Stationhead: A Social Media Melting Pot of Artists, Creators, and Fandoms is Quickly Becoming the Future of Radio

Camilla Cabello and Halsey were on it. So was Charlie Puth. And Cardi B likes it so much, she recruited Normani.

“Normani, I don’t know if you’re new to Stationhead, but everybody in here is practically your fan,” the ‘Up’ rapper said on the social radio platform. “I feel like your fans have been dying to speak to you.”

So when it came time to promote their new collab “Wild Side,” Normani joined Cardi on social audio platform Stationhead.

And the two buzzed about talents are not alone; more and more stars are making Stationhead a part of their plans to introduce their latest music to fans.

An integral reason for this is because their fans are already there. BTS fans generated 5.5 million streams of “Butter” in one day on the platform and helped keep the K-pop group near the top of the charts with their regular support on Stationhead.

But mostly, stars are flocking to the platform because it’s a good time. “Clubhouse is like algebra class and this is like the after-prom party,” says Ryan Star, Stationhead’s CEO and co-founder.

Stationhead is naturally a good time because it’s built around music, Star says. Members get to create their own communities around their favorite artists and genres of music, which organically builds connections between fans as well as between artists and their supporters by letting them listen to music together and talk to each other while they do it.

Think of Stationhead as the future of radio; unlike traditional terrestrial radio stations, Stationhead is global, letting users from all over the world interact together simultaneously. And they’re listening to the music that they choose from Spotify and Apple Music’s vast and ever-growing catalogs, not the few dozen songs a radio program director picked for them.

It's a combination that seems to be working for Gen Z in particular, as Stationhead says 60% of its users are under 25 and it boasts a whopping average of one hour and 40 minutes of engagement a day.

Star says he created Stationhead because he wanted to build a social platform for musicians and music fans to connect. Set on changing the status-quo, he wanted a way to take back the airwaves, to give people who didn’t hear anyone like them on the radio a megaphone and give those who felt like the gatekeepers were stopping them from hearing their favorite artists as a community.

“Stationhead is sort of the best of both worlds,” said Star. “It’s a democratized social platform where artists and fans control the airwaves -- they control the narrative. On top of that, they get to influence the charts and have all these great experiences.”

Because Stationhead creators get to build their shows around the music they love rather than commercials, their shows are a mix of traditional radio elements, wild experimentation and simply chilling with friends introducing each other to new songs.

Utilizing Stationhead’s innovative approach, Billie Eilish fans gave away tickets to her “Happier Than Ever” world tour, as well as new merch inspired by her new album; Tinashe fans got her to talk about her brand new “333” album when she jumped into a Stationhead show, but she also revealed that she’d be up for a collaboration with South Korean star Kai if he was interested; and 5 Seconds of Summer’s Luke Hemmings dropped in on a admirer’s show with an interpreter on hand so that his  Spanish fans wouldn’t miss the inspiration for his surprise debut solo album “When Facing the Things We Turn Away From.”

Hemmings told his fans he had no plans to go solo from the Aussie band, he was just on his own during the pandemic and started writing. “But then as I started to write more songs, it didn’t feel like the band’s vibe and I wanted to challenge myself in a creative way,” he said. “It snowballed into a bigger thing.”

That functions as a pretty accurate description of Stationhead these days as well. The platform’s user base has exploded this year from 165,000 in the first quarter to more than 1.6 million in the second quarter.

When Star, an accomplished artist in his own right, started Stationhead, he wanted to bring people together through music.

In some ways,Stationhead has grown into so much more than that. Cardi B drops in to tell her fans about how she told Offset she was pregnant with their second child, because she feels comfortable sharing that with them in the intimate space. BTS and Blackpink fandoms band together to use the platform to show their support for their heroes and help get them more streams. New artists hustle from one show to the next playing their music and telling listeners why they made it.

But in some ways, the vibe remains the same. No matter how many superstars start hanging out with Cardi and Offset on Stationhead, the connection over music will stay at its core.

“It will always be a community platform to bring artists and fans together,” Star said.