For musicians, 1000 true fans may be the way to lift their sales, and therefore their careers, out of the flat plains of the Long Tail. Looking for information about 1000 fans, I entered ‘1000 friends’ as a search term in Google - it returned 12.2 million results. Here are the Google results.

In this context there isn’t much difference between ‘fans’ - who support musicians and artists, and ‘friends’ - who tend to support causes and the environment. For instance, 1000 Friends of Houston wants 1000 people to donate $100 each to kick start an initiative to improve livability in Houston. Meanwhile the musician Jill Sobule put up a web site asking for donations to make a new album. She needed $75,000. If you visit the site today she happily proclaims that she has achieved her goal and recording is under way. Here’s her original post setting out her goals and the different levels of donor participation.

Kevin Kelly, who describes himself as follows: “Kevin Kelly is a Senior Maverick at Wired magazine and is currently editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website” says in a post at his site, The Technium, “A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.”

Kelly’s article [from which I borrowed that image] provoked a lot of comment and in one case an outright rebuttal from a musician who has been using the 1000 fans technique to sell his music. As this musician wrote, he couldn’t make a living from operating with such low income. [I would argue that the real point of reaching out to your true fans is networking and not about trying to make a living solely from the income derived this way. It should be treated as another arrow in the quiver of tools that musicians already use.] Kelly then wrote another article entitled ‘The Case Against 1000 True Fans.’ The debate continues.

I like the idea of 1000 true fans. It’s rather like a patronage and when it works it must be wonderful to be that artist who feels the affirmation of her fans. Yet what if it doesn’t work? Fundable is a web site that helps artists by putting up the page that solicits the donations. If the artist requests $5000 for her next work to be created but falls short of that goal then no one pays. Fundable helps in two ways 1. It’s an easy way to create a web site for this purpose, and 2. Artists learn how many fans are willing to support their endeavor before starting a new project.

Arguably these groups of donors are more than just ’super fans’ of artists, they are a micro social network. In April, Peter Bowman, a contributor to the web site Internet Evolution wrote a post about the emergence of micro social networking. He argues that companies and businesses that have built micro-sites for their brands are now branching out and creating micro social networks and asks:

“Will this growing micro-social trend dilute the existing power of social network elites like Facebook and MySpace , or will they empower more people to participate in a wider selection of online communities based on their individual needs and wants? Large brands and businesses have been using micro-site spinoffs to vertically promote products and services while targeting a very defined and loyal online market. Micro-sites have worked wonders for companies that want to align something specific to a targeted online audience. Now, there is a growing movement to transform micro-sites into micro-social networks to become more in line with Web 2.0 applications that aim to engage users with more interactivity and peer-to-peer networking options.”

I think he’s right. As people tire of the faceless anonymity of Facebook and MySpace they will either seek out or start their own network to attract like-minded people to their particular cause, movement, musical group or hobby; a group such as the one that donated $83,000 to Jill Sobule. Sobule should start a Ning network to help all those people stay in touch with each other. After all, they share a common goal.

On a much larger level, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails had huge success with his direct sales set up where he sold a deluxe package that was a combination of MP3s, CDs, DVDs and a book that he called an “Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition” package available in an edition of 2,500 units. Critics scoffed but he sold every one of them raking in around $750,000 gross. That’s a micro social network in action. His next release, ‘The Slip’ comes as digipak CD in a limited edition of 200,000 units.

Dave Allen, Director, Insights & Digital Media, Nemo Design.

Related Post: On Social Media, Blogs and Advertising.