Executive Summary

Promoters and venue bookers struggle to find local nerd-music acts (nerdcore, chiptune, VGM) because those scenes are fragmented across Discord servers, Bandcamp pages and ad-hoc lists; the U.S. pool of roughly 80,000 live-music venues and promoters spends about $60,000 per organization annually on talent discovery, booking and promotion, yet discovery remains manual and inefficient. That time cost falls on smaller promoters and independent venues who need reliable, searchable rosters for niche shows but lack centralized tools. You could build a crowdsourced map and searchable directory that aggregates verified local rosters, availability calendars, audio/video clips, genre tags and contact workflows, with native promoter tools for shortlisting, offers and event-ready rider templates. An MVP should combine free artist listings with paid verification, promoter subscriptions and optional referral fees on confirmed bookings to create early revenue streams while keeping the supply side low-friction. This moment is attractive because microgenre and fandom-driven live monetization are growing and general platforms are deprioritizing niche discovery, creating an opening for a verticalized solution; we estimate an addressable market of $4.8B and score the market opportunity 78/100 with revenue potential 76/100. Promoters are increasingly fatigued by decentralized outreach, so a product that meaningfully reduces search time can win early adopters. Low direct competition is a practical advantage, but the primary challenges are achieving critical mass on both sides of the marketplace and maintaining trust and data quality. Differentiation should come from rigorous verification, deep promoter integrations (calendar sync, payments, simple CRM), and targeted partnerships with 10–20 regional festivals or aggregators in year one to seed supply—expect the first 12–18 months to be execution-heavy on acquisition, curation and conversion.

Market Opportunity

Promoters can't find local nerd-music acts — crowdsourced map + directory targets a $4.8B = 80,000 live-music venues & promoters x $60K avg annual spend on talent discovery, booking & promotion total addressable market with low saturation and a year-over-year growth rate of 6–10% — steady growth in live events and niche community monetization tools.

Key trends driving demand: Microgenre & fandom growth -- niche communities (nerdcore, chiptune, VGM) increasingly monetize live shows and want centralized discovery.; Decentralized promotion fatigue -- promoters tired of manual outreach prefer searchable, verified rosters.; Verticalization of platforms -- general social platforms deprioritize niche discovery, creating openings for specialized directories.; AI-enabled data aggregation -- NLP and entity resolution make consolidating fragmented artist/event data scalable..

Key competitors include Bandsintown, Songkick, IndieOnTheMove (IOTM), Bandcamp.

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Promoters can't find local nerd-music acts — crowdsourced map + directory

Executive Summary

Market Validation

Market Opportunity

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