Stationhead announced the launch of a new feature on Wednesday (May 28): Collections, which allows users to show off the physical and digital merchandise that they have bought through the fandom platform.
“We were inspired by what fans were already doing,” Ryan Star, founder and CEO of Stationhead, said in a statement. “They would post receipts to prove they were there first — that they didn’t just show up late to the party. We wanted to honor that devotion and make it more fun, meaningful, and permanent.”
Stationhead debuted in 2017 as an app that allowed Spotify subscribers to transform their playlists into personalized radio stations. “It turns everybody into a DJ, basically,” Troy Carter said at the time. “You can play music, you can go live, there’s a great flow and people are commenting — it’s almost as if you took Facebook Live and layered it onto the platform.” When the civilian-turned-DJ played music, every listener also streamed it on their Spotify account, so the streams counted towards the charts.
In January 2023, the platform added “channels,” rooms dedicated to the fanbases of specific artists. A year later, when “superfan” became the buzzword of choice for the major labels, Stationhead was well positioned to take advantage of additional interest.
The company says it now has 20 million users, and half of them are between 18 and 25. It makes money primarily from taking a portion of downloads that are sold through the platform.
The rollout of Collections follows close on the heels of another new initiative, Stationhead Shop, which launched in March, allowing artists to sell their merch on the platform through an integration with Shopify.
The goal of Stationhead Shop, Star explained, was twofold: To “combine the excitement of the merch booth with the scale and social currency of a gaming platform,” while also providing artists with another way “to monetize and build direct relationships with their most passionate and loyal fans.”
After fans buy something, they now have the ability to flaunt their purchase. “In a world where your online identity matters, this is how fandom shows up,” Star added. “If Roblox and Fortnite taught a generation to express themselves through virtual skins and items, we see Stationhead Collections becoming that for music.”