I would love for this to work well, but it really needs a better way to know who is already on the platform. Right now all I can do is search and every artist I tried simply results in an empty results page and a suggestion I contact them. This makes it feel like there's no interest in the platform from the side of performers and you're asking me to volunteer to change that.
It would be much better if I could look at a list of already registered artists with a form to submit a wish for missing artists, with an implication that you'd contact them. Either you have a network in the industry and are more likely to reach them than a random fan, or you don't and this seems unlikely to take off.
You should of course save statistics of fans requesting an artist and where in the world they are, to facilitate convincing them. Maybe even, as another commenter suggested, make this data visible on the site to show users how much interest there is for certain performers.
Thanks for the input! We've been asked for a viewable list of performers a few times and it's definitely something we plan on adding. I agree, searching randomly can be tedious. Especially if the bands you're looking for aren't signed up yet.
We do plan on reaching out to our network of artists to create profiles to make this more user-friendly for the fans.
It would be much better if I could look at a list of already registered artists with a form to submit a wish for missing artists, with an implication that you'd contact them. Either you have a network in the industry and are more likely to reach them than a random fan, or you don't and this seems unlikely to take off.
You should of course save statistics of fans requesting an artist and where in the world they are, to facilitate convincing them. Maybe even, as another commenter suggested, make this data visible on the site to show users how much interest there is for certain performers.