About

Current 'State-of-play'

The music industry is broken!

Music Labels Take all the Money
Every up and coming artist dreams of getting 'signed' by a major label. But they have no idea what the deal will really be.

Obviously there are a myriad of potential deal types — and everything is up for negotiation, but for new acts with little leverage the typical deal major labels offer will mean the artist either ends up with nothing or deep in debt.

Basically, the deal is: the label takes 85% and then puts ALL the costs onto the artists 15%. So regardless of advances — which are all recoverable from that 15% — all the production, marketing, management and promotional costs are lumped on the artists 15% — not the label's 85%! Obviously, numbers and costs can be fudged so the artist ends up with nothing — or worse, in debt to the label for the rest of their lives.

There are lots of stories about many major artists being burnt by these deals: Prince, Billy Joel, Taylor Swift, etc.
The Labels Control Spotify — and by extension the public perceptions, charts and money.
Spotify has become so dominant in the music industry that essentially the whole industry revolves around it. Artists only really earn money from plays on Spotify (not record sales or through purchases of their music); charts are determined by the number of plays an artists gets — and radio stations only play charting music; and the public only gets shown what the labels want them to see — so crappy indie music or amazing labelled music (setting the perception that indie music is 'less than' (quality wise) label music.

Of course, when the labels determine what songs end up on Spotify curated playlists, then indie artists simply don't get a look in.

What is more, labels use all sorts of play count rigging practices to get their new artists charting, but if an indie artists even thinks of using paid promotions for their new release, 'unusual' play counts are labels 'bot generated' and the music is permanently taken off Spotify — effectively killing an artists career. We even commonly see play counts altered — e.g. 300 plays become 200 plays — because an artist is 'growing too fast'. Of course, this is all justified with that ominous, tow-the line-or-die-phrase: we spotted FRAUD!
No New Genres Allowed
The Spotify algorithm kills any possibility of new music genres emerging. That is, if you don't fit into a neatly defined set of boxes, your music does not get pushed to anyone — including your own fans.

We believe that if Spotify was the dominant platform in the 1940's we would all still be listening to big band music and celebrating the next new horn player — "Bring on the Umpa band!"

Obviously there is lot more we could highlight that is wrong with the current industry state-of-play: new artists killed by incompetent record label employees; a countries own music being relegated to 'a minor mention' compared to USA and UK charted music; etc... Honestly, the whole thing is a mess and needs to change.

The Solution

A new music streaming platform — think Spotify with a multi-channel internet radio station front end.

Here are our goals:

Change the public's perception that Indie music is 'less than' label music.
This needs to be a coordinated campaign reaching out to terrestrial radio stations and industry organizations that control the charts.

To begin with, we need to present 'the best' indie music in an easily discoverable way to the public. This is where having multiple fully curated 'radio stations' that anyone can tune into provides a readily accessible 'point of entry'. These will be supported with advertising, or add free to subscribers.
Create a platform that gives the money back to the artists: literally 90% of revenue with a clear and honest audit trail for all to see.
The idea that large corporates like Spotify and labels 'own' the music and get all the money is abhorrent to us. The music industry is worth in excess of $65 Billion globally — easily big enough for any competent artist to make a living from it.

Of course, we wouldn't expect every 'bedroom musician' to be getting rich off their poorly produced, sometimes out-of-tune, 'music'. However, those who have invested the better part of their lives in their craft and are capable of producing a high quality commercial product should be able to at least live off their work.

The cost of running a full streaming service is not cheap, but the executives should not be on a multi-million dollar salary while the very people who create the product they 'sell' (the content providers) are starving. We need to flip this equation around.

On top of this, why on earth can't artists sell product and get donations directly on the platform their fans are finding them on?

We expect to be able to pay artists around $0.012 per stream as opposed to the $0.003 Spotify pays. Of course, all our artists are Indie artists — NO LABELS ALLOWED — so they will get ALL the money themselves.
A platform needs to give the artists easy access to their own fans
Having the right marketing tools for building and selling to a customer base is critical for any business — and the music business is no different. This means quality Client Relationship Management (CRM) tools.

