From 0 to 100kartist-fanrelationships.

The biggest inspiration for us were early Internet spaces — MySpace, individual artist websites in the 00s, Turntable, & more. Platforms that gave musicians spaces that were theirs and small enough to be casual in. These were diluted and eventually mostly disappeared as the Internet grew bigger and more commonplace in everyday life. Through primary research with major labels and artists, we found this constant spotlight on their every move (or tweet) made it hard to have a place where they could more candidly communicate with fans. Every online move is seen as a business move to be approved by everyone who has access to your public social media, leading to a less connected artist-fan relationship.

On the business side, this meant less accurate data on the reception of their work, as publishing records and posting online for a general social media audience meant having to navigate an ocean of feedback from both invested fans and users who came across their art on a random feed. Private communities who are already invested in the artist in some capacity offer higher quality feedback and a higher chance of monetary backing. The goal was for artists and labels to easily own, export, and analyze the feedback and fan data that would otherwise be lost on a social platform.

The first 6 months involved fast and heavy iteration, working closely with the CTO, PM, and engineering team, taking a very rough initial prototype into an alpha for internal and small-scale user testing, and eventually into a full-on, invite-only beta launch. I worked with our A&R and marketing team, analyzing the users’ (both artist teams and fans) feedback and applying it. At the 1 year mark, we launched publicly after much iteration and new feature development. By end of that first year, we had 10k+ monthly active users. By the time I left on year 3, we had 100k monthly active users and partnerships with multiple major labels and A-list artists.

We created unique experiences not seen in other apps, such as Listening Parties — virtual concerts where musicians could show unreleased demos, ideas, new singles, even their favorite songs. Fans could live through moments previously only reserved for live shows: chat with the artist, dance, emote cries and claps, hype certain songs, and even dim all the lights in the LP if enough people held down a virtual lighter. Most importantly for the artist, fans could pay for ticketed events, and/or tip on both free and paid events, creating hype trains that encouraged more tipping.

This was a unique experience product-wise, too. For every fan-facing feature, its Artist Portal counterpart would be carefully thought out and crafted for artist teams to use. It was an exciting challenge designing for B2B and B2C simultaneously, having to balance what a superfan would want, as well as what is low-lift and efficient for musicians and their teams to post with their busy schedules, and how to let them easily access the most valuable metrics for their career strategy (their Mellomanic fan email list, payments received, most devoted fans, best performing content, best received content, etc.).