An Idiot's Guide to Running a Fan Club

In recent weeks, antiMusic has reported on fan club fiascos and we have been reporting on how these fans/customers have been treated. In the dozens upon dozens of emails we've received there has been a sense of immense dissatisfaction with a few of these fan clubs. What is most surprising to us is that the artists and organizations running these fan clubs appear to have forgotten that these fans are their most valued customers; not suits, not radio, not promoters, not people who watch Oprah but the person who buys everything you put out should always be number-one in their book. These are the people who would follow you into the depths of hell and if you charged them a ticket for the ride to hell, they'd pay. Call it devotion, blind love or even insanity, but the point is that fans like this are few and far between. The artist MUST take care of them before anyone else. In recent works, we've received word and reports of certain artists adding a "convenience fee" of $45 to each of their fan club tickets. What is the difference between this and a scalper? Even worse, these fans are picking up their tickets at WILL CALL! I saw Prince five-times in 2004 and each time I went through his fan club and did not pay one cent above face value for any of the tickets and the worse seat I had was in the seventh row. Oh yeah, that seventh row seat I scored on Ticketmaster.

Many of these emails from fans declared that they would rather go to a scalper because at least then they would be treated with respect and receive good service. So the question comes into play; are these organizations out to serve the fan/customer or are they there to turn a mighty profit? From the sound of it, these organizations are nothing more than money making ventures. What is most surprising to me is how little these artists appear to have with their respective fan clubs. When fans make excuses for the artists by commenting that the poor organization and scalped charges for tickets are not the artists fault�it saddens me, because the artist, no matter how big or small should be completely aware of what is being done in their name.

In Corporate America if a client was treated poorly or had a series of very bad experiences they would take their business elsewhere. Unfortunately, many of these fans feel like they're being treated with disrespect but they devotion is so deep they won't do anything about it and blindly pay these exorbitant service fee's. I understand this devotion, but my answer to you is to seek out other artists to follow, because you're bound to find one who treats you with the respect you deserve. In preparation for this article, I sent an email out to a few hundred fans asking them to tell me their best and worst experiences with fan clubs. I'm not going to name names, except in the case of the one who was universally named "The Best"; Pearl Jam's "Ten Club". When it became apparent Pearl Jam was the winner, I decided to take their model and write an outline for these other clubs to follow in the hopes they see it and see the error of their ways. Most will probably ignore it, but then again it's no skin off my back. In the long run, the only person who will lose out will be the artist when these mistreated fans take their hard earned money and devotion elsewhere.

Here Are Three Easy Steps That Will Guarantee Fan Satisfaction

#1 Keep the Standard Joining Fee Fair
Last spring, the Police charged $100 to join their fan club and it provided short of nothing to their fans. It was a disastrous situation that was never rectified. Unless the club is providing you with first-rate exclusives and deals, in my opinion, no fee should ever be above $40 or $50. Anything more than this and they're taking you for a ride. People join these clubs for perks, benefits and most importantly access! Sure an exclusive message board is nice, but is it essential no? Most fan run boards on the net often wind up being better.

There are loads of options one can offer a fan. A yearly fee, a multi-year package and even a lifetime membership (in which case they would justify charging more than $50). For the lifetime members you could even give preference in seating for concerts. The point is to make it affordable to those who want to join and for those who will follow these artists to the depths of hell and back; a one-time fee wouldn't be a bad option.

#2 Offer Worthwhile Exclusives
One of the perks of running a fan club is to get special items no one else gets. In the last two-years U2 has offered exclusive live cd's to their subscribers and since the band were in the midst of taking some time off, they even offered a 20% discount to each of its subscribers. How about that, a band who knows it will not be touring offering a discount on membership and a live album? This is pretty damn ingenious if you ask me. Prince's one-time fan club allowed you access to exclusive downloads and releases sometimes mere hours after Prince had recorded them. The crown jewel of all fan clubs is Pearl Jam's Ten Club. Up until a handful of years ago, the member ship fee was $10. Yes, that's correct, $10. There was a mini controversy when they moved it up to $20 a few years back, but in my mind they kept it at an insanely low price for over a decade and a raise to $20 was far overdue. With the $20 fee, you get access to the usual fan club perks, but there are two that make Pearl Jam stand out. The first is access to concert tickets and the second is a 45 rpm single member's get every Christmas (although it's actually Easter when it finally happens). This is the coolest single thing a fan club does for their fans every year. Do they charge you for the 45? No? How about shipping�they must charge for shipping, right? No. The $20 fee allows you incredible access and this free single, which this year had a cover of the Who's "Love Reign O'er Me" on the A-side. About a decade back the single included a cover of the oldie "Last Kiss" which wound up picking up some incredible traction and attention by radio that the band released it officially as a single. Here is a situation where a good deed yielded the band their highest chart topping single ever and what do they do as a result? They gave all proceeds from the single to charity. This is a supreme case of where a good deed went rewarded. The band raised its profile, a charity received a substantial donation and a long forgotten pop favorite was resurrected. If only more artists did this.

