Hi {{first_name|there}},

If you’re a music fan, this is about you: the data says your support counts more than streaming numbers show. Last week Goldman Sachs released Music in the Air, its yearly forecast for the global music business. In the section on direct-to-consumer sales, the bank admits it has been underestimating Superfans.

For years Goldman assumed a Superfan spends about twice what an average listener does. Now it says that number is too low. When fans can pay what they want on an artist's own storefront, close to half pay more than the minimum.

Many of you took our State of Music survey this spring (thank you). And many more have seen the Summary of Findings. One of the questions we asked fans was what they pay for streaming each month, and whether they'd pay more if artists were paid fairly. Here's how they answered:

The fans already paying the most were the most willing to pay more. Our numbers are what fans told us they'd do. Goldman's are what fans did with real money. Both point to the same conclusion: Superfans can fuel an independent career.

I conducted this survey because I was curious. It’s an independent survey conducted by an independent podcast host, without the giant budget of a Wall Street financial institution. And I am proud to say that my survey results of real people and real artists hit the nail on the head without any financial backing or infrastructure.

The full report profiles the fans at the top of that table: how they find new music, how they want to connect with artists, and where their money goes outside streaming. Some of it runs against the standard advice independent artists hear every day, including a finding I call The Content Trap.

Free Summary of Findings: Get your free summary here.

If you try any of this on your next release, hit reply and tell me how it goes. I'd love to share what's working with the rest of the artists on this list.

Album Review: Eliot Bronson, Arrive

In September 2024, at AmericanaFest in Nashville, I asked Eliot Bronson what he was curious about. He had spent most of a year touring Talking to Myself, the most stripped-down record he had ever made, mostly one man and a guitar. I figured he would want to keep working that vein. Instead the Atlanta-based artists told me he felt pulled the other way. "I feel called to like, turn the energy up a bit," he said. "Get a little louder." He wanted to find out what "the current version of me, adult me, has to offer in that department." Arrive, out November 6 on his own New Pain Records, is what he came back with.

Oliver Wood of The Wood Brothers produced it at his studio in Nashville and called it "a departure from anything Eliot's done before." There's a full band now, a fiddle, a Wurlitzer, a horn section on one song. The bigger change is underneath. These songs, Eliot says, "aren't fueled by pain or grief but by abundance."

The review covers the church he grew up in, the song he almost kept from Oliver Wood, and the two-minute closer that sums up the whole record. Read the full review here:

If this newsletter has given you something worth passing along, send it to one friend who loves music. When they subscribe, you get The Vault: eight pages of the most memorable things guests have said on Curious Goldfish. Some funny, some random, some might get you through the day.

Cam Cole was once fined £10,000 for busking. ThenTed Lasso put him on screen. He still plays the street, because he wants to know if strangers will stop.

Millions of strangers decided who Brendan Abernathy was in 30 seconds. A frew threatened his life for singing a song a beach for his friends. He kept writing anyway, and he'll tell you he didn't get it all wrong.

What is the LA-Based Singer-Songwriter and Song of Two Music Legends Most Curious About?

Thank you for reading and for supporting the podcast. Remember, don't just be a goldfish…be a curious one. — Jason English, Host.