Are Fangirls Fueling The Industry?

For as long as the music industry has been alive, one group has carried it on their shoulders whilst being mocked and criticised for doing so: fangirls. They're always the target, being labelled as 'crazy' and 'hysterical'. For years fangirls have been the punch line of the music industry, but behind the memes and hurtful comments, the misconceptions of being 'stalkers' and 'obsessed' is a silent truth the industry really knows. 

Fangirls are the backbone to careers, the charts, sold out gigs – all of it. 

The music world has always relied on young women to carry the sales, stream the albums and come to those live shows. They're the ones there early, buying albums on physical media, memorising every lyric, learning the stories and connecting with the meaning. Yet when a man becomes deeply invested with something like perhaps a sport, its called dedication and passion. But girls and music? Well apparently that makes you deranged and dramatic. 

The difference isn't behaviour, its gender. 

Women in and supporting the music industry often face misogyny and inequality, especially our fangirls. To be labelled as a 'fangirl' carries heaps of dismissal, its used to paint passion as silliness, intensity as immaturity and community as complete chaos. People choosing to ignore that without such dedicated fans, live shows wouldn’t be as popular, artists wouldn’t grow and music as itself would be boring and almost irrelevant.  

Fangirls are organised, strategic and creative. They promote music, expand fandoms and sell out tours, if fangirls weren't behind our artists they simply wouldn’t have careers. They hold streaming parties for new releases, they create content to help artists trend and help them grow and they do it completely for free all because they adore these artists, these singles. It just keeps repeating, the industry grows, the fans are insulted and judged whilst never being given any gratitude or placed in a positive light. 

People mocked our girls for crying over The Beatles, they named One Direction fans as 'crazy', blamed K-pop fans for being 'too much' and they write whole think pieces about Swifties being 'extreme'. But every record these groups broke, redefining how music success is measured – it was all powered by fangirls.  

So yes, our fangirls are the industry's punching bag, but they are definitely the backbone of it all, without them there wouldn’t be an industry at all. We need to stop using this name as an insult when its more like an honour, especially to be behind something so powerful.