How to Create Fan Personas with Music Streaming Insights [FREE TEMPLATE]

A persona is a fictional character whose characteristics and attributes represent the wants and needs of a larger group. Character personas are foundational standards for most marketing and design teams; they help tell the story of an audience’s behavior patterns, skills, attitudes, background, as well as the environment in which that audience operates. Music is a universal language, but it’s still important to understand that all bands and artists, regardless of the ubiquitousness of music, attract a specific type of person. Understanding what that person looks like, where they’re from, how old they are, and what they like and dislike is essential for strategically promoting and growing an artist’s fan base. 

With the help of cold hard data, you can easily create something as seemingly complex as what your average fan looks like. In this article, we’ll discuss how you can use your streaming data and smart link statistics to create fan personas. We’ve also included a free fan persona template so you can take that data and build out what your fanbase looks like. Let’s get into it. 

Accessing Analytics and Insights 

To start creating your fan personas, you’ll need to access your analytics. If your music has been distributed to Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music, then you’ve already got quality data waiting for you. Here’s the analytics you’ll want to look at on each of these platforms:

Spotify

• Age 
• Gender
• Top Countries 
• Top Cities 
• Source of Streams 

Apple Music

• Age
• Gender
• Top Countries 
• Top Cities 
• Songs they connect to the most 

YouTube 

• Age
• Gender
• Top Countries 
• Top Cities 

All of these platforms offer even more insight into your audience’s listening habits, but for the sake of creating personas we’ll stick with the bulleted points above. 

To access this data, you’ll have to log into your artist accounts.  For detailed instructions on how to access your analytics on each platform, we’ve linked articles straight from the source:

Spotify for Artists Analytics >>
Apple Music Analytics >> 
YouTube Analytics >>

Now that you have your hard data, you’ll want to review and analyze these metrics and assemble the information available on your current audience. Make note of the age range your listeners fall under, their gender, and list the top three countries and cities they reside in. We suggest organizing this data in a spreadsheet or standard document. After reviewing your streaming statistics, you should be able to draw a picture of your fan like this: 

My average listener is between 18 to 24 years old, identifies as female, resides in the US, and is living in either New York or LA. 

Gathering Psychographic Data

We’re diving a bit deeper now into your average fan’s psychographic data. While streaming insights can give you knowledge about your fan’s buying and listening habits, you’ll want to use your own judgment, fan interaction experiences, and audience interviews to paint a picture of your average fan’s interests and personalities. 

To achieve this, you’ll want to create a written survey to send to your fans (email contacts or posting a survey typeform on social media is a good start), or sit down for 1:1 casual interviews. Some good questions to ask would be: 

• What do you like to do in your free time?
• Would you call yourself an optimist or a pessimist?
• Which social platforms do you use, and how often?
• What are some challenges you face?
• How would you describe your personality?
• What are your goals and aspirations?

If you’re going the 1:1 interview route, try to keep your questions the same for each person. You’ll want to look for similarities between your interviewees and make note of those.  

Creating Your Fan Personas

Now that you have all of your demographic and psychographic information compiled, sorted, and reviewed, it’s time to build your fan personas! After all that research and data analysis, we’re going to make this last step as simple as possible for you. 

Download our free template below to start building out your fan persona! Going forward, you can use this template in your marketing efforts to create content, curate merchandise, define your target audience for advertising, and more. 

Download Our Free Fan Persona Template