Official Fan Clubs: A Requiem

The Jonas Brothers, Michael Jackson, the Beach Boys, The Twitter Fail Whale, Metallica, The Bee Gees, Battlestar Galactica, Beyonce, and SpongeBob.

The above list was generated through the simple process of googling the term "fan club." All of the above, along with the obligatory Wikipedia page, comprise the first page of hits. The list is stunning in its diversity, with cultural icons representative of every decade from the 1960s onward. What this might seem to imply is the constant presence and influence in society of the concept of a "fan club." However, a closer analysis reveals that there are two types of fan clubs: official and unofficial. And it might not be too much of a stretch to assert that an ongoing shift from the former to the latter is downright revolutionary.

The official fan club, which will almost always charge a membership fee, is marketed as a way to obtain a level of access unavailable to the non-member. This often manifests itself tangibly in the form of the "special offer" for exclusive merchandise, along with some kind of personalized recognition such as a "membership card/certificate." But while these tangible products are needed to seal the deal, what is really being sold is not access, but identity. There is a reason that Facebook asks for members to prominently list favorite music, movies, and books along with religious, political, and occupational affiliations. We are as apt to define ourselves by the things we like as the things we do. And if the fact that we like Metallica is central to our identity, it would be in Metallica's best interests to charge us for that.

But just as Metallica found out that it is getting harder to hold on to intellectual property rights, I think they will also find it increasingly more difficult to profit from intellectual affiliation (if they haven't already). Long before the world wide web, fandoms attempted to wrestle control of collective identity from the sanctioned gatekeepers (see "fanzines"). But with the web, the opportunities to declare independence from a prescribed fan identity abound. The need for a membership card is mitigated by the existence of a facebook group (and the ability to display this affiliation on one's profile). The opportunity to receive a newsletter is nullified by the existence of an independent message board. But most importantly, the power to identify a "fan" has been taken from the commercial entity and diffused among the consumers themselves.