Music curation is something that greatly interests me as well, and one of my projects slated for 1-2 years out will be in that area.

Don't forget that -- apart from being united by musical taste -- fans usually have MUCH else in common as well. Musical taste is a great predictor of other demographic features such as age, nationality, race, gender, region, economic class, and a million much subtler social characteristics.

Fans of Steely Dan or Yo Yo Ma are different overall than fans of 50 Cent, Garth Brooks, or Lady Gaga.

That's obvious, and you know it already. But keep in mind that sites like Facebook are valuable for advertisers, yes, for the eyeballs but partly because they can CHARACTERIZE those eyeballs and predict their behavior as consumers.

You may be making a site that's laser-focused on music as such. But monetizing music has become notoriously difficult in the post-CD era. So you may want to look at non-musical ways to monetize music, based audience characteristics that various fan groups happen to share.

If you're wondering about a brand name or domains, call me.