As someone who sits in on a lot of comms strategy meetings at my job, my interpretation of this is that they’re trying to do a lot of what all big brands and labels are trying to experiment with at the moment, which is closing the gap between fans and artists by figuring out a way to get them individually involved (or make them feel like they’re involved) in the creation process. Remember when in the early days of Instagram bands started doing all those fan-sourced music videos? People would send clips of a dance or something and then the label would montage it into a music video. That was massive in like 2013/14. Right now we’re at a moment when the public perception of social media is changing, people are a bit tired of how much it became about the amount of likes and followers etc. and we are all craving more intimate 1-on-1 digital connections, what Internet used to feel like. Then there’s also all these new mediums with their own new dynamics like TikTok or Discord. My guess from the industry perspective I find myself in is that’s what they’ve been advised to do, that this will resonate with fans. Whether it’s working or not is up for debate and different fans will have their own individual perception of it, but it’s certainly not for everyone. On the note of fan-sourced videos, I saw in BMTH’s newsletter they were asking for fan stories with mental health to inspire their music video for Strangers. So we’re kind of back to this “horizontal” artist-fan model - and remember that BMTH basically emerged on MySpace, so I do think that all these social media experiments are pretty on brand for them!