Scientists explain that the brain is not, in the field of market research, the real brain of the customer: it is the brain of a company taking care of the customer and it tries to learn how to best deal with the customer and how to provide a great experience to the customer. It is about knowing customers, then reaching them and finally delighting them.
That brain never forgets any event and has a high-resolution photographic memory related to the customer’s movements, trying to make the next best action. And it is not only about collecting data and analyzing them. The brain's decisions are relevant both for inbound marketing (where it is the customer which moves toward the company via a call center or a mobile app) and outbound marketing (where the company assumes movements via email, sms, telephony or postal mail). These two styles of marketing are customer centric, trying to know customers individually (as customers want to be known individually, and to offer the right message, the right offer and the right level of service in each communication).
The customer brain helps to foster a brand identity. A brand is not a logo, a product; it is the emotional connection between a company and its customers, especially when it comes to millenials because they are the first generation not directly connected to their parents’ brands. That is why brands who want to approach millenials must express their beliefs.
A lot of music composers, who are their own brand, say : 'Music is not what I do, it is who I am'. And the average popular music listener claims: 'Music is my life'. How can it be and what are the consequences of these perceptions ? We can say that, both for music composers and their audiences, for music stars and their fandoms, music is part of their identity.
First, we must explain why music has an identity. Music is a metaphor for identity. It has an identity because people who make and use it shape it, so music has a life of its own. Music identity is mobile in the sense that it is a process and not a thing, a becoming and not a being. Like identity, music is both a performance and a story which describes the social and the individual. Music is a key to identity because it provides a sense of both self and others; it creates links between people.
Different types of musical activities produce different sorts of musical identities (for example, ambient house music combines rave culture and minimalism; and Christian music is linked to specific worship and the traditional baroque and romantic music culture), but how musical works form identities is the same. It is about combining an intense cognitive experience and a high-quality emotional pleasure, judgment being an important part of the process.
The first type of people to express judgments related to music are musicians themselves. They judge the music itself as well as the contexts where it is accessible online. When they build their musical identity, they make a career move. They want to create unique branding identifiers and capitalize on them. Some are trendsetters in specific music genres, exposing what their music represents to the audience.
Also, let us define what exactly a fan is. The word appeared in American English, in 1899 and its meaning was 'devotee'. It was then related to baseball. 'Fan' is probably a shortening of 'fanatic'. The simplest etymology links 'fanatic' to 'fanum', the latin word for 'temple'. In the first century BCE, the priests who served Bellona, a Roman war goddess, would make blood sacrifices during her annual festival. The priests were seen as being crazed by the goddess: the priests were literally fanatic. That is why, when the word 'fan' appeared in English during the 16th century, it meant 'person possessed with divine fury'.
'Fanatic' could also be linked to 'fancy', coming from 'fantasy', and 'fantasy' had various meanings : 'inclination, liking (middle of the 15th century), 'productive imagination' (end of the 16th century), 'fanciful image or conception' (middle of the 17th century). Finally, 'Fandom' is attested by 1903, designing a group of avid enthusiasts, and 'fanclub' appears in 1930.
A fan is a person with great enthusiasm, generally uncritical, for a person or a cause. That zeal may be excessive and irrational. Now, how do fans select the music that will become a part of their identity? As the experience of music is an experience linked to personal identity, their choices depend on their emotional reactions, the state of their bodies and the context where they find the music. Indeed, identity is something that people try on, taking it in culture.
Let us notice that listeners create their identity as music fans via symbolic interactions. In that context, music sharing, as well as listening, is a representation of a musical identity: music listeners want to show their 'true self'. For example when they create and share playlists, which become forms of self-expression reflecting a genre, a mood or a relationship. In that sense, music listeners or more specifically fandoms aare distancing themselves from ancient forms where fandoms were communities worshipping an idol. Now fans, or more simply music listeners, may express their personalities via social media accounts, make new friends through fandom and even get rewards from a star or a star's management staff.
What does a fan actually bring to social media ? Discovery, intimacy and collective identity. They may talk about their favorite stars or about the fact that music festivals give them what they want (generally escape from reality and great entertainment). Sometimes, more serious subjects emerge (how music reshapes or preserves the cultural identity of a community, helps in resolvin) gender problems and so on. All their actions and realities (music as a ritual, fandom in media, musical training within fandom, music fan communities, music fandom and tourism, etc.) are studied, for example by the Journal of Fandom Studies, and music brands take these data into account in the framework of decision making.
Now, for fandom, what is music fandom about ? Socially speaking, it is about being different and being appreciated for that, because that state of mind and attitude is often forbidden in daily life contexts. Difference is expressed by symbolic interactions, as music is a symbolic system of meaning which allows the assumption of the self to emerge. What does this mean? Put more simply, it means that music allows communities of people who share the same symbols and values to appear. In these communities, individuals develop self-concepts through interactions with others. Especially during concerts, which may be the place where individuals express changes that happen in their lives in a ritual way (with accessories and even paintings). They also may adopt the ethics of specific artists, developing a complete musical imagery, through lyrics, videos and music itself, which is partly an involuntary musical imagery, or involuntary semantic memories, i.e. reliving musical memories without conscious attempts to do so. Let us finally notice that involuntary musical imagery developed by fans may have a role in music performance: it is a support for artists.