The Fractured Fan Connection — why we developed Fan Pass
TL:DR
Fan Pass serves as a single, cost-effective digital key that's easy to manage and offers ultimate flexibility. It's designed to be the foundational starting point for any meaningful relationship between a creator and their fans.
The connection between creators and their fans is fractured.
For musicians, artists, writers, and other such creators, the landscape is cluttered with too many platforms and little or no control over their fan data. For the fans, algorithm-driven scrolling has replaced meaningful engagement, diminishing the value of true connections.
This is not a trivial problem, It is underestimated how much society relies on these cultural leaders to guide us emotionally and intellectually, particularly during transformative periods. They capture the spirit of the times, offer insightful commentary, and serve as emotional outlets.
While such leaders undoubtedly exist, they're often overshadowed in a world where viral moments have supplanted the natural word-of-mouth that once allowed meaningful content and conversation to flourish.
With a few exceptions, those who excel in big data analytics now wield more influence than those with genuine talent. Consequently, social platforms, driven by metrics like likes, shares, and follows, will naturally prioritise quantity over quality. This has led the entertainment industry to have a tendency to prioritise 'gatekeeper' strategies at the expense of 'fan-centric' approaches.
In summary, shallow attention with a short term fix, has usurped deep connection and we all lose.
CIRKAY developed Fan Pass to rectify this imbalance. Our goal is to empower creators & foster authentic connections. Acting as a digital key, it allows creators to interact with their community and monetize as they see fit. Fan Pass works alongside existing platforms and services, granting creators a level of autonomy in cultivating their relationships with fans.
The design principles behind Fan Pass
In a fragmented digital landscape, a different set of design principles was essential to authentically connect creators with fans.
The following principles serve as the foundational thinking behind Fan Pass.
Fan Pass is not a platform: The world doesn't need another platform. Existing social platforms are becoming functional clones, extracting value at the expense of both creators and fans.
Fan Pass should not store any Personal Information: We recognize that the fan relationship belongs to the creator, not to CIRKAY.
Fan Pass should focus on being a Digital Identity Key: Fan Pass abstracts identity from underlying technologies, enabling connections across multiple digital platforms.
Fan Pass needs to support a flexible business model: Fan Pass doesn't dictate the business model a creator should adopt. It's cost-effective enough to suit various levels of engagement.
Web3 technologies, with their transparent and anonymous nature, align well with these principles. The NFT smart contract is central to Fan Pass, and our aim was to deliver a product that avoids jargon like "NFT," "blockchain," or "wallet".
We launched Fan Pass on Shopify, the world's leading e-commerce provider, to enable creators to seamlessly integrate it with their existing products and content.
Fan Pass helps creators navigate the attention economy
In today's Attention Economy, a term coined by scholars like Herbert Simon, human focus has become a scarce resource that's commodified. Simon's famous assertion that "what information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients" rings true now more than ever. Creators are caught in a relentless cycle of maximizing metrics—clicks, likes, shares—across multiple platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook, often leading to mental burnout.
Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist, amplifies this concern by highlighting how tech companies deliberately design products to capture and monopolize attention. This often results in shallow interactions that offer little value to either creators or fans. True fans are left feeling undervalued, lacking the exclusivity and special status they crave.
Fan Pass emerges as a solution to these challenges. It aims to reclaim the value of authentic, meaningful connections between creators and fans, directly challenging the superficial interactions that have become the digital norm. With Fan Pass, creators can dynamically tailor their engagement levels, offering exclusive access and content based on their current activities and the needs of their community. This approach aligns with the call for a more humane technology landscape, allowing both creators and fans to navigate the Attention Economy in a way that values quality over quantity.
Fan Pass - connection, information and access
The topic of monetizing super fans is currently in the spotlight. Goldman Sachs' "Music In The Air" report estimates that the music industry alone could generate an additional $4 billion in annual revenue. When you consider the potential for writers, podcasters, and filmmakers etc, the financial opportunity becomes even more significant.
A monthly subscription model priced between $7-$10 for exclusive content and offers might seem attractive at first glance. However, this model often doesn't hold up under scrutiny for the majority of creators and fans. Committing over $100 a year is a significant investment for fans, and it's challenging for creators to consistently produce enough new content to justify this cost. From our experience at CIRKAY, working with leading influencers and artists, we've found that maintaining such a commitment over a long period is difficult, leading to declining subscriptions and waning enthusiasm.
Fan Pass proposes an alternative: a $10 annual fee that provides fans with three key elements—connection, information, and access—that satisfy their primary motivations and offer long-term revenue streams for creators.
Connection: At its core, connection means fans pay for the privilege of being the first to hear about new releases, events, offers, and news. This straightforward yet impactful engagement model not only encourages fans to renew their subscriptions annually but also opens the door for diversified revenue streams. While others may hear the news second, the primary focus of Fan Pass is to identify the most dedicated fans and use that core group as a foundation to expand the broader fan community.
Information: Fans crave information, which becomes a form of social currency. Knowing something before others, provides fans with talking points in their social circles and enhances their fan experience by making them feel special and valued.
Access: This is where Fan Pass truly shines with its multi-platform capabilities. A single Fan Pass could unlock a range of benefits across various platforms. For example, it could provide discounts on Shopify, exclusive content on WordPress, special chats on Discord, or even ticket presales on Ticketmaster.
So at its heart Fan Pass is a new business model for the creator economy, it serves as a single, cost-effective digital key that's easy to manage and offers ultimate flexibility. It's designed to be the foundational starting point for any meaningful relationship between a creator and their fans.
Simon Scott
8th Oct 2023