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Now we get to our dissection. So what I want to talk about here is going to be framed a little differently than some things we do.

Julia Wolf

When we were talking about Julia Wolf the other week, one thing that stood out was how she’s been leveraging fandom culture to promote her music, specifically by tapping into the Twilight fandom. For those unfamiliar with her, she makes what you might call Deftones-inspired tracks with soft, female vocals.

She’s been creating content centered around Twilight and experimenting with other fandoms like The White Lotus. The Twilight-themed TikToks in particular went viral, racking up millions of views, which is huge for getting her songs heard, especially when the music is as catchy as the one she’s currently promoting.

I want to talk about the strategy behind bringing other fandoms into your world, especially if those fandoms overlap with your target audience. I’ve seen this approach work really well before, and it’s worth examining why.

Laufey

One of the best examples of this strategy is the Laufey Book Club. Full disclosure: I’ve been paid by Laufey for my services before, so that’s important to note.

For those who don’t know her, Laufey has made a big name for herself in the soft-pop world, currently sitting at 15 million monthly listeners on Spotify.

Now, I don’t usually talk about this kind of music because I don’t really listen to it. But a lot of people have pointed out her Spotify bio to me:

Plenty of people say she’s one of the few artists actually bringing jazz to Gen Z. Whether that’s true or just PR spin, I don’t know…but those numbers are wild for a jazz artist. It's genuinely insane for someone making jazz, especially a Gen Z musician.

Laufey Book Club

Anyway, what’s been really interesting to me is that we always talk about community—how to build it, how to get people engaged—but Laufey is someone who’s actually doing it. One of the main things people point to with her is her book club, which she’s been running for a long time.

She’s built a whole world around it: a separate Instagram, a dedicated link-in-bio that leads to a Discord where they actually meet, TikToks tied to the content, even a Pinterest board—which I thought was fucking wild, because almost no one markets on Pinterest anymore (as we’ve talked about). But it’s genuinely one of the more interesting fan ecosystems I’ve seen.

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