If the Grateful Dead is known for anything, it's their band of loyal travelers. They're a community of benevolent hippies that worships the band as heroes.
Deadheads defined the spirit of the Grateful Dead's shows, transforming concert-goers into a mega-movement over the past five decades. But whether these individuals, in reality, were the founding fathers of Silicon Valley or the creator of Westeros, at a Dead concert, they were simply fans.
Peter Shapiro, a long-time Deadhead and well-known name in the music industry, is building a tech platform around this concept, aiming to capture the entire experience of being a fan on a single site.
“I created Fans.com because there’s no real place where people can talk about the shows they went to,” said Shapiro. “We hope to extend the vibe you have at a great show, which is such a communal feeling, and create a way to continue that energy after the show ends.”
Fans.com marks Shapiro's latest venture in a long-standing career in music. Last year, Shapiro reunited the Grateful Dead and co-produced the band's ‘Fare Thee Well’ tour, which collectively raked in over $52 million in ticket sales. Shapiro also owns the popular music and bowling venue, Brooklyn Bowl, which attracts New Yorkers in droves into the heart of Williamsburg.
While Shapiro isn’t touting the site as a social network per se, the platform works as a record of your musical preferences and history, as well as a place to be a fan with other fans.
Within the platform, users can create a profile, build their concert history from the site’s massive database of past shows, import their music preferences from Spotify or Facebook, discover upcoming concerts and sync up with like-minded fans. From there, anytime a user attends a show they can log the event and post photos, recordings, videos and comments to remember and share the experience.
While music’s digital presence currently exists in silos, with artist news, event databases, touring information and message boards occupying different sites, Fans.com is a one-stop shop.
“For Brooklyn Bowl, I can now see a listing of every concert we’ve ever had, what happened and who was there," said Shapiro. "This helps in seeing who was at a show and who the top fans are, which helps in analyzing the audience demographics. As both a fan and someone who puts on shows, Fans.com was built by someone who was likely to use the product, and nothing like it exists.”
While Fans.com launched with a robust database of concert listings, Shapiro is also optimistic the platform could expand into sports or other types of entertainment as well.
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