01 — How it works
If you only read one part of this page, read this one. Everything else hangs off these four steps.
On a placard, a sticker, a shirt. No app, no account, no password. One field, an email or a phone number, which is all anyone will do in a loud room.
They were here, on this night, for this artist, before anyone else knew the name. It is permanent, and it belongs to them.
Points for things that cost something: showing up, coming back, bringing someone. Multiplied by how early you were. Every number traces back to a real event.
The artist can finally show a booker who believed and when. We accumulate the only record of early, real-world belief that exists anywhere.
That is the product today. Not a plan, not a mock. A fan can do this tonight.
02 — What is missing
A play count can only move once someone has already found the artist. It describes the aftermath of discovery, never the discovery itself.
A like costs nothing, so it proves nothing. Attention and belief look identical in the data and behave nothing alike in the world.
An artist can play to a room of real, provable connection, and by sunrise none of it exists anywhere. No one can say who believed early, or prove it to anyone who matters.
The harder it is to do, the more it means.
Showing up in person, coming back, or bringing a friend is harder to fake and says more than a click. That one idea sits under every part of this company.
03 — The Belief Score
No black box. A fan should be able to read their own timeline and understand exactly why the number is what it is. Below is the whole model behind our founding list, the sign-up on this site, in public. How the app scores a night at a show follows it.
| Event | Points | Counted |
|---|---|---|
| Backing an artist for the first time | 100 | Once ever |
| Verified presence at the venue | 50 | Once per show |
| Coming back at a later show | 60 | Once per show |
| Someone you brought backs them too | 75 | Once per person |
| Sharing their page | 15 | Once |
| Following one of their links | 10 | Once per platform |
Your bonus is locked in the moment you first support an artist, and it never changes. Nobody who shows up later can water it down. That is not a launch promotion. It is the whole idea, written into the math.
| Where you land | Multiplier | Locked |
|---|---|---|
| First 50 supporters | 3× | Forever |
| Up to 250 | 2× | Forever |
| Up to 1,000 | 1.5× | Forever |
| After that | 1× | Forever |
Tiers run Listener at 0, Supporter at 100, Believer at 400, Ambassador at 1,200, Founding Believer at 3,000.
Assumes you join in the founding fifty at 3×, so joining is worth 300 and every person you bring is worth 225. This is the same arithmetic the founding list runs, not an illustration.
Same idea, its own weights. The app counts the show nights you checked in, whenever you found the artist, with more for seeing them in different rooms. Getting there early adds a founding bonus, a little smaller for each regular already coming back when you arrived, and it grows every month you keep coming while the crowd of regulars grows. Following adds a little, and so does chipping in, never more than one night in the room. What you tell the artist goes to them, not to your score. Its tiers run Casual, Early Believer, Consistent, and Founding Superfan. The weights are a starting point, and they stay that way until the Austin pilot gives us real rooms to tune them against.
A printed QR proves intent, not attendance. What we check today, and what comes next, is in where we actually are.
04 — Who it serves
A permanent record of the night you believed, and a standing that grows as the artist does. The thing you already brag about, finally written down.
Who showed up, who came back, who brought someone. Free, theirs, and portable. Proof of momentum to show a booker, a label, or an investor.
Ticket counts say whether tonight sold out. They do not say whether people are coming back. We measure the difference.
05 — Where we actually are
Most company pages blur these three together. We keep them apart, because a claim you cannot defend in a room full of people who check is worth less than no claim at all.
| What | Status | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| QR to artist page to free backing | Live | Working end to end. Artist claims a page, prints a QR, fans back for free. |
| Belief Score v1 | Live | Computed from real event data in production, not a mock. |
| A log behind every score | Live | Every change to a fan’s score is written down with what caused it, so any number can be rebuilt and explained. |
| Sign up with one field, claim it later | Live | Identity created on the spot from one field, claimed later with a code, history never lost. |
| Check-ins tied to the show | Live | A free check-in counts only on the night, while the show is on, from that show’s own code. |
| An artist’s own data room | Live | An artist can open their believers, shows, and growth to a manager or a label with a private link and a code they set. |
| Proof you were really in the room | Next | Built into the scoring and switched off until tags that change on every tap, and codes that change on a screen, are in venues. |
| Paid backing | Next | Coded and dormant. Held until a compliance read on money transmission comes back. |
| Belief Score v2 | Next | Designed and simulated. Adds streaks, referral depth, and anti-gaming. Not deployed. |
| Austin venue pilot | Next | First pilot night is Saturday, September 26, 2026, in Austin. |
| Dashboard for venues | Next | Exists in the demo layer. Not yet part of the live loop. |
| Scouting tools for labels, across many artists | Hypothesis | Real interest from the conversations we have had. Nothing built yet. |
| Recommendations for ticket and music apps | Hypothesis | The long-run prize, and entirely untested. They would get recommendations, never the records behind them. |
Show that a belief record is real, reusable, and worth keeping. That is the entire job right now.
Venues, labels, and established artists pay for the tools the record makes possible: whether a room is growing, who to book next, and which rising artists to work with. Fans and artists stay free.
Ticket and music apps pay to show our recommendations of rising artists inside their own apps. They get the recommendation, never the records behind it. Far off, unproven, and deliberately not the plan we are betting this year on.
If the scan rate at real shows stays low and no one returns to their own page, the whole premise is decoration. The Austin pilot is the first honest test.
