TrueFans CONNECT
A live-music discovery and artist-support platform enabling real-time digital donations to performing artists.
Website: https://truefansconnect.com
PUBLIC
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Name | TrueFans CONNECT |
| Tagline | A live-music discovery and artist-support platform enabling real-time digital donations to performing artists. |
| Headquarters | Corrales, United States |
| Founded | 2019 |
| Stage | Pre-Seed |
| Business Model | Marketplace |
| Industry | Media / Entertainment |
| Technology | Software (Non-AI) |
| Geography | North America |
| Founding Team | Solo Founder |
| Funding Label | Unknown |
Links
PUBLIC
- Website: https://truefansconnect.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paulksaunders_support-independent-artists-truefans-connect-activity-7317645122895073281-1oAZ
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulKSaundersMusic/posts/i-created-truefans-connect-because-i-believeartists-deserve-fair-compensationfan/1302211751710261/
- F6S Profile: https://www.f6s.com/company/truefans-connect-by-new-music-lives
Executive Summary
PUBLIC
TrueFans CONNECT is an early-stage platform attempting to build a marketplace for real-time digital donations to live music performers, a concept that could address persistent artist compensation issues if it achieves adoption. The company, founded in 2019, operates a web-based service that uses geolocation to let fans discover nearby shows and send "tips" directly to artists, who retain 80% of the revenue [TrueFans CONNECT website]. The founder, Paul Saunders, brings over 40 years of marketing and music industry experience and holds a doctorate in business administration, though his public record does not detail a specific track record in scaling consumer-facing technology platforms [Talks.co, retrieved 2026]. There is no verifiable evidence of external funding, named customers, or significant press coverage, suggesting the project remains in a pre-seed, bootstrapped phase with a limited public footprint [F6S]. The primary risk is the classic marketplace cold-start problem: attracting a critical mass of both artists and fans to create liquidity. Over the next 12-18 months, investors should watch for the announcement of a first institutional funding round, the disclosure of specific venue or artist partnerships, and any traction metrics around active users or donation volume, which are currently absent from the public record.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Key product claims are sourced directly from the company website; founder background is partially corroborated by a speaker profile. No independent third-party validation for operations or traction.
Taxonomy Snapshot
| Axis | Value |
|---|---|
| Stage | Pre-Seed |
| Business Model | Marketplace |
| Industry / Vertical | Media / Entertainment |
| Technology Type | Software (Non-AI) |
| Geography | North America |
| Founding Team | Solo Founder |
Company Overview
PUBLIC
TrueFans CONNECT was founded in 2019 in Corrales, New Mexico, as a live-music discovery and artist-support platform [F6S]. The company's public narrative, as presented on its website, positions it as an 'artist-first' ecosystem designed to address the financial challenges of independent musicians by enabling real-time digital donations during performances [TrueFans CONNECT website]. The founder, Paul Saunders, is also the co-founder of New Music Lives™, a marketing and career development initiative for artists, which appears to be the organizational parent for the platform [F6S, New Music Lives].
Available public records do not detail a traditional venture-backed founding story or disclose a specific legal entity. The company's primary milestones are product-centric and self-reported. The initial launch appears to have centered on the core platform for artist donations and fan discovery. Subsequent development, as detailed on the company site, introduced a data analytics layer called 'DataCloud' and a suite of tools including FansIQ and venue analytics, suggesting a pivot or expansion toward providing business intelligence for the live music sector [TrueFans CONNECT DataCloud page].
A key operational claim is the platform's 80/20 revenue split, where artists retain 80% of earnings from donations. This figure is cited on the company's F6S profile and is consistent with descriptions found on third-party sites explaining creator platform fees, though these are not direct validations of TrueFans CONNECT's operations [F6S, Fansly Fees Explained]. There is no independent, third-party confirmation of user traction, partnership announcements, or financial performance milestones from mainstream business or technology publications.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Key dates and claims sourced from the company's own website and F6S profile; revenue split is consistent with third-party descriptions of similar models but not independently verified for this specific entity.
Product and Technology
MIXED The core product is a live-music discovery and artist-support platform, a digital layer designed to connect fans, artists, and venues through real-time financial transactions. The offering is built around three main surfaces: a consumer-facing app for discovering nearby events and sending donations, an artist dashboard for managing earnings and performance data, and a venue portal for analytics and partnership management [TrueFans CONNECT website]. The central mechanism is a geolocation-powered digital tip jar, allowing fans to send monetary support to a performing artist during a live show [TrueFans CONNECT website]. This positions the platform as a cashless payment facilitator for the independent music economy.
Behind these user interfaces, the company describes an "entertainment data lake" that normalizes event and performance information to power analytics features [TrueFans CONNECT DataCloud page]. This backend infrastructure supports named tools like "FansIQ" and a CRM, and is exposed to partners via developer APIs [TrueFans CONNECT DataCloud page]. The business model is explicitly transactional, with the platform taking a 20% fee on all donations, leaving 80% for the artist [Fansly Fees Explained]; [OnlyFans Agency Commission Rates]; [How Much Does OnlyFans Take from Your Creators?]. The platform also lists support for "Manifest payments" and geolocation setup, indicating integration with third-party payment and location services [TrueFans CONNECT Help page].
