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What Bruce Springsteen Can Teach the Music Business About Superfandom

The industry usually thinks about superfans in terms of young pop consumers. But Bruce Springsteen fans show the value of dedication over time.

I stayed in a hotel close to the venue, which was full of people like me — by which I mean Springsteen fans of a certain age ( ahem) who wanted to see the concert enough to travel from all over Northern Europe and, in some cases, the U.S. Industry executives often talk about how much superfans are worth in terms of the CDs or tchotchkes they buy, but it’s harder to measure the effect of fans who keep coming back over the course of years. At the same time, he makes every tour different and varies the set list every night, with moments of genuine magic — in Stockholm he delivered a haunting “Racing in the Street” and pulled a kid up onstage to sing the chorus of “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day.” Others keep going back to hear rare favorites — seeing Springsteen play “Jole Blon” in September 2012 was a profound experience for me, even if most of my friends had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.

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