* “Host layer”: greeting newcomers + making it safe to arrive alone mattered more than we expected.
  * Curation as governance: coherent music changes how people behave in the room.
  * Offline outreach outperformed posting: visiting local businesses in person built trust faster than Instagram.
  * Scale changes the social physics; we stayed small on purpose.

Brilliant. Fantastic example of constraints producing richly creative results.

Those are much more meaningful to me than those giant stadiums where you watch the band on giant screens. These thoughts will seem obvious, but smaller spaces with a limited audience are really warmer. You feel much closer to the artists, you are sharing emotions, sometimes the artist comes playing or singing in the middle of the audience. Things happen! A guitar string breaks, a drum falls, the singer goes out of tune. This is real live music!

Aha, I recognise this as a direct translation of what I used to see DJs and club promoters writing in GBG and Sthlm — ses i dimman!

Best of luck going forward.

> People return when they feel recognised and when the night has a consistent identity.

But there's no identity to your post, because it doesn't feel like it was written by a person. Try writing it yourself! It’s boring, but it builds trust because it’s human, not algorithmic.

Anyway, congrats! I used to be a little bit into the DIY music scene in Chicago. Super cool to see other manifestations of it around the world