Beyond Noise Team
An all-in-one platform for DJ’s to build, expand, and engage with fans
Internationally renowned for his chart-topping house and pop-crossover hits, DJ and producer Sam Feldt is no stranger to success and widespread acclaim. A globe-trotting performer who collaborates with the likes of Kesha, Akon, Hollywood superstar Jeremy Renner and Ella Henderson, Feldt is also an acute businessman and the brains behind interactive fan-based platform Fangage.
Feldt’s entrepreneurial journey started early on. At the age of just 15, Feldt had built and sold his first company, an e-commerce platform specializing in consumer electronics. As he gained traction with his music productions, signing to labels like Spinnin’ Records, he also continued to develop his business portfolio, with multiple social media marketing services as well as a digital agency.
By 2016, the electronic music world was at his feet, with millions of fans collected across multiple social media and music platforms. Yet whenever Feldt wanted to connect directly with his fans, to share news, ticket links, or more, he was blocked at every turn by an ever-changing carousel of algorithms. The base he’d spent years carefully building up and curating was practically unusable, a dormant asset held hostage by computer metrics completely out of his control. Out of Feldt’s frustration, Fangage was born. Experiencing an explosion of immediate growth, Feldt had to revisit the website’s original framework to allow for such an unexpected demand in capacity.
“We were a victim of our own success,” Feldt explains from his studios in The Netherlands. Due to Feldt’s high profile and reputation within the music scene, some of electronica’s biggest stars were swift to sign on, bringing with them millions of fans and multiple different social media sites they wanted to integrate. “The architecture of our previous platform was not scalable,” Feldt explains. “Every website ran on a separate server which made it hard to perform upgrades and bug fixes. Also, it made the platform really expensive to run.”
So Feldt did what so many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs did. He took a look at the product, saw exactly how to scale things up, and then started preparing for Fangage 2.0. And unsurprisingly, the support flooded in from fans and peers alike.
“After raising €300,000 in crowdfunding in 2019, we fully redeveloped the platform into a scalable, affordable solution that is ready for growth,” Feldt says. “We completely rebuilt the system from the ground up to make it faster, cheaper, and more scalable. We also allowed websites to be created automatically via Fangage.com instead of having to do this manually, saving time and costs. Also, we launched many new features like multi-language support and paid content and subscriptions, a bit like Onlyfans for non-adult stars.”
The hard work has paid off. After launching Fangage 2.0 in November 2020, in three months the site has created over 500 new websites with 500,000+ fans signed up to them. And it’s not just music artists jumping on board, as Feldt explains. “Fangage is for anyone or anything with fans. Influencers, sports teams, athletes, esports players but also brands. Heinz, for example, could create a fan platform for ketchup lovers with recipes and cooking videos to generate leads around a new product.”
As Feldt ups the stakes with his music career, kicking 2021 off with his Kesha collaboration ‘Stronger’, it seems the single’s theme has crossed over into his business life as well. With Fangage’s Q1 growth projected to be over 100%, the site looks set to provide that vital, missing link between fans and their heroes.
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