The year was 2014, I had discovered the 1975 through one of my YouTube deep dives, and through some odd texting with a random man I realized they were coming to play at one of my favorite local venues. The show was sold, out, but I didn’t care. By that point in my life I was used to buying random single tickets, and getting into shows. Most of my money was being spent going to see live music, I think I even made it a resolution to see live music every week. I was happy to treat myself whenever I wanted. With the confidence of a man, I scrolled through craigslist and found ONE single ticket for sale. At 29, I was old enough to brave meeting a strange man and get my ticket before the show. He was kind enough to sell it at face value and into the show I went.

I consumed music in a bubble at that point, literally pouring over Youtube or Spotify, and telling my friends about my discoveries. All of us loved sharing back and forth, the bulk of my college friends having moved away after college, we connected through shared playlists. I was not prepared for what would happen when I entered that show.

As I entered I realized that the fandom for the band was on average 15 years younger than me. All the girls around me asked how I managed to score a ticket so late, and how I got a wristband to drink. It was adorable to watch the look on their faces when they realized how much older I was, and how I discovered the band. They told me so much about them, how they got together, the names of all the members, what was the inspiration behind all the songs. Last, but most importantly, they spoke about how they had used one of their father’s VLAN to make sure they would all be able to buy tickets, beating out scalpers and securing tickets to the show. I was in awe of all of them, how much they knew and how determined they were.

There are many theories as to what will bring mass adoption of web3, will it be easy onramps? Or do we need a big corporation to come onboard? I believe it’ll be fandoms, and not one from an already established artist, but an emerging artist (or artists). Most successful artists attribute their success to a dedicated fandom that grew with them. The fandom that can tap parent resources to access a VLAN to buy highly desired tickets, will also set up their crypto wallets, sign up for allowlists, whitelists and show all of their friends how to do it. The value that groups like this bring is incredible, and their parents are funding their determined efforts and adding to their purchasing power.

A lot of the credit is given to big corporations developing technology for the status of the music industry today, but none of the progress, achieved so far, would have happened without fandoms. They have built careers, platforms, taken down political campaign efforts, created trends, crashed websites. Fandoms are responsible for the rise of social media platforms to the top of download lists, and will flock wherever they find their favorite artists. A determined group of young fans is more effective in pushing change than anything else in the world. They are also incredible recruiters, not only encouraging their friends, but creating explainers or walking them step-by-step through convoluted process to help their artists climb the charts, win awards, succeed.

The web3 community is incredibly welcoming. At the same time we seek to find that “cross-over” success from one of our own, looking for validation. Focusing on pooling resources around one or few artists is a mistake. The fans has often decided which artists and singles are more successful, we need to allow them to do the same with the web3 roster. This is only achievable if we give them room to discover them, so music must be available through traditional means, and peeks behind the curtain of NFTs available through social media.

In web3 we often push for the idea of 100 or 1000 true fans, AND still beg for easier onramps. Wouldn’t a true fan jump through all of the hurdles to acquire access to their artists? We are looking for dedicated fans, dedication is not shown through simple one-click experiences. Perhaps we are doing a disservice to fandoms by trying to focus only on simplifying the process, what we need to do a better job of is trying to connect with them.