Hipsters are the type of people who are on the margins of the music industry. They love music no doubt, but they tend to like things that the majority of the public has heard nothing about. They believe in following artists that are largely undiscovered because they feel that these artists have not sold themselves out to the overrated music industry.
Hipsters drive some artists out of irrelevance and into a more important role. This can often have an odd effect in that the artist then becomes something that they no longer wish to follow. After that have created this popularity for the artist, hipsters will start to run away from following that artist. It is a start phenomenon, but it does happen. The hipsters just do not like the overrated music industry and what it does to their artists at all.
Whenever you start to hear about an artist becoming popular for the first time, you might want to see if that person had hipster followers in the past. You may find that they indeed came from this kind of background, and that may impact the way that you view them and their continuing career. It can be an interesting way to look at musical artists.