Maybe ‘fan’ is undergoing a redefinition?

FAN: someone who likes your art enough to want to incentivise you (reward, or pay you to carry on, say).
APPRECIATOR: A pre-fan or non-fan, who finds your art tolerable or agreeable
AUDITIONER: someone who is seeing whether or not they like you
AGNOSTIC: someone who doesn’t know about you
ANTAGONIST: someone who doesn’t like your art (or you as an artist)

It seems to me that a gated performance/exhibition can extract money from all of them (including other halves dragged along).

However, by my definition above, only fans will stump up any money online.

I suspect there’s a schism between those who believe in ‘dark matter’ (an invisible and as yet unidentified demographic that can be soaked for cash) and those who don’t.

No doubt revenue can be extracted from this untapped demographic via taxation…