Warner Music, Sony Music, And Others Raises $2 Million In Strategic Funding For Superfan Platform Favorite

The competition to commercialize music superfans is heating up, and one of the field’s leading businesses says it’s raising millions more for its AI-powered superfan platform.

Fave, a social networking platform and fan-centric home for celebrity obsessives, has raised USD $2 million as part of an ongoing investment round that is expected to reach $6 million.

Early investors such as Warner Music, Sony Music, and the Female Founders Fund have returned to the round, as have some new investors such as Lyor Cohen, the Global Head of Music at Google and YouTube, and Shiva Rajaraman, the Chief Business Officer at OpenSea and a former VP at Meta and Spotify.

Alexandra Moore, Chief Business Officer at Empire and former General Manager at Amazon; Gen-Z expert and gaming investor Faye Maidment, as part of the Atomico Angel Program; and Switzerland-based investors Alberto Cozzi and Mario Andrea Cozzi are among the new investors.

Xoogler.co, which focuses on investments in former Google employee firms, as well as “the world’s first closed-loop investment firm” Goodwater and venture capital firm Gaingels, also participated in the round.

In 2021, the company raised $2.2 million in a seed round.

The Fave platform, founded and maintained by Jacquelle Amankonah Horton, started in beta in 2021 as a place for fandoms to connect, tell tales about their favorite artists, and examine song lyrics. It also has a marketplace for fan-made merchandise.

Taylor Swift’s Swifties, Bruno Mars’ Hooligans, and the BTS ARMY, fans of K-pop duo BTS, whose label HYBE is an early sponsor of Fave, were among the first to flock to the platform.

“I can’t think of a better person to take on this mission,” Rajaraman said in a statement about Horton. “She’s created a clear, high-impact plan that prioritizes fans while making it simple for creators to engage.” It is an honor for me to participate in this round and support the team.”

Fave attributes its “groundbreaking” music company deals to “AI-powered fan intelligence” and a “laser focus on empowering superfans.” According to the startup, it intends to release a “suite of products for artist teams to find and reach superfans using this unique intelligence.”

The latest amount of funding will be used “to deepen the power of these tools, expand them into other entertainment markets, and create more meaningful ways for fans to come together on- and offline, like never before,” according to Fave in a statement.

The fundraising round comes at a time when the music industry is increasingly focusing on monetizing superfans as a potentially substantial source of revenue.

While streaming platforms such as Spotify develop new goods and services to engage superfans, companies are now entering the fray, promising to connect superfans with artists in monetizable ways. And, like Fave, these companies are increasingly incorporating AI into the mix, both as creative tools for fans or artists and as analytical tools for creators and marketers.

“WE’VE SPENT YEARS PROMOTING SUPERFANS. THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY IS BECOMING AWARE OF HOW IMPORTANT THEY ARE TO ARTISTS’ LONGEVITY, AND THEY ARE TURNING TO US AS THE EXPERTS.” FAVE JACQUEELLE AMANKONAH HORTON

As an example, fan engagement platform Afterparty.ai recently announced a $5 million funding round, which it intends to use to develop its new AI-powered platform, which will allow fans to interact one-on-one with their favorite artists via AI-generated content.

Goldman Sachs researchers projected that full monetization of superfans may raise the music industry’s revenue by roughly $4 billion in the newest edition of the Music In The Air study. This figure is based on estimations that 20% of current music streaming paying users are superfans who are willing to spend twice as much on music as non-superfans.

“We’ve spent years advocating for superfans,” Horton added. “The entertainment industry has begun to recognize how important they are to the longevity of artists, and they are turning to us as the experts.”

“We’ve thankfully built strong trust with fans, and our products are seen as win-win, finally allowing the industry to efficiently see who an artist’s biggest supporters are, what activities they are engaging in across the fan experience, and at what intensity level – even things fans do that no one else captures, like having a tattoo of the artist or memorizing all of their lyrics – which are far better indicators of fandom than the black box of streaming data alone.”

“The strength of our relationships across the music industry has allowed us to turn our supporters into our customers, and we’re excited to move into creator communities beyond music that can just as powerfully benefit from recognizing and better understanding their most passionate fans.”

In a 2021 interview with MBW, Horton stated that her platform is experimenting with many types of fandoms, and she is particularly eager in seeing how sports fandoms expand on Fave.

“Sports is really good at fandom and leveraging their fans already, but do they have any value with this?” she said.

What works for one fandom often does not work for another.

“Even the Swifties and the ARMY are very different fandoms.” What works for one does not work for the other, but we want to learn about the details that do work so that we can provide fan partners with a blueprint to begin establishing their own fandoms… We’ll be opening the floodgates to many more fandoms as soon as we collect this data.”

Warner Music, Sony Music, And Others Raises $2 Million In Strategic Funding For Superfan Platform Favorite

The competition to commercialize music superfans is heating up, and one of the field’s leading businesses says it’s raising millions more for its AI-powered superfan platform.

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