As the concept of superfandom gained interest in the Western music industry a few years ago, a broad ecosystem of platforms built from the ground up quickly emerged and garnered larger industry backing.
One company that’s taken advantage of this blooming market is UMG, which made expanding its direct-to-fan services a core tenet of its “Streaming 2.0” initiative back in 2024. Not quite two years later, and as other music company leaders are just beginning to catch up, the label group showed off its robust ecosystem of recent superfan-related key investments and partnerships during its FY 2025 earnings call.
These numerous deals across a wide array of services make clear that the group’s superfan ambitions go well beyond the usual examples of, say, premium streaming subscriptions. By extension, UMG’s confidence in these superfan-centric companies underscores its belief that the market is just beginning to heat up.
UMG is far from the only major music company dedicating money and attention to superfans, but its approach is fairly different from its Big Three counterparts. While both Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment seem more focused on developing in-house resources and acquiring back-end tech, UMG is primarily banking on high-profile companies that have already made a splash within the industry and built solid footholds in the fandom market.
Or more to the point, UMG is partnering with companies that have already cracked the superfan code instead of using its own time and resources to solve it from scratch.
That approach may explain why some of the company’s earliest superfan-related moves were in Asia, where superfandom has long been a driver of the region’s key music markets. Its partnership with Tencent Music Entertainment in 2023, for instance, came just a year after the Chinese streaming giant launched its Super VIP subscription tier, which surpassed 20 million users last year.
A key component of UMG’s 2024 partnership with HYBE was access to Weverse, the subscription-based “superfan app” that has 12 million monthly active global users as of Q4 2025.
Outside of Asia, UMG is wasting no time in bringing the early breakthroughs into its purview. The company kicked off 2026 by acquiring a minority stake in Stationhead, a virtual “listening party” platform launched in 2021 with 20 million users as of last year.
Just weeks later, they struck a multiyear partnership with EVEN, a direct-to-fan platform for artists to sell music and merchandise that has had over 500,000 artists join via direct signup since launching in 2024.
But even as UMG backs more established superfan players, the company is willing to take bigger swings. The best example of such is its partnership with Udio, which will test both UMG’s “walled garden” approach to AI regulation and its belief in AI as an untapped superfan income stream.
Most surprisingly, UMG is even getting into brick-and-mortar businesses in the name of superfans, with plans to bring retail stores to New York and London and, as part of a new JV with IMI Group, develop luxury hospitality experiences.
Despite the superfan market’s rapid development, UMG CEO Sir Lucian Grainge emphasized during the earnings call that it remains “massively undermonetized” and “only scrapes the surface of our potential.” That mindset may help explain why UMG is casting such a wide net and putting its extensive resources and artist roster behind everything from social media apps to beach resorts.
Luminate data shows Grainge and Co. are right to think the superfan market is not fully exploited. U.S. Music 360 data shows the percentage of U.S. superfans — music listeners who regularly engage with artists in at least five ways — has grown from 18% in 2023 to 20% in 2025.
Additionally, the ways in which superfans are interested in engaging with musical artists are more diverse than the average listener. While activities such as attending concerts and buying physical merchandise are high among both U.S. superfans and general music listeners, the gap between the two groups widens with more niche activities, including joining a Discord group, subscribing to an artist’s newsletter or directly funding the artist via platforms such as Patreon.
It’s within these more superfan-leaning activities where platforms like EVEN, Stationhead and Weverse come in and have so far found substantial success. Assuming superfans’ passion and spending power will stay this strong going forward, UMG’s vision of superfandom may just come to pass in the near future.