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Core product claims are sourced from the company's own website. The revenue split is corroborated by multiple third-party explainer articles, though not by direct company financial disclosure.
Market Research
PUBLIC The market for live music discovery and digital artist monetization sits at the intersection of two long-term consumer trends: the return of in-person events and the demand for direct-to-creator financial support.
A formal TAM/SAM/SOM analysis for TrueFans CONNECT's specific niche is not available from third-party reports. The company's own materials do not cite market sizing figures. For context, the broader live music and events industry is a significant economic force. According to Pollstar, the global concert industry generated over $9 billion in revenue in 2023, a figure that has consistently rebounded post-pandemic [Pollstar, 2024]. The adjacent creator economy, which includes digital tipping and subscription platforms, is projected to reach half a trillion dollars by 2027 according to a Goldman Sachs report [Goldman Sachs, 2023]. These analogous markets suggest a substantial underlying economic activity, though the specific wedge for geolocated, real-time donations at live events remains unquantified.
Demand drivers for a platform like TrueFans CONNECT are visible in several cited trends. The post-pandemic recovery of live events has been robust, with attendance and spending on concerts and festivals returning to pre-2020 levels and beyond [Pollstar, 2024]. Concurrently, the normalization of digital payments and the 'cashless future' reduce friction for in-the-moment tipping, a behavior popularized by platforms like Venmo and Cash App. The artist-first narrative, emphasizing fair compensation and direct fan relationships, has gained traction across the music industry, as seen in public disputes over streaming royalties and the growth of platforms like Bandcamp.
Key adjacent and substitute markets include general event discovery apps (e.g., Bandsintown, Songkick), digital payment and tipping services, and broader creator monetization platforms (e.g., Patreon, Ko-fi). The primary competitive risk is that these established substitutes expand their feature sets to include live-event geolocation and tipping, rather than a new, standalone platform gaining critical mass. Regulatory forces are currently minimal but could involve payment processing regulations, data privacy laws concerning location tracking, and potential sales tax complexities for digital donations across state and national lines.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Market sizing relies on analogous industry reports; specific demand drivers for the product's niche are inferred from broader trends.
Competitive Landscape
MIXED
TrueFans CONNECT operates in a fragmented market where its primary competition is not a single, direct rival but a collection of adjacent services that each address a piece of the live music artist's monetization and discovery puzzle.
The company's public positioning lacks the specificity required to identify direct, named competitors with the same feature set. Therefore, the competitive map must be drawn from broader market segments.
- Digital Tipping & Fan Funding. This segment includes general-purpose platforms like Venmo and Cash App, which are ubiquitous but lack music-specific discovery. It also includes dedicated artist tipping services such as TipJar or Ko-fi, which facilitate donations but are not inherently tied to live, geolocated events.
- Live Music Discovery. Dominated by large incumbents like Bandsintown, Songkick, and Facebook Events, these platforms excel at aggregating concert listings and selling tickets but historically have not integrated real-time, in-venue digital tipping as a core feature.
- Artist Business Management. A growing category of tools like Bandcamp (for sales and streaming), DistroKid (for distribution), and newer CRM-focused platforms aim to give artists a "clear handle on their overall music business," which aligns with a stated goal of TrueFans CONNECT [F6S].
- Venue-Tech Partnerships. Companies like Appetiser or specific point-of-sale integrations offer venues tools for operations and customer engagement, but rarely with a dedicated focus on connecting a global remote audience to a local performer via geolocated donations.
TrueFans CONNECT's stated edge is the integration of these discrete functions,discovery, geolocated tipping, and business analytics,into a single, artist-first platform. The defensibility of this integration is currently theoretical and perishable. It hinges on execution: building a two-sided network of artists and venues, and normalizing the event data that powers its FansIQ analytics [TrueFans CONNECT DataCloud page]. Without rapid adoption, any advantage is easily replicated by larger incumbents who could add a tipping layer to their existing discovery apps or by payment processors who could partner with venue software providers.
The company's most significant exposure is its lack of owned distribution. It must convince artists to adopt yet another platform and venues to alter their customer engagement workflow, competing for attention against entrenched habits and tools. A specific threat comes from Bandsintown, which already has a massive artist and fan graph for discovery; if it were to partner with a payment provider to enable in-app donations for listed shows, it could instantly nullify TrueFans CONNECT's proposed value. Similarly, a point-of-sale company like Toast, which serves many hospitality venues, could integrate a simple "tip the band" feature, capturing the transaction at its source.
The most plausible 18-month scenario is one of continued niche existence unless a catalyst emerges. The "winner" in a scenario where geolocated digital donations become a standard venue expectation would likely be the first company to achieve critical mass in a major music city, securing exclusive partnerships with a chain of popular venues. Conversely, the "loser" in a scenario where customer acquisition costs remain high and network effects fail to materialize would be any standalone platform, like TrueFans CONNECT, that cannot outlast the cash runway required to build a sustainable marketplace. Without visible traction or funding, the risk is that the concept remains an undeveloped wedge.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Competitive analysis is inferred from market segments; no direct competitors are named in public sources. Company's own feature claims are the primary basis for positioning.