The Dave Matthews Band offers links to exclusive downloads from their immense catalog of live shows. Pearl Jam very often records every show and within 12-hours of the performance you can download MP3's or FLAC (lossless) files of the concert for a very reasonable price. The sound quality on these Pearl Jam recordings is better than any live album I've ever heard and in most instances they are done on the fly. As a fan club the goal is to promote the artist and their music. By releasing live concerts for download, you are opening these core fans to an unprecedented world. Even if the artist does not warrant having every show released, why not offer a free concert at the end of the year as an exclusive download as a way to reward your fans? If it's a download it won't cost them any money to make cd's or sleeves and would only cost some server space. However, the reward is that the fans will feel that they are being taken care of and as a result will continue to follow the artist.

#3 Ticket Perks
When I asked these hundred-plus what was most important to them with a fan club, 100% of them mentioned preferred preference with ticket sales. This is the defining factor that fan clubs will live and die by. No exceptions. Once again, Pearl Jam is the crown jewel and takes care of their fan base better than anyone. Fan club tickets usually go on-sale a few days before the regular sale. They have an interesting way of distributing tickets which is by seniority. I only joined this fan club a few years back, but my tickets were still excellent lower lodge seats and at less than $70 I could not complain. For each order processed, there is less than a $5 fee added to each ticket. Here's the deal, I completely understand about covering your costs, but at the same time, you do not want to take your fans for a ride. When I went to pick up my tickets for Pearl Jam, I went to the box office, which has ten windows. Nine of the ten windows were for Pearl Jam fan club members. The feeling inside of the arena that night was electric and I can't tell you how many times shivers went down my spine just from the reaction of these core fans to the show.

One of the defining moments was when the band performed the song, "Present Tense". This isn't an anthem well known to the masses and it was on an album I generally despised, but on this night, the crowd overwhelmed me because they sang every word to the song and the 18,000 in attendance it will be a moment none of them ever forget. Could this be possible if 50% of the seats were over $100? Would it have occurred in the best seats in the house were auctioned off? In short�no, this never could have happened. In recent years I have seen number-one singles fall deaf on audiences because many are there for the element of coolness that has nothing to do with the music. But because I witnessed that performance of "Present Tense" I rediscovered an album I thought I hated and I bought the official download so I could relive that experience over and over again.

In July of 2003 Pearl Jam played Madison Square Garden and the fan club received orders for over 10,000 seats for fan club members. This is New York City�this is the Garden and it would have been within the band's right to say, "We're sorry but we can only accommodate 500 of these requests", but they didn't. They provided tickets to each and every fan club member. Granted, not all seats were great but the feeling within that legendary arena on that particular night was surreal and may have been the greatest gig Pearl Jam eve experienced. Could you imagine an arena size fan club only show? The roars, the yelps, and the screams�the FEELING you would have walking out of there. It's the type of experience that can change your outlook of that artist just not momentarily but forever.

When distributing tickets through a fan club, there are a few essential rules you must follow:

� Procure enough prime seats for a large amount of members. Pearl Jam does have a cut off limit (within reason). Reserving only a few hundred seats is a disservice to the fan and more importantly to the artist who misses out on potential merchandise sales these fan club members are guaranteed to buy.

� Allow members to choose between one and two seats. Some clubs like Pearl Jam only allow you to buy two seats, but Pearl Jam's tickets are very affordable and this makes sense. However, when tickets break the $100 barrier, I feel that fan clubs should offer an option of one or two tickets because not everyone will be able to find another fan to pay that much for their ticket.

� Do not rape your fans with service charges. If your fees for the tickets are more than Ticketmaster then it's time to re-think your model. This is gorging and nothing more.

� All tickets should be picked up at the Box Office the day of the show and tickets should be randomly given out. The seniority system of Pearl Jam works great but this is only because they had their act together from day-one. A random distribution system is the way to go and as I found out with Prince, he took care of everyone. There was a show in 2001 where Prince was badgering comedian Chris Tucker in the balcony of a club telling him he could have secured a better seat for Tucker if only he has joined Prince's fan club. Here is an A-grade artist putting his fans before celebrities and VIP's. Unheard of.