Someone chasing points and someone who genuinely cares look identical from outside. If the model cannot tell them apart, the data is noise with a nice interface.
It is. What protects us, if anything does, is the record piling up over years and the reputations built on it, not the QR code itself. That takes time we may not get.
06 — Perks
This is not a waitlist. A waitlist gives you nothing until somebody lets you in. You get your number in line, the bonus that comes with it, and your own QR code to share, all straight away. Your place in line never moves.
The counts below assume the founding fifty 3× bonus. Join later and you have further to climb, which is the entire point.
Your number in line and your bonus, locked in for good. Your own link and QR code. Your name on the Founding Wall we publish at launch.
On the invite list for the Austin pilot night, ahead of any public announcement. You see the thing working in a real room before anyone writes about it.
We print and send you StageCred swag with your own referral QR on it. A placard, a sticker sheet, a shirt. Your code, in the physical world, doing the work for you.
Your name on the Founding Wall at launch, a direct line to the founders, and first look at everything we ship before it goes out.
Every one of those is something we can hand you ourselves. No equity, no revenue share, no financial instrument of any kind. Belief points are a record of when you showed up, and that is all they are.
07 — How this spreads
We do not buy attention. Every piece of StageCred swag carries a real person's referral QR, so the thing that spreads the company is the same thing that rewards the person spreading it. One object, two jobs.
It points at this page with your code attached. Nothing to configure, nothing to claim.
A placard at the merch table, a sticker on a case, a shirt at a show. We print it for you once four people have joined through you.
They read what the company is, in four beats, and join in one field. Their place is locked the same instant yours was.
Seventy five points at your locked multiplier, once per person, recorded against your name. The graph it builds matters as much as the points. Someone who repeatedly brings others early is a signal in their own right.
08 — Advertising and partnerships
Most advertising reaches people at their desk. StageCred reaches them in the room, at the moment they decide an artist is worth believing in. Three ways to be part of it.
Fans unlock a physical reward by connecting with the artist. The reward, the table and the pass on the fan's phone can carry your name. One per believer, picked up in person.
One printed code per door, reused every show. Your mark next to the artist's, on the object every fan scans or taps first.
A message to the fans who showed up for an artist, on the night, with the numbers to show what it did: who scanned or tapped, who connected, who came back.
Pricing is by the night during the pilot. We will build the package with you.
09 — For investors
Short on time? Start with the FAQ, including how we make money and what protects us.
We write it down. If a record of who showed up early can be made permanent and easy to explain, then everyone who finds and books and signs artists has something to work with that they have never had.
Real venue, real artists, real scans and taps. The questions are scan rate per room, return rate across shows, and whether an artist comes back and asks to run the next one.
Not the QR code. The record of who showed up early, artist by artist and room by room, piling up year after year, and how hard it becomes to walk away once an artist’s whole history lives in one place.
Music, live events, or marketplace data. We would rather have a smaller check from someone who can open a venue door than a larger one that cannot.
We will send the current company memo, the Belief Score model write-up, and a walkthrough of the working product. If you want to see it in a real room instead, come to the pilot.
10 — FAQ
StageCred helps find artists who are likely to break out before the music industry does. Fans scan or tap at a live show, and that night becomes a permanent record of who believed early. Artists, fans, and venues can all use that record.
Yes, for fans and for artists. Checking in at a show, keeping your record, and an artist’s own page and data room cost nothing. Venues, labels, and established artists pay for extra tools, and brands pay to sponsor a night.
Fans and artists use StageCred for free. We make money from the people who gain the most from finding talent early.
Austin alone has hundreds of live music venues. Every city with a music scene has the same buyers: venues booking acts every week, labels and managers looking for the next one, artists on tour, and brands that want to be in the room.
For pricing and details, write to hello@getstagecred.com.
No. We do not sell fan data or artist data, to anyone. We make money from tools built on the record, not from the record itself.
A label only sees an artist who chose to be found, and we never show a fan’s email to an artist or anyone else. The details are in our privacy policy.
Your record is the nights you checked in, what you chipped in, and which artists you followed. The history stays permanent, so a believer number can never be rewritten later.
You can ask us to delete your account at any time, and we will take your name off that history within 30 days.
No. They are a record of what you did, not money. They cannot be sold, traded, or cashed out, and they give you no share of StageCred or of any artist. Money you send an artist is a gift to that artist. Our terms say so in plain words.
They can copy the app. They cannot copy the past.
Nobody can go back in time. Early belief has to be written down on the night it happens. Every show we are part of adds a record that no one who starts later can recreate.
We are in the rooms they do not see. The earliest shows are small, and many have no ticket at all: bars, open mics, free nights. A ticketing company sees tickets. We see who showed up.
We are on everyone’s side. A fan’s record follows them across every artist, venue, and ticket seller. A ticketing company only sees its own shows, and a fan-club app is built around one artist at a time.
It gets harder to catch. Every new fan makes every artist’s record more useful, and every artist brings their fans with them. The longer we run, the wider the gap. All of it starts small, which is why we started now.
In Austin, starting with live pilot nights in September 2026. Nothing about how it works is specific to Austin.
We are watching three things: how many people in the room check in, how many come back for another show, and whether artists ask to do it again.
Something we did not answer? Write to us at hello@getstagecred.com.