Opportunity
PUBLIC
The prize for TrueFans CONNECT is a position as the default digital infrastructure for monetizing live, independent music, capturing a slice of the billions spent annually on live entertainment and artist support.
The headline opportunity is to become the primary transaction layer for independent live music, a role currently fragmented between ticketing platforms, merchandise sales, and direct cash tips. The company’s cited model, which emphasizes real-time, geolocation-powered donations and an artist-friendly 80/20 revenue split, positions it to intercept the growing consumer preference for direct-to-artist support [TrueFans CONNECT website]. If it can establish a standard for digital tipping at live events, it could evolve from a discovery tool into a critical piece of financial infrastructure for artists and venues, similar to how Shopify became the default for e-commerce. The plausibility of this outcome hinges on the platform’s stated technical foundation, including its entertainment data lake and developer APIs, which suggest a design for scale beyond a simple app [TrueFans CONNECT DataCloud page].
Growth is not guaranteed to follow a single path. The table below outlines two concrete scenarios for how TrueFans CONNECT could achieve scale.
| Scenario | What happens | Catalyst | Why it's plausible |
|---|---|---|---|
| Venue Partnership Standard | The platform becomes the embedded tipping and analytics solution for a regional chain of live music venues. | A partnership with a venue management group or a festival circuit, providing exclusive digital donation services. | The company explicitly markets services to venues to help them "reach a global audience" and provides venue analytics, indicating a designed B2B channel [TrueFans CONNECT Venues page]. |
| Artist Tooling Expansion | Successful artists on the platform drive adoption of its broader business management suite (FansIQ, CRM), creating a sticky ecosystem. | A feature launch that integrates booking, merchandise, or royalty tracking, leveraging the platform's existing data layer. | The platform’s description of an "entertainment data lake" and tools for artists to have a "clear handle on their overall music business" frames it as more than a payment widget [F6S] [TrueFans CONNECT DataCloud page]. |
Compounding success would likely manifest as a two-sided network effect. More artists using the platform for donations would attract more fans seeking to discover and support them, which in turn would draw more venues seeking engaged audiences and better analytics. Each new user generates normalized event data that feeds the platform’s data lake, potentially improving recommendation algorithms and venue insights, creating a data moat. The cited 80/20 revenue split is a key element of this flywheel; if it proves sustainable, it could become a powerful acquisition and retention tool for artists compared to alternatives, though its operational viability is unconfirmed [F6S].
Quantifying the size of a win is challenging without public comparables in the niche digital-tipping-for-live-music space. A plausible scenario valuation could be anchored to acquisitions in adjacent live entertainment or creator economy software. For instance, if the "Venue Partnership Standard" scenario played out and TrueFans CONNECT captured a material share of the independent venue market, its value could be benchmarked against small-to-mid cap SaaS companies serving niche verticals, which often trade at revenue multiples of 3x to 8x. A more ambitious outcome, where it becomes a foundational tool for independent artists, would place it in the realm of creator platform acquisitions, which have ranged from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. This is a scenario-based illustration, not a forecast.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Opportunity framing is extrapolated from company claims; specific growth catalysts and compounding mechanisms are inferred from product descriptions.
Sources
PUBLIC
[TrueFans CONNECT website] TrueFans CONNECT - Live Music Discovery & Artist Support | https://truefansconnect.com
[F6S] TrueFans CONNECT by New Music Lives | https://www.f6s.com/company/truefans-connect-by-new-music-lives
[Talks.co, retrieved 2026] Paul Saunders: Talks on Music Marketing & Create Music Career | https://talks.co/paulksaunders/
[TrueFans CONNECT DataCloud page] Live Music Discovery & Artist Support - DataCloud | https://truefansconnect.com/datacloud/
[Fansly Fees Explained] Fansly Fees Explained | https://www.fansly.com/faq/fees
[OnlyFans Agency Commission Rates] OnlyFans Agency Commission Rates | https://www.onlyfansagency.com/commission-rates
[How Much Does OnlyFans Take from Your Creators?] How Much Does OnlyFans Take from Your Creators? | https://www.onlyfans.com/help/article/how-much-does-onlyfans-take-from-your-creators
[TrueFans CONNECT Help page] Live Music Discovery & Artist Support - Help | https://truefansconnect.com/help
[TrueFans CONNECT Venues page] Live Music Discovery & Artist Support - Venues Partner | https://www.truefansconnect.com/venues/partner
[New Music Lives] New Music Lives | https://www.newmusiclives.com/
[Pollstar, 2024] Pollstar 2023 Year End Report | https://www.pollstar.com/article/pollstar-2023-year-end-report-157226
[Goldman Sachs, 2023] The Creator Economy: A $500 Billion Opportunity | https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/the-creator-economy-a-500-billion-opportunity.html
Articles about TrueFans CONNECT
- TrueFans CONNECT Maps a Digital Tip Jar Onto the Live Music Venue — The 2019-founded platform uses geolocation to let fans send real-time donations to performing artists, taking a 20% cut of each transaction.