A new UK music platform wants to change the basic unit of online discovery from the individual track to the entire scene surrounding it.
Fairground has launched publicly on iOS, Android and the web, combining independent music discovery, community features, live listings, memberships and direct-to-fan commerce in one app. Its first rollout is focused on building density in London and Manchester before expanding into more UK cities.
At the center of Fairground are Scenes: hubs organized around the artists, labels, venues, promoters, curators and fans connected to a city, genre or cultural movement. Users can follow those scenes to find releases and shows, join conversations, watch videos, and buy music or merchandise.
That makes Fairground a notable counterpoint to discovery systems that present music as a seemingly endless stream of disconnected tracks. The startup is betting that fans do not only form attachments to artists or songs. They also care about the venues, organizers, and communities that give the music context.
+Read more: "Live Clips Are Powering Artist Discovery With the Next Generation of Fans"
Connecting a fragmented fan relationship
Fairground founder and CEO Lloyd Young said the idea emerged from his eight years running Permanent Creeps, where he released records and promoted roughly 1,000 shows. Young said:
"We were building real audiences, but also something harder to quantify: a sense of place, shared identity and connection between the people around the music... That culture came from the relationships between artists, venues, promoters and fans, yet online those relationships were constantly broken apart."
Fairground is not positioning itself as a replacement for streaming services or ticketing platforms. Instead, it aims to add a connected layer across tools that are typically scattered among social networks, merchandise stores, mailing lists, ticketing sites and private chats.
Its True Fans feature lets artists and music organizations create free or paid communities offering exclusive posts, unreleased material, early access and live perks. Artists and other sellers can also offer downloads, physical releases, merchandise, limited products and bundles within the same environment where discovery and discussion take place.
Fairground takes transaction fees from sales and memberships, while sellers and rightsholders retain the majority of the revenue, according to the company. Music is supplied through authorized uploads, and rightsholders control how their recordings appear. Fairground says it also plans to introduce content-identification technology to help detect and manage copyrighted recordings.
Live listings and outbound ticket links are incorporated into artist and Scene pages through APIs.
An early test with Bad Vibrations
Fairground has already tested the model through an activation with Bad Vibrations, the promoter behind Wide Awake Festival and London venues including MOTH Club and The Shacklewell Arms.
According to figures supplied by Fairground, 11.3% of the activation’s early users chose a paid membership. The campaign used no paid marketing, doubled the platform’s previous daily acquisition rate and began generating recurring subscription revenue immediately.
Those results come from one early activation and should not yet be treated as evidence that every scene or organization will convert fans at the same rate. Still, they illustrate Fairground’s central proposition: trusted independent music organizations may be able to turn an audience they already serve into a community that provides ongoing financial support.
For independent artists, the interesting part is not simply having another profile to maintain. It is the possibility that discovery, fandom and spending might reinforce one another when artists are presented as part of a living ecosystem rather than as isolated pieces of content.
Fairground is now onboarding more independent labels, venues, promoters and music organizations. The app is available free from the Apple App Store, Google Play and the web.
Fairground is an independent music marketplace and community platform built around Scenes: local, cultural and creative communities where artists, labels, venues, promoters, curators and fans overlap. It combines discovery, direct-to-fan commerce, community and live activity.
