I recently attended an in store for radio rock band. To be honest I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. Not so much with the band or the music, because I know the guys and know the music. More with whom was going to be there. I was genuinely interested with who would take time out at 10pm on a Tuesday night to make their way to the heart of Hollywood to hear a few songs from one of radios biggest artists from 6 years ago.

The reality is the band has not had a hit in the past 6 years and commercial has been a major disappointment in comparison to their first effort. This is not to say the music is bad or the latter album sales were even bad, just in comparison to an almost platinum debut record they were far lower, even though many start up bands would kill to sell even half the records their failures did. To be honest in regards to the music, it isn’t my style, but then again the vast majority of what is played on radio or what would be lumped into this genre isn’t my taste, so I can’t really judge the music. I don’t think it is particularly fair to judge any artist in a genre your not involved in.

I came to this in store with the intention to write an article about their fan base. Who is it? Why do they still go to in stores and find this band interesting? What demographic, race, sexuality or gender is their fan base? Typically when attending an event like this you can pin point who an artists fans are. This was not the case with this particular in store. Their fans were completely diverse. This is extremely strange because in all my years in music I have never seen such diversity in a hardcore fan base. The crowd was filled with everyone from 50 year olds to 6 year olds wearing the artists merchandise. It was quite insane.

I continued the entire night to pin point why this was. Who are these people? How did they hear of this artist and what turned them on to their music? The illustration of the landscape at this particular in store was so broad, that one mass of advertising could not have possibly reached all these people. Then I realized, one can. This in store showed the undeniable power of early 2000’s radio rock.

This artist has no vision for a fan base because radio has no vision for a fan base. This artist is all across the spectrum because radio is all across the spectrum. This is a perfect example of an artist not building a fan base organically instead relying on the power of modern frequency to mobilize a legion of fans, as a result the band lacks fans with anything in common with each other.

This realization explains a lot, because I have been noticing a lack of unity between this artists fans for some time. Most other artists whom have had their time to shine years ago still have a tight knit (although small) fan base that has developed a community around said artist. This is not the case with this particular artist. As the artist has completely relied on radio to inform, ignite and develop their fan base, they are left with a dying race of fans with no loyalty to one another. I guess we are right, radio does kill.

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