SELLING OUT Page 3

The Fan

Since fans are obviously an essential part of the equation, how can a fan be defined?
Again, a separation must be made to differentiate between people who like to listen to music and those who are active followers of a genre or artist. People that like to have the radio on, have a favorite CD, or even occasionally go to concerts should not be automatically referred to as fans. Surely these people would call themselves fans but for separation sake, they will be referred to as casual listeners. To be more specific, casual listeners are generally those who those who might answer "oh, I don't know, I like lots of stuff" to the question, "What is your favorite song or album?". To elaborate, casual listeners find no problem identifying with performers (as I previously defined) or musical artists. More specifically, casual listeners are often aware of the aspect of their conformity in the music industry that Dick Hebdige cites in Style as Homology and Signifying Practice (1979) and they just aren't concerned about it (Frith).

Fans are more intense in their love for good music. They find themselves associated with a sub-culture that might or might not at the given time be in the mainstream. As Gary Clarke notes in his cynical yet true account Defening Ski-Jumpers (1981), sub-cultures will always exist and always be taken advantage of (Frith). Thus it is important to distinguish that fans are not the kind to attach themselves to a short term trend, only to hop on a new bandwagon only months later. In other words, a fan of grunge music is not someone who owned Nirvana's Nevermind album but is now into Matchbox 20. A grunge fan is one who was into the Meatpuppets and Mother Love Bone, was thrilled when Nirvana and others got their moment, and is still around even though grunge's moment in the mainstream has long past. Fans are the ones who will make or break a "musical artist" not a performer.

The most important thing to note about fans is their connection to their musical genre or artist. The connection is often deep, and thus the feelings are profound if a trust is betrayed. Fans are often times not understanding of why "their" band made a certain move, while artists are often confused as to why "their" fans react in a certain manner. The relationship is codependent. Without one, the other suffers.

As David Riesman states of defining fans in Listening to Popular Music (1950), "the danger exists then of assuming that the other audience, the audience one does not converse with, is more passive, more manipulated, more vulgar in taste, than may be the case" (Frith). In other words that the casual listener is less important than a true fan. Again, the point here is to differentiate that the casual listener and the fan are separate entities, not to say that one is more important than the other.

Now that the artist/fan relationship has been properly defined, we can move forward to conceptualize how this relationship directly determines what selling out is. Rather than take the side of either the artist or the fan and push for change that will never occur, we can objectively look at the facts of today's industry and see how the artist/fan relationship directs it.

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