed on top of traditional royalties," Zisook said.

Patronage features add a new revenue layer, but the underlying royalty structure of streaming has long favoured the biggest artists.

Jones noted that less than half a per cent of artists on Spotify earn more than $10,000 a year through streaming, despite the platform paying out 65 to 70 per cent of revenue to rights holders. Calling out the disparity, she then asked the panel what newer payout models had achieved in practice.

Pettinato referred to SoundCloud's fan-powered royalties model, launched in 2021, which pays artists based on what each individual user listens to, rather than pooling all subscription and advertising revenue and dividing it by overall stream share.

The idea behind the model was that small but highly engaged audiences should generate more income for the artists they actually listen to.

"In the first year, we showed that independent artists on SoundCloud made on average 60% more through streaming royalties than they had the previous year, or if they had not been on fan-powered," Pettinato said.

"Will Page, who was the former chief economist at Spotify, did a report with us, and he basically did a case study on Lil Uzi Vert, and it showed that 6% of his fans on SoundCloud actually generate about 78% of his royalty income."

Pettinato also noted that the headline figure does not always translate to large absolute sums, with many independent artists seeing increases of a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. Those step changes, he said, are meaningful for artists still trying to make music a full-time pursuit.

Engaged users can change how platforms think about discovery

Before discovery comes engagement, and both Pettinato and Zisook pointed to a quieter but telling signal of how superfans actually behave on their platforms: they build their own libraries and playlists, and return to them.

Zisook said he was particularly proud that of all the possible stream sources on the Audiomack platform, the listener library is the number one stream source.

"That means someone heard a song, liked it enough to know that they wanted to return to it, and then returned to it. It signifies great resonance and stickiness, as opposed to opening up a streaming service, pressing play on personalized recommendations or an editorial playlist, and just having the music exist in the background."

Pettinato said the SoundCloud platform also sees and revels in this trend.

"We see most users in SoundCloud starting sessions from their library. And, specifically, the custom playlists that they've made themselves are not algorithmic playlists, not recommended playlists, but the ones that they've designed themselves. There's high intent when they go to listen."

Of course, for users to build those libraries and playlists in the first place, they need to find the music. That brings the conversation back to discovery, and to a long-standing criticism of the major streaming services: that their recommendation systems favour global hits over regional repertoire.

The panel agreed that the next phase of streaming will need to surface music that resonates within specific cultures and geographies, not just within shared languages.

Audiomack's Zisook discussed how the company rebuilt its approach with a sensitivity to what was more locally relevant, focusing on geography rather than relying solely on listening history.

"What we did was we created global cohorts, which are groupings of countries and regions within these countries, with similar musical tastes. And now, depending on where you are in the world, your experience on the Audiomack app will feel uniquely tailored to those markets so that when you open the app, you don't see Drake and Taylor Swift immediately," he said.

"You see artists who look like you, who sound like you, who speak the same language that you speak. And that sort of connection, I think, is priceless."

Raso, drawing on Tuned Global's work powering streaming services in markets including Greenland, Mongolia, and Egypt, said local repertoire often punches well above its weight when given a fair chance, while flagging a subtler algorithmic problem.

"In some examples, and I won't mention necessarily the country for confidentiality reasons, we power services that are say 95% international content and 5% local content, and they have millions and millions and millions of tracks," he said.

"But because they really focus on fandom and they focus on local repertoire of fandom and supporting artists, they actually get 80% of their streams from the 5% of repertoire. That really shows what that audience wants to listen to if they're given the chance to discover content in a more equitable way than just, hey, here's the front page.

"The challenge there is that, especially when content is of the same language, like english, then local artists even get less of a go. Because the algorithms will actually work at a language level, not at a cultural level.

"[For] the platforms that are really doing a lot of work at looking at the cultural aspect and the regional aspect beyond the language of performance, it's really important. The more diversity that we see, we think the happier that we are, rather than getting vanilla every time."

The panel went on to cover several other topics in more detail, including active participation and the licensing challenges around derivative works, AudioMod and remix culture, the convergence of social platforms and music, and the next five years of streaming.

The industry will undoubtedly continue to see an intertwining of social and music streaming platforms. People form communities around music, so platforms will increasingly embrace social aspects. The line between consuming music and creating it, as well as content about it, will continue to blur with more engaged superfans.

To check out the full presentation, visit this link.

About Tuned Global

Tuned Global is the data-driven music cloud platform that empowers businesses to integrate commercial music into their apps and launch complete streaming experiences using advanced APIs, real-time analytics, licensing solutions, rights management systems, Ai-enabled music discovery, and customisable white-label streaming apps.

Our turnkey solutions for music, audio, and video — coupled with advanced AI capabilities and a broad ecosystem of third-party music tech integrations — make us the most comprehensive platform for powering any digital music project.

We streamline complexities in licensing, rights management, and content delivery, enabling rapid innovation and bringing new ideas to life. Since 2011, we’ve supported 40+ companies in 70+ countries — across telecom, gaming, fitness, health, media, aviation, and more — to deliver innovative music experiences faster and more cost-effectively.