Personal or Parasocial? The Evolution of Fandom in the Indie Scene
WRITTEN BY JALEN GOMES
Emerging artists share the same dream of one day standing in a room full of devoted fans, but how far can that devotion go before it interferes with the art itself? Earlier this month, underground hip hop artist Slayr released his highly anticipated single Keep Me Going (Birdbrain) after fans begged for months. Upon release, the artist was quick to go on a tirade about how he never wanted to release the song after it got leaked, claiming he felt “forced” by his fanbase to put it out just to keep them satisfied. Stories like this play out frequently within indie communities, with artists sometimes feeling pressured into making decisions with their music that they feel would satisfy their fans, all the while making them feel they’re not taking the path as an artist that they should be. Fans are a more integral part than ever in shaping how artists plan and release their music. Independent artists, in particular, have found themselves navigating uncharted terrain brought on by the widespread use of social media.
Ask almost any recording artist, producer, or industry figure alike, and a large majority will relay the rhetoric that they see their fanbase as less of an audience and more of a family. The rise of social media and the ease of access it’s given people to their favourite artists stands to be the biggest catalyst in this phenomenon. Before we were all on Instagram and Twitter (or X, if you will), the most contact someone would have with their favourite artist would be through letters and postcards, which stayed unanswered to no avail– think Stan in the Eminem music video. If you got lucky, the artist would tour your nearest venue for a day or two during the summer, and you’d run up your parents’ credit card to score a backstage pass. That was the norm up until the 2010s, when people much like you and I suddenly gained the ability to message our favourite performer in the same inbox as our classmates and cousins. This technological shift is when the idea of fandom took a turn, for the better for some and the worse for others.
Artists could now discuss their music with fans on a more personal level, posting demos to their feed and asking for feedback from those who knew their music best. They could also see, for the first time, real-time analytics about who was streaming their music and from where, allowing them to plan tour stops and venue sizes around that data. For many independent artists, however, the cons heavily outweighed the pros during this era. In times now passed, an album would be crafted from start to finish and promoted single by single, building toward a full release somewhere down the line. This slow, steady rollout built mystique, where fans created their own lore and theories about what was coming next and the album's sonic direction.
Fans were only the audience, the observer of the final product. Now, they’ve become much more of consumer evaluators before the finalization process. Artists will tease a song they wrote fifteen minutes earlier at a studio session just to gauge its reaction at face value, at times scrapping the entire idea altogether no matter how much they may have liked it all because the initial feedback wasn’t what they expected. They’ll notice that their streams dip a few percentage points over a few weeks and employ someone to leak their own music, manufacturing an almost inauthentic buzz around songs and projects they already know will never see an official release date. Artists will also shut down altogether based on the hateful, negative rabbit holes they plunge into on social media. Ask yourself why some artists who were written off as one-hit wonders at the turn of the decade were never able to overcome that slump; many took that criticism to heart to a point where perfectionism ruined their process.
Social media has also brought onto independent artists a newfound obsession: the backstory. Fans crave intimacy and a personal narrative from the artists they’re now getting into or are hearing about for the first time. When a new artist emerges, culture pages and influencers making conversation around them on TikTok and in blog posts often lead with where they’re from and what life was like as they grew up. Fans naturally gravitate towards artists whose lyrics and overall sound resonate with them best, but the advent of social media has also put their life story at the forefront and made it into a decisive factor for many listeners. For independent artists, that backstory has become the pitch itself, serving as their ticket into standing out amidst a sea of similar sounds. A compelling origin story may attract first-time listeners, but at the cost of packaging the music alongside a storyline which the artist now must retain if they want to stay true to what they’ve built.
The same leak which made Slayr have his share of regrets is the same one to clear a million streams in the span of its first two days, the largest opening so far for the rapper. The song has put him in playlists beyond the typical underground listener and opened him up to opportunities at shows across the US and Europe as the summer comes to a close. Despite feeling persuaded by his fans and displeased with his initial decision, he’s since expressed gratitude for all of the recent support. The independent scene is both crafted and steered by the critique of fans, and those constructing the art within those spaces must now decide whether they will allow their followers to steer ahead or take back full control like the performers of the past.
EDITED BY LIZ FOSTER
