Bang Chan, Lee Know, Changbin, Hyunjin, Han, Felix, Seungmin, and I.N. of Stray Kids visit the SiriusXM Studios on June 16, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)
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Traditionally, fandoms are measured in units of intensity via streaming numbers, first-week album sales, trending hashtags, tour sellouts, crowd size and beyond. But a new study measuring happiness among fandoms — something far less quantifiable — has come back to find that Stray Kids have the happiest fans in music.
The Action Network ran an emotion analysis on more than 1.5 million comments pulled from Reddit fan communities of 106 popular artists, with the outlet that traditionally reports on sports betting and prediction markets now scoring fandoms based on the emotions present in different conversations. The Stray Kids fandom — affectionately known as STAY or STAYs — was reported to be joyful 30.5% of the time, the highest rate among all feelings and fandoms.
Among the fandoms most likely to feel joy, fans of Florence + the Machine finished second (with 27.2% of analyzed comments radiating joy), Hozier third (with 23.9%), with The Cure and BTS tied for fourth (both with 23.4%).
On the other side of the study, Mitski fans topped the sadness chart at 11.4%, just barely ahead of My Chemical Romance and Charlie Puth at 10.3% each. Fans of Future led the anger board at 11.7%, followed by Tyler, the Creator at 11.2% and Kodak Black at 10.7%.
Read the full report from The Action Network here and read on for more analyses.
Joy In Fandoms: The Least Predictable Chart
Among the core emotions of joy, sadness, and anger studied, the joy rankings were the only category without an obvious genre cluster.
The Top 10 runs Stray Kids, Florence + the Machine, Hozier, The Cure, BTS, Bon Iver, Ed Sheeran, SZA, The National and Elton John with those artists representing K-pop, rock, folk, soul, goth, indie, pop, R&B and classic rock.
‘The Happiest Fans’ Chart by The Action Network – Most Likely to Feel Joy and Least Likely to Feel Joy (2026)
The Action Network
Despite The Cure’s music being known for having a more gloomy sound, the band’s fans placing second as “most likely to feel joy” as well as their No. 9 place as “least likely to feel anger” speaks to how the fandom doesn’t necessarily reflect the subject matter of the artist’s music but how the community talks to one another and the impact of emotionally heavy discographies.
The bottom of the joy board is far more uniform: Kodak Black posted the lowest joy rate in the study at 5.6%, followed by Future (with 7.2%), Lil Wayne (7.3%), Drake (7.7%), Juice WRLD (8.0%), Kanye West (8.2%), Eminem (8.3%), Travis Scott (8.6%), Kendrick Lamar (9.3%) and Tyler, the Creator (9.6%). All of these artists operate in, or at least overlap with, the hip-hop world.
While those numbers may look gloomy, they may also speak more specifically to how Reddit and subreddits are used across different music spaces. Rap fan communities frequently function as debate rooms: ranking discographies, features, bars, rollouts — very little of that may read as “joy,” even if the fans are having a great time.
Sadness In Fandom: Lyrical Women Win
Mitski performs at the Royal Albert Hall on May 21, 2026 in London, England. (Photo by Lorne Thomson/Redferns)
Redferns
Mitski’s 11.4% tops the sadness chart with the top of that list boasting a bunched range of different artists: My Chemical Romance and Charlie Puth at 10.3%, Olivia Rodrigo at 10.2%, The National at 10.0%, Halsey at 9.9%, Melanie Martinez at 9.4%, Lana Del Rey and The Weeknd at 9.3%, and Gracie Abrams at 9.0%.
Notably, six of the ten saddest fandoms belong to female artists, in contrast to the anger ranking, which is mostly male.
The Action Network added in its methodology report that during manual review, researchers found that an estimated 15-20% of the highest-confidence sadness comments weren’t fans expressing actual sadness but were quotes from sad lyrics. The study says they kept them in, reasoning that choosing to quote the most emo lines is itself part of a fandom’s register. Still, the fandoms that are most likely to post emo lyrics or examine the most devastating lines could have a slightly inflated score.
On the other side of the sadness ranking, Stray Kids as the No. 1 most joyful fandom also ranks sixth among the least sad fandoms in the study, tied at 5.1% with The Beatles and Daft Punk. The fandom least likely to feel sadness is led by Migos member Offset (with only 3.1% of the fandom likely to feel sadness), followed by OutKast (with 3.6%), Doechii (4.4%), Kendrick Lamar (4.5%), Stray Kids, The Beatles and Daft Punk (all 5.1%), Drake (5.2%), and closed out by Metallica and Eminem (both with 5.3%).
Anger In Fandom: Rap Rules, With One Pop Star Outlier
Future performs onstage during day 1 of Rolling Loud Miami at Hard Rock Stadium on December 13, 2024 in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Jason Koerner/Getty Images)
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When it comes the angriest fans, Future leads at 11.7%, trailed by Tyler, the Creator (11.2%), Kodak Black (10.7%), Doechii (10.2%), Megan Thee Stallion (9.6%), Chris Brown (9.4%), Eminem (9.3%), Lil Wayne (9.0%) and Kanye West (9.0%). Tying with Kanye is Chappell Roan — the only act in the anger top ten that doesn’t overlap in the hip-hop world and one of the study’s most conspicuous inclusions. Notably, Roan has made sure not to hold back whenever she has been angry in her career, by being open about invasive paparazzi and standing up for artists’ rights. Even when Chappell has not spoken up about various media frenzies, her fans may be the ones speaking on her behalf.
The calmest fandoms — or those least likely to experience anger — sit almost entirely in pop, rock as well as some hip-hop: Ed Sheeran (2.3%), Offset (2.5%), Elton John and Avicii (2.9% each), Olivia Dean (3.1%), Bad Bunny (3.2%), Florence + the Machine and Bruno Mars (3.4%), The Cure (3.4%) and David Bowie (3.5%).
The ‘Neutral’ Option
The single largest finding in the study is the one that won’t produce any ranking: The Action Network notes that roughly 46% of comments in a typical fan community were tagged “neutral.”
More Joy For Stray Kids Fans: THIS & THAT Out This Week
Two fans pose in front of posters of K-pop boy band Stray Kids before attending the band’s concert, which kicked off a world tour, in Seoul on July 25, 2026. (Photo by GREG BAKER / AFP via Getty Images)
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Two participants hold a sign reading “Stray Kids Stand With Us” during the 2026 Pride Parade on June 13, 2026 in Genoa, Italy. The annual LGBTQIA+ march brought thousands of participants to the streets of Genoa. (Photo by Emanuela Zampa/Getty Images)
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Stray Kids fans will continue their happiness with the band releasing their album THIS & THAT this upcoming Friday, marking the group’s first full project of 2026 and first since the Do It mixtape arrived in November 2025. It sold a massive 295,000 units in its first week in the U.S. for one of the biggest opening weeks ever for a K-pop release.
The eight-track release comes just as Stray Kids kicked off The Run It World Tour with five dates at Seoul’s KSPO Dome and continues through at least early 2027.
No doubt, the happiest fandom in music will stay the happiest fandom in music with all that Stray Kids are set to unveil in the coming weeks and months.
Stray Kids “This & That” music video teaser, out August 7.