It happens to the best of us: You are at a show and the person behind you is talking, that guy in front of you is on his phone, you are so far away from the stage that you can’t even tell who is playing and you are too embarrassed to ask your friends if that was the headliner or the second act.

Take comfort, you are not alone.

One day in London, Rafe Offer, Rocky Start and Passion Ate Dave had the same thought and did something about it. The three friends joined forces and formed Sofar Sounds, a concert series that allows attendees to experience a rotating lineup of up-and-coming bands in the most intimate atmosphere possible–someone’s living room. 

Offering up live, stripped-back performances in rooms across the globe, Sofar Sounds draws bands from all over the world, providing a three-band set to those lucky enough to score a spot on the small RSVP list that night. The result? There are no bad seats, no phones, and plenty of passionate music lovers to bond with in-between sets. 

We chatted with Offer about the past, present, and ever growing future of Sofar Sounds.

Tell me how Sofar Sounds started.

Well, it all started in a bar. I was there with two friends and we were listening to a band and there was this moment, an epiphany. We were enjoying the band, The Friendly Fires, and it was prior to them being well known. And we were like, “Wow they are really good, but this whole experience could be so much better.’ Half of the room was talking and it wasn’t about the band and you could hear the clang of the bar in the background and of course the omnipresent phones and we said, “This is soul destroying when you are on stage,” and it was just not okay. So we came up with this idea at the same time—let’s set up some music and just invite people who will enjoy it and be quiet and focus. We went to my friend’s house and asked people to come and just shut up and listen. It was so quiet and personal, and I remember you could hear the clock ticking and we said maybe this is the way it should be.

How did you get the word out that this was even happening?

People started posting stuff about it and lots of people were showing up. But it was only in friends’ houses and we said, “Well if we are inviting people into other people’s homes we don’t want them telling too many other people, it would get to be too much.” So we decided we would not tell people about the location for the show until that day, the privacy issue was what drove that. 

How do you decide who performs? 

Well, we think all musicians are equal and we want to give them all the same respect. Not this whole coming and going stuff during opening sets, talking or at the bar waiting for the third act. Our idea to avoid this was we would not tell anyone who is performing and they can be surprised, and in that way we can throw in a lot of types of acts too. But honestly, we aren’t that smart, we didn’t think about all that it would become, it was just a natural thing, not like, Oh we’ll build a brand, or whatever. That’s also why we keep the sets short—you don’t know the band, you don’t know who is playing and it still only goes 20 minutes so even if it isn’t your style it doesn’t last long. Plus, when you are sitting on the floor of someone’s living room it can get uncomfortable after too long. 

Now that Sofar Sounds has gotten bigger, do you still maintain the same ways of selecting the music?

We started out being really obsessive about who plays, and I think we still are. If someone is going to come out we feel like we better reward them with something that is good. It may not be your style, but it is good. We were really inspired by MySpace actually, and we talked a lot about that in the early days, I think we had that sense of having a reputation for good music and we want to curate something we thought was deserving of people’s time. 

What is the incentive for the bands performing? 

We always try to help the bands. If we are inviting 50 people to come, we always make sure they are massive music fans, people who will spread the word and follow that band.

So you curate the audience?

We do curate the audience, yes totally, but not in an exclusive sort of way. More to rotate it—if someone has been trying to get in for a while, we will push that one forward. We begin to know who is a music fan and who isn’t and who is a little more likely to come - we allow all ages but there is slightly more of a certain age, a bit younger. It makes sense because they have the time, someone who doesn’t have a family or a massive job is going to have more time to go and hear music and write about a band so it tends to skew a bit younger because of that.

How far has Sofar grown?

We are now in 181 cities.

Wow.

[Laughs] Yeah. Well, at some point we were doing them regularly and I wondered if it would work outside of London. I had lived in New York for eight years; I said to Dave lets try New York and that was the first time we branched out of London. Then we went to Paris, and then the fourth was Los Angeles and that was when a stranger contacted me for the first time and offered to start hosting. Enter Skype. We would have never spread without things like Skype, which allowed us to find out who this person was who wants to take our little movement and expand it. We quickly got very good about figuring people out—who is the best person to take on our movement in an area. We say just don’t break these rules—good music, good people keeping quiet during the sets and a good living room. 

Inviting strangers into people’s homes can be daunting. Have you ever had any incidents?

Believe it or not, pretty much no. People who come are really respectful. There was like, one time in Berlin where the guy who did it was the wrong person and had a freak out and still they managed to redirect people to a bar. When you tell the landlord it is just going to happen once and it ends at 10:30pm and it isn’t really amped up they are usually okay with it. A really important thing is that people don’t get drunk—we are BYO and there is only so much alcohol you can physically bring. When you drink more, you tend to talk more and louder so we kind of avoid that in that way, also that is why we usually host sessions during the week.

What do you see in the future for Sofar?

We are definitely going to keep growing. There are a lot of cities and a lot of great music out there. We are not changing the format—it seems to be working. We are sometimes going out of living rooms by necessity in places like Tokyo, where no one has a house, but the venue still has to be quirky and very rarely are we in a commercial or typical venue. We want more people to travel and say “Hey, I am going to be in Paris for a week and I would love to go to a Sofar Sounds there.” I also enjoy the idea that people can go to Sofar to make friends. You can meet someone from Cleveland on one side and Ireland on the other, and you can build a global network of music lovers. Someone once joked to me that Sofar is better than Tinder, being single or just friendly is a good thing —you meet people more than you might in a bar situation, and you know they love good music too.