� If you have wide ranges in prices for tickets, offer cheaper options. This isn't an option for acts other than Pearl Jam, but every ticket for a fan club should be within the first twenty-rows of the floor or the four prime 100 level areas of the stage. If this still doesn't fit your demand for tickets then it's time for the artist to drop those enormous screens blocking seats behind the stage. These tickets should be a second level pricing and in the case of Bon Jovi, I don't think many fans would complain all that much about having a bird's eye view of Jon Bon Jovi's ass. However, the seats behind the stage should give a clear view and be unobstructed.

When you run a thing called a fan club it's bound to leave some people who are never satisfied but then again these are the type of people who find a $100 bill on the ground and bitch to their friends that it wasn't five $20 bills. However, if the bullet points above are followed, you are destined to have a very satisfied fan base who you will not only secure album to album, but because of the two tickets they can buy, they will bring you more fans. These aren't fans that watch Ellen and may download one song but fans that will not just join the fan club but buy your entire musical catalog.

Fan clubs must be looked at as investments. These are the type of people whom you will have to piss off immensely to have them turn their backs on you. I'm witnessing it first hand right now with two very specific fan clubs. One of them had a show in Chicago recently and there were still fan club packages that were never sold, something that is a prime example of how these packages are out of control in terms of price. This particular artist's fan club have upset their fans to the point where they just don't go anymore. Adding excessive service fee's onto tickets is a way to lose long standing customers, especially when other fan clubs don't do it. Why do some fan clubs scalp their own tickets or other don't? It's simple�.GREED. My main question is if Pearl Jam procures enough tickets and prices them at face value, why doesn't every artist do this? It's not that they can't, it's because they choose not to.

A fan club should be an organization that serves the loyal fan community and not a profiteering endeavor. This is how Pearl Jam does business and this is why even when the band has had a lower profile they were still able to sell out arenas. I would say that most artists that are really big have a core fan base that is in the range of 100,000. I would say Pearl Jam's is at least three-times that size. Instead of selling and offering eye-candy, they give fans what they really want; access. You can buy downloads of entire concerts, get a free magazine yearly and the aforementioned Christmas single. Even better than that, I know of a friend who couldn't get one of her downloads to work and when she emailed the club about it, someone responded the same day and assisted her.

If certain fan clubs think they can rip off their fans and treat them poorly then they have another thing coming. For well over a decade, one of my favorite Italian eateries in Chicago was a restaurant called Basta Pasta. The servings were enormous and the taste of the food was beyond delicious with wildly unique recipes that you couldn't concoct in your own kitchen even if your own mother came from Sicily. Now, I'll admit that the service at this restaurant was never the best. However, when one of the owners was on duty, I seemed to get either a free desert or a free appetizer every other time I was there. It was a simple gesture that went a long way. A month did not pass where I did not return. However, a few years back the owner sold the restaurant. The new owner, foolishly, tried to put his own stamp on the place. Instead of keeping a winning formula, he removed many of the most popular items, re-did the menu's, re-did advertising and raised almost every price on the menu by $5. Now, this may all seem like small items, but when a bowl of pasta costs $13 and it jumps to $18, there's something wrong. To make matters worse, the portions were smaller and even on many of the classic dishes, they didn't taste the same. I later came to find out that when the business switched hands, the new owner went cheap on everything. The previous owners bought all of their supplies (cheese, pasta, sauces, spices, etc.) from Taylor Street, a renowned Italian neighborhood in Chicago. The new owner bought the cheapest trying to maximize his profit. If this wasn't enough, service became rather horrendous. One friend of mine was seated at a table and they ordered drinks that did not appear for forty-five minutes. It was with little surprise when I found out that business closed it doors in early 2006. This was an Italian food empire and within two-years the new owner brought it to its knees and destroyed one of the best restaurants in Chicago.

Rock bands are a lot like restaurants. Fans will put up with missteps and mistakes, but when it starts affecting the way they listen to their music and their pocket book, they take a step back and begin to reevaluate whether they should be following this band. As mentioned earlier, one artist can't even sell all of their fan clubs packages anymore because of the excessive price of the packages. I see another artist whose fan club isn't far behind. While there will always be some people who will pay the excessive price, it will limit how many shows they see on a given tour.

If you were a restaurant owner would you want to raise your prices to the point where people come once a year or keep prices at a pace where you see that customer every week? Repeat customers make the world go round and round.

Anthony Kuzminski is a Chicago based writer and can be found at The Screen Door

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