Primarily you need to be able to build a database of fans and be able to communicate with them, managing your relationship, in a simple to use, fast way. Think, bulk email marketing solutions, without needing to send emails. Also, you need to be able to classify which fans are 'prospects' who have not yet brought anything; fans who have brought something; and super fans who not only buy from you, but want to donate to you as well. Each of these target groups will need different communications — many of which can easily be automated or setup in advance to coincide with the release of new music, merchandise or live performances.

This a where a safe / opt-out internal messaging system that enables artists to talk to their entire fan base by sending just one message (automatically personalize to suit) is critical — i.e. to those people who have 'subscribed' to them and agreed to receive messages. It is surprising to us that no other social platform allows this. Again, automated, customized and targeted.
We need to enable and promote new and emerging genres
Honestly, music is an art form. So, why do we force musicians to 'conform'?

We want to move the whole music industry forward. Ever since the error of algorithms the industry has stagnated. We have only seen a regurgitation of past decades — nothing new.

It is sad to us that we have not seen the rise of new and exciting genres of music from a world of creative artists pouring their heart into their craft. We want to change this. We welcome strange and wonderful new music and will do I best to feature it and promote it.

We believe this is the only way we can beat AI from robbing humanity of its creativity. Innovation will always outdo copycats. — AI included. We need the industry to move forward faster than AI can keep up!

The Deal

Anyone can 'tune in' to the radio stations for free — supported by ads. But to have an ad free experience and to be able to choose what they listen to and create their own playlists, they will need to 'subscribe'. We are currently estimating a $5 monthly fee (less in developing nations). Of course, there will be a 30 day free trial available (credit card required — mainly to stop bot accounts). Subscribers can create their own profiles, playlists, etc. and follow, like, etc, artists and songs.

Artists can upload their music for a very small one time fee of around $0.20 per song, which covers the cost of encoding and conversion of the files to the various required formats for streaming. This small fee will also deter spam uploads and unfinished songs from being uploaded.

All the sales and CRM tools will be freely available to all artists. Obviously, we do not want to be liable for 'undelivered' merchandise from sales via our platform, so it will be necessary for artists to have their own merchandise e-commerce website (which we can provide for a small monthly fee). However, music downloads and donations can be accepted through the platform where we will take a small 1% fee (plus credit card fees — totally around 2.95% all up) from the client and a 1% fee (plus any bank fees — which is highly dependent on what bank the artist uses) when the money is transferred out of our platform to your bank account.

We don't want to charge a monthly fee for artists to use the platform for themselves. However, we won't be counting plays of their own music from their own account. Also, since artists will require a credit card and ID to setup an account, we will not be allowing multiple accounts in an effort to stop playlist or song spamming.

What we Expect from Artists

We want to make this very clear. This whole platform will not even get off the ground without support from the Indie artist community.

While we will not be requiring anything in the way of proof or even independent monitoring, we do expect artists to act in their own best interests and support this platform by:

Uploading their music to the platform and building a high quality profile — with pictures, bios, links to socials, links to their website, and links to videos (which will be embedded on their profile), etc.
Promote the platform to all their fans through all their socials

Yup! That's it.

Obviously, we will be providing opportunities to promote the platform: voting for song-of-the-day, song-of-the-week, artist-of-the-year, etc; promoting new and emerging genres and new artists; competitions, etc.

What can you do Today?

Tell our backers this is what you want.

Join us (here) and tell all your fellow musicians and friends (even just non-musical fans and family) to also sign-up. It costs you nothing and will send a huge message to the people who control the purse strings as well as potential advertisers and sponsors.

Tell us where you live and what you want from the platform — i.e. have your say.

We are wanting to see at least 500 Indie artists enthusiastically wanting to come on board — or a smaller number of very highly motivated artists.

Thanks for reading through all this and we all hope we can finally do something together to transform the music industry and ensure the future of music and our dedicated artists.

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