The psychedelic trance musician bringing dedicated communities closer together

For the sake of argument, let’s suppose you are an up-and-coming (or even established) pop band. Do you want an “audience” for your music? No, says Benji Vaughan: “What you need is an online digital community.” And even if you are not a musical sensation, or any other kind of sensation, but simply want to find others who share your enthusiasm, something similar applies, which is where Disciple – Vaughan’s brainchild – comes in.

Vaughan, now in his forties, started out as a musician. Brought up in Surrey he could hear sylvan raves in the distance even as a kid. “What’s that, Mum?” was one of his first questions. He was given a drum kit when he was aged 12 and got his first record deal at 19. He scraped an economics degree from Bristol while mainly doing gigs and went on to do a PhD in “studio nerdery”, building Heath Robinson-style contraptions to produce electronic sounds for “psychedelic trance” music (which he describes as “banging late-night techno noise”). “Even then I knew I wasn’t going to make money out of selling CDs.”

In the late Eighties he started using an Atari computer, playing games and doing basic coding, and realised that he could use that to control his equipment. Since then, he has been more software-engineer and tech entrepreneur than music-maker. But his experience collaborating with a record label, Twisted Records, has had a huge influence on Disciple. “It was always communal. It was all about a shared culture.”

They used an early chat forum for the purpose of file-sharing. “It was very niche, but at the same time instantly global. It would appear at the same time in Tokyo and New York and London.” Prometheus – his band or brand name – didn’t have mainstream media coverage, but Vaughan realised they didn’t need it: the niche was big enough on its own and didn’t suffer from the boom and bust of the traditional media-led musical phenomenon.

Disciple arose, in 2015-16, out of a discussion at the record label. Vaughan says that he had started to realise that his job was “not to sell records but to grow fans”. His key insight was that people who were passionate about one thing also potentially had a relationship with each other. “If you could tap into that then you would be immune to technological change,” he says. It wouldn’t matter if you were on cassette, CD or digital, your fan-base would follow you regardless.

They were initially using Facebook to communicate with fans. But Vaughan was conscious of being “exploited” and “under surveillance” by Facebook. “It was obvious that we had to build a social experience that we owned.” Vaughan sees this as a process of decentralisation. Facebook seeks to hoover up everyone. Vaughan wanted to create dedicated communities, held together by a shared focus.

The first platform he created was for Twisted Records. But then other people started asking him if he could do something similar for them. Thus was born the idea of building bespoke social networks on demand, first of all for other labels, then for musicians like The Rolling Stones and Luke Bryan, the American country singer. “The great thing is,” says Vaughan, “that the Stones don’t really have to do anything once it’s set up, the fans do it all.”

At the outset, it would take them about six weeks to build a platform for a band. But if musicians, then why not writers, or movie-stars, or politicians? Wouldn’t they all potentially need something like this? And so too their legions of fans. Which is why they spent most of 2017 working out how the process could be automated and compressed into an app that enables you to do it all in about five minutes.

Disciple launched its Cloud-based software-as-a-service business in 2018. The range of different groups who have become disciples of Disciple is huge and defined only by one thing: that they must be passionate about something: “No one is going to have a product on their phone unless they’re passionate about it,” says Vaughan.

Novice teachers and dog groomers and determined dieters have used Disciple. Cattle farmers in New Zealand have banded together to form a digital community, as have cattle traders in the midwest. “They’re not sitting around a campfire any more”, says Vaughan. “They’re sitting around their app – and it’s the same one that Matt Hancock uses.” Hancock uses a Disciple-generated platform to communicate with his constituents. Forbes split its clientele into 300 special interest groups with their own platforms. One of them, “30 under 30”, used to consist of just thirty people, now it’s around 6,000.

An online community is much stronger, argues Vaughan, than a mere audience. “It would work well for The Independent,” he says, and starts mapping out what this group would look like. “The likelihood is that they would turn out to have a lot more in common than just reading the paper. The Independent is the vehicle that brings them together.”

We are, of course, communicating in splendid isolation via our computer screens. Disciple has not fared too badly during the pandemic. “No one wants to say that the virus has benefited their business. And we are not Zoom or Slack. But we have seen an uptick.” Groups have migrated online to ensure that their community can continue to thrive, no matter what happens. The online congregation is the only one that is guaranteed to be immune from Covid. “We are creating a lifeline,” says Vaughan, “keeping communities alive during the crisis.” Fitness instructors in particular have flocked to Disciple.

In April they are launching a new service bringing the standard big-company rate of £450 down to more like £45 for smaller groups and individual hosts. “It’s a process of democratisation,” says Vaughan. “We started with just stars, now it’s anyone – maybe they can become stars.”