As a side note, one common distinguishing factor of a superfan is that he or she becomes a superfan while young. The early stages of being a superfan requires the sort of time and energy that few people above the age of 25 are able to muster, as increasing life responsibilities kick in. And so while remaining a superfan of a given artist after 25 is not necessarily a problem--just ask anyone who has been to a Bruce Springsteen concert in the last 15 years--becoming one for the first time after 25 is rather unlikely. The implication for fan-engagement strategy is that artists will be attracting fans who are exclusively in the teens or early 20s. There's not necessarily anything wrong with this either. And, to be sure, popular rock bands of the past by and large got their start with fans in the same age group. The thing is, by 2009, the idea that rock'n'roll music must somehow be the province of teens and college students is at once quaint and wrong-headed. By now there have been at least two generations who have grown up on rock music and are no longer in their teens and 20s. These people by and large still listen to rock music, and many are still interested in music that is not merely the same old stuff they grew up with. The music industry has never successfully tapped into this group. Older rock fans are thought only to be interested in going to Eagles concerts, and maybe Steely Dan concerts. This is an idiotic presumption, but the less the industry has promoted itself to older fans, the more this sort of thing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so a big extra problem with the fan engagement model, from my point of view, is that it obviously perpetuates the idea that only young people are interested in new music. [return to main essay]