Gagas Fan Base Has Shrunk... Broad Appeal Increased

[Economy 50,368]

I was having this discussion with another user a couple days back and its something i noticed in the last few years tbh...

 

When Gaga first came out although she had overall mass appeal and popularity with GP with first few singles... by the time we got to Paparazzi/Bad Romance her dedicated fan base kept exploding while her broad appeal started to take a hit as people found her "too weird and desperate".

 

By the time we got to the end of TFM and Born This Way, most people no longer "liked" Gaga, but those that did, REALLY did and at the time her fans were carrying her still successful career. For years more she remained disliked by the GP but with a dedicated fan base although it had shrunk somewhat by ARTPOP (and what little GP support she hadeft erroaded)

 

As years went by a she repaired her image with Jazz era (showed her raw talent and that she could do more than just excentric gimmicks)... and Joanne era largely reinforced this... Super Bowl and A Star Is Born then largely put her back on the map....

 

The interesting thing is, her hardcore dedicated fan base never got as big as it once was. And tbh these days my anecdotal experience is also that I rarely meet hardcore Gaga fans. Yet, she has a lot of casual fans now and broad based appeal. The exact opposite of 2011 to 2014 days

 

While shes few ppls fav artist. She is liked and respected by most even straight men i know. Even in my warehouse where its mostly guys in their 20s, 30s and early 40s almost no one "dislikes" her and most at least like her with 3 or 4 of them having played her music in playlists at least once before 

 

Yet very few ppl are obsessed with her like Taylor Swift or Sabrina Carpenter. May explain how she can get #3 on most monthly listeners on spotify but a top 10 is a challenge and a half...

 

Interestingly, way fewer people seem like like Taylor Swift than Lady Gaga... yet the people who like Taylor like her WAY more than Gaga who most people like casually

[salty like sodium 1,983]

9 minutes ago, Economy said:

I was having this discussion with another user a couple days back and its something i noticed in the last few years tbh...

 

When Gaga first came out although she had overall mass appeal and popularity with GP with first few singles... by the time we got to Paparazzi/Bad Romance her dedicated fan base kept exploding while her broad appeal started to take a hit as people found her "too weird and desperate".

 

By the time we got to the end of TFM and Born This Way, most people no longer "liked" Gaga, but those that did, REALLY did and at the time her fans were carrying her still successful career. For years more she remained disliked by the GP but with a dedicated fan base although it had shrunk somewhat by ARTPOP (and what little GP support she hadeft erroaded)

 

As years went by a she repaired her image with Jazz era (showed her raw talent and that she could do more than just excentric gimmicks)... and Joanne era largely reinforced this... Super Bowl and A Star Is Born then largely put her back on the map....

 

The interesting thing is, her hardcore dedicated fan base never got as big as it once was. And tbh these days my anecdotal experience is also that I rarely meet hardcore Gaga fans. Yet, she has a lot of casual fans now and broad based appeal. The exact opposite of 2011 to 2014 days

 

While shes few ppls fav artist. She is liked and respected by most even straight men i know. Even in my warehouse where its mostly guys in their 20s, 30s and early 40s almost no one "dislikes" her and most at least like her with 3 or 4 of them having played her music in playlists at least once before 

 

Yet very few ppl are obsessed with her like Taylor Swift or Sabrina Carpenter. May explain how she can get #3 on most monthly listeners on spotify but a top 10 is a challenge and a half...

 

Interestingly, way fewer people seem like like Taylor Swift than Lady Gaga... yet the people who like Taylor like her WAY more than Gaga who most people like casually

totally agreed.

I was basically what Swifties are today for Gaga back during the BTW era. (Maybe not as insane... But I was really listening to her all the time and loved her music and desperate to meet her/watch her perform).

Over the years I've gotten a lot more casual. I was still invested at the start of the Artpop era but that faded probably as soon as the vomit artist got brought in. And also the artrave stuff... Rave culture doidn't appeal to me.

I could've gotten lower bowl seats to the artpop tour the day before the show for like $110 and I decided I didn't want to because the born this way ball was better.

