A fan club is an organised group of devoted admirers, once run by post with membership cards and newsletters, today mostly through apps, presale codes and private online groups.
The Beatles set a standard for perks that is still hard to beat. Every Christmas from 1963 to 1969, members of their official fan club received a flexi disc, a thin, bendy record made just for them, mixing thank-you messages, comic sketches, carols and original songs. The first one was partly a way of making up for the club’s slow replies to an avalanche of letters, and later editions grew more elaborate, with a pantomime theme in 1966 and imaginary radio auditions in 1967. American members were sometimes less lucky and received a postcard instead. The full set was only reissued for the general public as a vinyl box in December 2017. Today’s equivalent perk is an early-access ticket code, which is useful, but nobody has ever framed a presale password.