Trey Songz Fan Club App Brings In $50K A Month For 'Fumble' Singer

With the abundance of artist-specific apps out there, it seems like many performers toss a poorly thought-out app out into the ether just because they are told they should have one. That’s not the case with R&B singer Trey Songz, whose interesting “fan club” app/experiment is not only drawing a lot of use from fans, but bringing in a hefty income of $50K per month.

The app called “Trey Songz- The Angel Network” was recently profiled by Billboard magazine and is an attempt to re-create the fan club for a generation reared on social media. A good deal of the content doesn’t even have to do with Songz, but rather with status within the group. According to Billboard, users “lavish virtual gifts on each other, send out private messages and buff up their profiles.” Members of the Angel network can bid credits to be put on an Instant VIP board for six hours, making your profile visible to all users of the network. The more you bid, the higher your position on the board (for the record, users have bid up to 5,000 credits for the opportunity and 5,000 credits will cost you $24.99 in real money).

“It’s pure ego,” Handmade Mobile (the company that produced the app) chief executive Neil Goldberg says. “People just want to be visible in a social network, and they’re willing to pay to do that.”

Before you go thinking that this is a few status obsessed fringe crazies, Billboard reports that over 45,300 people have downloaded the app and are spending at a rate of $1.10 per month per fan.

 “The more highly engaged fans—those who check in at least six times a week -- spend around $32 each,” writes Billboard.

Of course the app isn’t all a social media network. Songz checks in three times a week with new posts and fans can even send him a private e-mail...for 100 credits.