Then the jazz thing happened and I wanted to see that London show but my show was cancelled. I still wonder who she actually won over with the jazz crowd – like the whole Vegas residency... Who was the target audience? was it monsters? jazz fans? something else? gp?

Joanne happened and I lost interest a lot there. I listened to the album but it didn't hit me the same way. ASIB was nice but it wasn't MY gaga. I kind of got back into it with Chromatica and Mayhem was also a huge win (and I also loved Harlequin)... but now I'm more into Beyoncé than Gaga as an artist, like my fandom for Gaga is not the same it used to be if that makes sense. I still love her and her music but her eras haven't connected with me as much as BTW did way back when (and BTW was my entire life).

[ALGAYDO 32,963]

Don’t forget that a big part of this is because her early-days hardcore fans were mostly teenagers, as we all grew up and became functioning adults, most of us don’t have the time or energy to Stan the way we used to, and some have outright stopped  participating in Stan-culture altogether (but are still big fans). 
 

and a HUGE chunk of Taylor’s fans are kids, pre-teens, and teenagers, who do have the time and energy to Stan Taylor as hard as they can, Gaga just doesn’t have that kind of fanbase anymore. 
 

but I also have to disagree that more people casually like Gaga than Taylor, based solely on my own personal experience, more people “like” Taylor and her music than Gaga, which is perfectly fine because Gaga just doesn’t make super GP-friendly music (she does here and there like with Shallow and DWAS, which are her biggest hits ever) 

[salty like sodium 1,983]

3 minutes ago, ALGAYDO said:

Don’t forget that a big part of this is because her early-days hardcore fans were mostly teenagers, as we all grew up and became functioning adults, most of us don’t have the time or energy to Stan the way we used to, and some have outright stopped  participating in Stan-culture altogether (but are still big fans). 
 

and a HUGE chunk of Taylor’s fans are kids, pre-teens, and teenagers, who do have the time and energy to Stan Taylor as hard as they can, Gaga just doesn’t have that kind of fanbase anymore. 
 

but I also have to disagree that more people casually like Gaga than Taylor, based solely on my own personal experience, more people “like” Taylor and her music than Gaga, which is perfectly fine because Gaga just doesn’t make super GP-friendly music (she does here and there like with Shallow and DWAS, which are her biggest hits ever) 

idk i feel like shallow, dwas and bad romance are perfect examples of how gaga's appeal is broader. taylor has hits but mainly because there are so many swifties imo. Gaga's music does pour into the GP a lot more. Shallow was everywhere when it came out.

[Starmie25 19,345]

While Gaga does have her more "casual listeners aka USA" sometimes, overall she has built a strong community (fanbase) and they will continue to check for her new music (streaming) and purchase tickets, whether it be arena or stadium.

[Lextyr97 20,065]

I mean maybe but at least in my experience, I’ve just become a lot more casual. I became a Stan right before Joanne and I bought like 5 or so copies of Joanne but I wouldn’t do that again nowadays cause I’m older and that’s a waste of money. I think her fanbase just aged and see her more as a friend than a goddess or something like Swifties with Taylor

[palma 8,253]

well we aged as a fanbase and then there are the bandwagoners who tend to jump ship once the artist in question is no longer the it girl... She still has a massive fanbase, especially in her secondary markets (Eastern Europe and Latin America most strikingly). I don't know a gay person of my age in Turkey who doesn't adore her.

She played the long game by being the divisive artist with a strong core fanbase, which will continue to buy tour tickets well into her 70s - once her peers' hits are forgotten, so they are. Gaga became big and respected as an artist, not as a singer/hit-maker over the last decade, which is the key to a sustainable career. 

While I agree her die-hard fanbase did shrink, including those alienated by the long gaps between albums and C2C/Joanne/ASIB, I think she did a lot this past year to revitalize it and by the look of the Mayhem Ball sales, it seems like it worked?  MAYHEM has been doing a lot better than Chromatica on streaming, even without DWAS. 

I still don't see LG8 opening above 250k in the US though - unless she pulls an ASIB 2.0 with palatable HAC radio hits and manages to market it to the masses somehow.