Nano recently posted a heartfelt message asking overseas fans to follow, stream, comment, and share to help Japanese artists justify touring abroad. The sentiment is genuine yet many Jpop fans showed their frustration with this post. The advice, while well-intentioned, simplifies how fan behaviour actually translates into ticket sales and what the fans perspective is on this. In this post I will go over Nano’s post and share what I have to say about it.
"Please go follow and subscribe"
Follows and subscriptions feel like support, and in a way they are, but they are passive engagement, and passive engagement does not sell tickets. According to Spotify's own data, super listeners make up just 2% of an artist's monthly audience, yet account for 50% of all ticket sales through the platform. The remaining 98% of listeners, the ones casually streaming from playlists and occasionally hitting follow, contribute very little to live revenue. While indicating passive interest, this alone is not enough to justify overseas liveshows. Asking fans to follow more accounts will not move the needle on a touring decision.
"Please interact by commenting and sharing"
Sharing posts and leaving comments is still passive. It generates visibility but not financial intent. The fans who actually show up to concerts are superfans or active fans, people who actively seek out music, buy merchandise, and travel to shows. Spotify's research shows super listeners are nine times more likely to share music and spend over $25 per touring artist on merch and live shows within a single month. These are not people who need to be reminded to comment. They are already deeply engaged.
And research backs up exactly what kind of fan is likely to show up. A University of Newcastle study on concert attendee behaviour found that willingness to attend and travel to concerts is strongly tied to fan identification, the level of attachment a fan feels toward an artist. Fans who buy merchandise are generally understood to demonstrate higher levels of that attachment, making them far more likely to attend live shows than casual listeners. In short: merch buyers are your most likely concertgoers. They are demonstrating financial intent before a tour is even announced. The problem is that Japanese labels have made it structurally difficult for overseas fans to demonstrate that intent in a way that is visible to management.
"It costs more to bring a tour overseas"
This is true, but it is also the wrong frame. Western and Korean artists also risk money when touring in other countries. The question is not whether touring costs money, it always does. The question is whether there is enough demonstrated demand to justify the risk.
Here is the core problem: overseas superfans are largely invisible to Japanese management.
Most Japanese artists and labels do not sell merchandise or physical releases directly overseas. All international orders go through proxy services, which record the sale as domestic. The fan in Germany who bought a CD, a t-shirt, and a photo book has financially supported the artist, but from the label's perspective, that sale happened in Japan. There is no data trail pointing to Europe. The demand exists. It is simply not being measured because the infrastructure to capture it does not exist.
There is also a question of realistic expectations. Filling Nippon Budokan does not mean you can fill an equivalent venue abroad. Japan is your home market, you have years of domestic promotion, media presence, and cultural context behind you. Overseas you are starting closer to zero. The artists who have successfully gone overseas on tours or small gigs at festivals, Wednesday Campanella, Babymetal, Hanabie, Zenbu Kimi no Sei da, You'll Melt More, Broken By The Scream, Yubiningyou, did not arrive expecting to replicate their domestic scale. They started with smaller venues, found where their demand was concentrated, and built from there.
Wednesday Campanella is a perfect illustration of this. They have sold out Nippon Budokan in Japan, yet their 2025 Europe tour played Heaven in London, Legend Club in Milan, Petit Bain in Paris, and a festival slot at OFF Festival in Poland, intimate, mid-sized venues a fraction of Budokan's scale. It can be done. It just requires management willing to temper expectations and prioritise actually reaching fans over maintaining the same production prestige abroad.
"Don't miss the opportunity to buy a ticket when it comes"
Let's be honest, for most international fans it will not even get to this point with how things are done at this moment. The problem with this is that, this puts the entire burden on the fan while ignoring that the artist's management is the one deciding whether that opportunity ever arrives, and that decision is based on data that currently does not reflect overseas demand accurately.
This is also the part that likely stung the most for most fans, because a lot of us have checked out of the idea of our favourite artist coming close to our home, so we seek to travel to Japan to see them live, and there we are met with multiple hurdles, like the need of an acceptable credit card, and a Japanese phone number or even Japanese residency in some cases. All this to often access a fan club to enter a lottery for tickets, which you might not even win. You’d have to plan a trip to Japan beforehand in case you win your ticket, for some countries you’d have to go to Japan specifically to get a phone number. The setup to see the artist live is actually insane compared to the situation in other countries.
Minor side note, most underground idol and small artists venues let you buy tickets at the door, or use the more user friendly LivePocket ticket broker which actually does accept foreigners.
This is not a fan enthusiasm problem. International fans are willing to jump through extraordinary hoops. The question is why the industry makes it this hard in the first place.
What would actually help
The good news is that none of this requires Japanese artists to change what they do. No English lyrics. No rebranding. No becoming the next K-pop, a scene that chased Western markets so aggressively that much of what made it distinctly Korean got diluted in the process. Japanese artists do not need to follow that path. The ask is far simpler:
Sell merchandise and releases directly overseas.
That is it. When a fan in the Netherlands buys a CD through an official store, that is a data point for Western Europe. Enough data points in the same region and a touring decision starts to make financial sense. Artists like Ano, backed by Toy Factory, are large enough that this is entirely feasible. There is no logistical reason it is not already happening. Especially since many undeground idols are fairly accomodating towards foreigners whilst having less resources.
A note for fans in the meantime
Should you stop buying merch through proxies? Not necessarily, if you want the item, buy it. But do not buy it expecting it to signal overseas demand to your favourite artist, because at the label level they will not see it.
The exception is smaller underground artists. If you buy through a proxy and post about it publicly on social media, mention the group or artist, show them what arrived, they will likely see it, and for a small act that kind of direct signal from overseas genuinely matters. For larger label-backed artists that approach does not scale. They will not see your tweet. Their management is looking at sales data, and your purchase is recorded in Tokyo.
If you are a fan of bigger artists and also smaller artists like underground idols, I personally recommend spending your money on smaller artists, they are more likely to see it and appreciate it, and they need it more as well. As for the larger artists, you can mail their agency or label, politely explain the situation to them, they will likely not respond or do anything with it, but if enough people do it, who knows, something might change. Whatever you do, do not bother the artists themselves, they have no power in this, they are basically just employees.
The invisible fan is not a fan problem. It is an infrastructure problem. And it is one the labels could fix tomorrow if they chose to.
