How music fans really feel

Prediction markets have turned almost anything into something you can price. Elections, Oscar winners, the Fed's next move, how many times a word gets said in a speech. If enough people have an opinion, there's a market forming around it, and the crowd's collective read gets baked into a number.

So here's a market nobody has made yet: which musician has the happiest fans? The saddest? If you could buy a contract on it, where would the smart money go?

That got us curious. Are there some acts that leave their fans full of joy? What about artists that have their fans down in the dumps? Rather than guess at the odds, we went and measured them. We scored more than 1.5 million comments across the Reddit fan communities of 106 popular artists, tagging each one with the emotion it carried, and ranked every fandom by the feelings they drive in their fans.

Keep reading to see the saddest musical acts, and the happiest.

The happiest fans: Stray Kids, wire to wire

Some fandoms simply radiate delight, flooding their communities with excitement and gratitude. Leading by a distance are the fans of Stray Kids, whose comments landed as joyful more than 30% of the time. That's the clearest favorite in the entire study.

A few quick reads from the joy board:

• Stray Kids run away with it. Their three-point lead is the widest margin in any emotion we measured.
• Florence + the Machine take silver. Their cathartic anthems leave listeners elated rather than drained.
• The Cure are the upset of the day. The goth icons crack the top five, proving their fans do plenty of smiling.
• Hip-hop sits at the bottom. Kodak Black, Future, and Lil Wayne post the lowest joy shares, though their energy points elsewhere.

The saddest fans: a photo finish

Whether they invoke regret, heartbreak, or quiet melancholy, some artists make their fans feel. Topping the sadness board is Mitski, whose introspective songwriting has become shorthand for beautiful devastation.

But her lead is razor-thin. The top of this chart is a genuine cluster:

• Mitski edges the field at 11.4%, with My Chemical Romance and Charlie Puth right on her heels.
• A new generation of heartbreak. Olivia Rodrigo and Gracie Abrams show breakup-pop resonates as hard as classic emo.
• A familiar face at #5. The National also cracked the happiest top ten, which is the most interesting wrinkle in the data.

That last point is worth pausing on, because it is not a glitch.

Why one band can be both happy and sad

Joy and sadness aren't opposite ends of one slider here. Each is just a slice of a much bigger pie, and most of that pie is neutral, everyday conversation. The National's fans are about 22% joy and 10% sadness, with the rest spread across neutral and other feelings. Both slices can run large at once.

Emotionally resonant artists attract all-in fandoms that do two things at the same time: quote gutting lyrics and pour out appreciation. If you were pricing a market on it, you'd learn the same lesson every sharp bettor knows. The favorite in one category can be a contender in another, because deep investment shows up as big numbers in every column.

The angriest fans: a crowded field

Not every fandom channels its energy into joy or sorrow. Some bring the heat, and those communities cluster in rap and metal. Future tops the anger board, trailed by Tyler, the Creator and Kodak Black.

What the anger rankings show:

• Rap dominates the top spots. Future, Tyler, the Creator, Kodak Black, and Doechii lead the field.
• Anger is often just passion, loud. Release-day debates, rivalries, and online sparring all register here.
• The calmest fandoms skew pop and classic. Ed Sheeran, Elton John, and Avicii sit at the bottom of the anger chart.

In other words, an angry comment section isn't so different from the one that lights up after a blown call.