I suppose generating BUZZ has, up to now, been thought of as a one way street - you get people to be excited about what your doing.  But what if it was also the other way around?   What if your FANS and sympathetic others, interested in your BRAND, were calling the shots?  Would you still idolize someone when you know what they had for breakfast this morning?

A recent New York Times article had an intriguing title: Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog which track how the dynamics of being well known cuts both ways - the artist as manager of his or her fans, who also manage them.   It's old hat to me because my wife has been following Clay Aiken for 4 years and he's very much a model for an artist created by his fan base.   The record labels haven't gotten it right yet, often trying to co-opt and cross-promote artists who literally are in it for their fans.

I first heard about the Times article from FutureLab - who suggests the artist - fan - relationship is going to continue to evolve:

"…There will be further stages in the evolution of artist-fan relationships, and the chances are that they some of the most interesting developments will be led by the artists with what you might call 'human scale' fan-bases — that is, small enough to be able to treat fans like people instead of numbers. "

To me, that means "quality" over "quantity" and that one artist does not need 60 million fans - maybe they just need a couple of thousand fans - and one artist can interact with that many fans.