Refract was a community intelligence platform built for Discord. It turned what fans say in an artist's server into insight that labels and artist teams could act on.
I co-founded it and ran it as CEO. We bootstrapped it.
Artists and their teams across labels including Sony, Warner, Universal and Atlantic.
Refract presents
- A$AP Rocky
- PinkPantheress
- ONE OK ROCK
- David Kushner
- I Hate Models
- 1nonly
- Midwxst
- Rommulas
- W6RST
- Cokho
- EMPIRE
- TapCap
on labels including Sony, Warner, Universal & Atlantic
Where fans really talk
Discord is where an artist's most committed fans spend their time online. They talk there every day, and they say things they would never post in public.
I'd spent years working inside Discord with Grow A Tree and Hyperliminal, so I knew how much was being said in those servers. Labels had no good way to hear it:
- Social listening tools only read public feeds, so private communities were a blind spot.
- So teams skimmed Discord by hand and reported on it a week late.
What we built
Refract read an artist's community as it happened and gave every conversation structure. A team could see how fans felt about a release on the day it dropped, and find the fans who mattered most to a campaign.
It also picked up what fans were listening to through their Discord status, so streams and conversation sat side by side. Anyone on the team could ask a question in plain English and get the answer straight from the community.
Running the company
I co-founded Refract with Josh Maizes and Fragment Studios. As CEO I set the product direction and ran the development team.
Listening activity, pulled from fans' Discord status.
How fans felt, day by day.