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Many months ago as I was leaving one of David’s concerts, the following lyrics kept running through my mind…
That is why all the girls in town,
Follow you all around.
Just like me, they long to be
Close to you.
I arrived back at our hotel and looked up the words ‘Close to You’ on YouTube, a classic song by The Carpenters. I listened to the song a few times and it came to my mind that we feel as David’s fans, to be relatively close to him and that emotion must have triggered the song from my memory. 
Often in the early months of David’s fandom, we questioned how did we as fans, get where we are, following the career of one fabulous David Archuleta and how did we come to develop special friendships with other fans from around the world? It is because of the evolution in the relationship between the music industry and the fans that we see fans worldwide coming closer together in their online fandom. It is becoming more obvious that music fans and musicians belong to each other and that relationship happens more easily because of the empowerment of the intermediary, the internet. Fans want to feel that they are being brought closer to the music and the musicians that they admire.
The following video is of David, his family and fans from around the world:
Musicians like David, can see reviews on sites, read blogs, talk to fans on twitter and learn how everyone enjoyed their show soon after they get back to their hotel, which can be valuable information leading into the next night’s performance. There is an increased sense of closeness to the fans that never existed before. It is interesting to think how the potential of the internet to create relative closeness between fans and artists affects the artists not just financially but emotionally. The internet gives names, faces, personalities and a sense of individualized realness to their audience. This can be very powerful to the artist who has in the past been used to fans being mainly in groups held back and at a distance.
Fans of artists are recorded in history dating as far back as the 1200’s. Around 1850, Charles Dickens, one of the most popular novelists of all time, had a large number of fans in America. The fans of Charles Dickens novels were noted to have often gathered at the docks waiting for newspapers that carried his latest novel chapters. There was no medium for fans to discuss the artist.
A ship from Liverpool, England prepraring to sail for America.
Fan bases today are being built worldwide in never before locations due to the ability to transcend distances through the internet. David’s fan communities have enriched our lives. We learn about David’s fans in countries we sometimes know little about until the morning when we awake after a concert and scramble to our computers to savor every minute detail. We bring information provided to us by fans from web sites afar, and quickly write stories with transferred pictures and videos, for everyone to linger over.
New fan communities are building more rapidly and successfully than ever before. The positive consequences reach from the fan to everyone involved in the making and distribution of the albums and the planning of tours worldwide. There is a new music scene on the horizon that is changing the long-standing balance of power between the fans and the people of the music industry.
David has created an undeniably respectful and caring closeness with his fans that reach young and old everywhere.
The Voice David Archuleta 