Originally shared in The Scoop, a weekly email on what's working in direct-to-fan. Subscribe to get stories like this in your inbox every Friday.
When Triple 8 Management launched the Swim Team — Johnnyswim's official fan club — hundreds of fans signed up within days and pledged up to $85 a year.
That kind of conversion doesn't come from a strong launch. It comes from years of work that happens long before anyone's asked to pay.
This is the story of the groundwork.
First — meet the band.
Amanda Sudano and Abner Ramirez have been making music together for over twenty years. They're the kind of act where fans drive four hours to a show and still talk about a setlist from 2018 like it just happened.
That level of devotion doesn't appear out of nowhere. For years, Johnnyswim has shown up for their fans in ways that feel personal and unhurried:
- Abner makes personalized tees by hand, one at a time.
- They have a YouTube series fans have been begging them to bring back for years.
- They treat Instagram like a group chat — posting, responding to DMs and comments, all day long.
This is just how they operate. And over time, it gave them something most artists miss entirely: a clear read on what actually moves their fans.
That shows up directly in how they built the fan club.
A lot of artists assume a fan club needs to justify itself with more — more exclusives, more behind-the-scenes content, more tiers, more everything. Johnnyswim is a clean counter to that with their tier structure.
Their perks are mostly things they already do, now organized — with a few exclusives and early access opportunities layered in. The highest tier only adds two things beyond the base membership:
- A free personalized tee
- A VIP upgrade at a show of their choice
Is it more work? A little. But compared to what they're already doing, it's not a significant lift. And more importantly, they already have the muscle to actually deliver it.
That last part matters more than most people admit. Fan clubs don't usually fail from lack of interest. They fail because teams can't keep up with what they promised. This structure sidesteps that trap entirely.
Zoom out, and the pattern is clear.
Johnnyswim turned years of fan trust into hundreds of paying members within days of launch. The rollout worked because of smart marketing, yes — but more than anything, it worked because of everything that came before it.
If you already know what makes your fans raise their hand — what format they respond to, when they engage most, what gets them to hand over their email — you might be closer to this than you think.
If you don't know yet, start paying attention now:
- What content pulls people off platform?
- When does engagement actually spike?
- What gets a reply instead of a like?
That's your groundwork. And it's exactly the kind of thing Single is built to help with.
