Monetizing remix culture: Beatport’s former CEO about his new mission

Matthew Adell about founding MetaPop and the surprising amount of money being left on the table by artists & labels.

It’s 2016 and artists still have to think like lawyers when working on remixes. As someone whose music consumption primarily exists of remixes and sampled works, this is a very personal pet peeve of mine. The topic is, finally, getting some attention beyond lawsuits and takedown notices.

Earlier this year, a task force from the US Department of Commerce presented their findings of a 2-year study, suggesting that a compulsory license is undesirable. Instead, it recommends that the marketplace be left alone to figure this out. An upcoming key player in this marketplace, is MetaPop: a platform that connects labels, producers and remixers, co-founded by former Beatport CEO, Matthew Adell. To date, MetaPop has signed on over 5,000 labels and helps them clear and monetize fan remixes.

I spoke to Matthew about how it got started, why remixes are so important, and the future of the remix landscape and MetaPop’s place in it.

~

A year after selling Beatport to SFX, Matt decided to step down and take some time off. After some time spent relaxing, he started looking for a new challenge, asking:

“What is not getting solved, because people just think it’s hard?”

This question formed the basis of Matt’s search for intractable problems in the music business. Having always had an interest in derivative works he decided to investigate this problem, because “especially in music, we’ve seen the behaviour of people making remixes without authorisation really become explosive,” indicating that remixes account for 10% of all music listening on YouTube.

To find this out, he teamed up with Michael Mukhin, former CTO of Boomrat, and built a piece of technology called Remix Finder. The purpose of the technology was to understand derivative works online. To start, they created a huge index of remixes, mashups and DJ sets on YouTube. The index contains track information, metadata, and engagement metrics, and over time they could also start seeing the speed and frequency at which these derivatives were taken down. If at all.

“What we learned is while mashups have hits every now and then, there aren’t a lot of mashups that generate a tremendous amount of engagement on YouTube. DJs have some of the tastemaker names in the world, but we found that other than after-movies from really big festivals, DJ sets weren’t really generating that much engagement on a global scale. The work that was really generating the most engagement, and was leaving the most possible revenue on the table, was what we call the single-song remix.”

So as a starting point, they honed MetaPop’s technology on single song remixes and found that they’re better at finding single song remixes than YouTube’s Content ID tool. On YouTube alone, they identified over 8 million remixes that are currently not monetized for the original artist nor the remixer. This could mean hundreds of millions of dollars currently being left on the table, because according to MetaPop just 2.5 million of those fan remixes generate over a billion plays per month.

“So, we have built a system now that allows rightsholders and remixers to come together on our platform to authorise and monetise all of these fan remixes.”

The platform is intended for all genres. In fact, they found that country music is one of the more popular remix genres on YouTube. But why should artists care about remixes in the first place? Matt explains how back in the day, one would have to press vinyl bootlegs to get remixes out there. It was a slow process.

Now music has become part of a constant flow of social media. As a musician, it’s nearly impossible to create enough music to feed this constant flow by yourself, he explains. For remixers, it can help them get noticed, and for the original artist it means an expanded fanbase, and increased revenue.

It makes sense. If you make country music, and someone makes an EDM remix of your track, suddenly you’re reaching another demographic that you otherwise wouldn’t. MetaPop’s revenue split, 70/15/15 to the original artist, remixer and MetaPop respectively, can form a great incentive to monetize remixes, as opposed to taking them down.

If it’s so valuable to artists and there are hundreds of millions of dollars on the table, then why has nobody cracked this before?

“It wasn’t solved before, because there was no money. And it’s complex. Each country has its own laws for how to deal with derivatives.” The rise of streaming means that now there suddenly is a way to monetize. You wouldn’t be able to track the vinyl bootlegs and monetize them, but with all the music platforms out there now, there’s suddenly a lot more data.

Matt also understands that older generations of original artists were more wary of remixes, but this is becoming less the case today.

In the next 10 years, he expects remixes to become even more prevalent, because the software and hardware necessary to create them is becoming ever-accessible. In this landscape, we’ll see much less takedowns than we do today, with there being more systems in place to monetize instead. This is where MetaPop’s place is, as a rights-clearing house for derivative works.

There’s still a long road ahead. The team currently consists of 5 people, with all the technology being built by 1. The thousands of labels, remixers, and original artists they’ve managed to attract and host is an impressive feat, and testament to many years of experience the team has throughout music & tech.

MetaPop’s currently in the process of raising a Series A investment round, so that they can start going global and bring in more music from more places. Besides single song remixes, they want to expand their footprint to cover other forms of derivatives, too, like mashups. The goal is, quite simple: to be able to monetize derivatives more widely and more efficiently.

Are MetaPop going to be able to crack this problem? Matt is confident.

“Nobody else has the right mixture of experience, tech and relationships.”

~

Personally, I’m happy to see people cracking away at this problem, because its importance is underestimated. There are 2 trends that make it urgent to create a legal base for derivative works:

  1. Adaptive music: generations are growing up expecting interactivity from everything in their environment. This is the generation that is growing up trying to swipe magazines, televisions and windows, believing they should be able to interact with it. Their music is going to be adaptive to fit the situation and whims of the listener.
  2. The remix is the internet’s language: whether it’s attaching a gif to a tweet, changing the caption on a meme, or filming yourself playbacking on the wildly popular Musically, we use the remix to express ourselves now. Music genres are increasingly behaving like memes: they often start with remixes by bedroom producers giving existing tracks another twist. Take vaporwave, moombahton, nightcore or even edm-trap as an example.

This is the way people interact with music now. The world shouldn’t have ignored the inner city kids sampling in the 80s and 90s to create hiphop, but now there’s just no getting around it.

Remixing is the new default.

~

Matt and I are both speaking at Amsterdam Dance Event (19–23 Oct).
Come see us.

Walking on stairs

Moving up the music curation food chain

Time for a quick lesson in free publicity. The increase of easy access to information and entertainment, combined with the democratisation of creation thereof, have led to the need for curation.

As an artist, you want to get your music noticed by curators, so it gets spread around further. But how do you get them to give a damn?

 

Curators follow curators

How do you think curators get their content? They follow other curators. It can be the DJ getting selected tracks from a trusted label rep, or a blogger learning about new releases through a mailinglist.

The easiest way to get noticed by top curators, is making sure you get noticed by smaller curators.

You have to be consistent about it. People have to see your name a few times before recognising you. Only then will they start giving a damn. How you do this depends on the category of music curation.

It will take time. It can be a year if you work hard at it – or even longer. If you don’t work hard at it, it will never happen, unless you hire someone that already has the network.

 

The categories of music curation

The actual dynamics differ from category to category, but the basic jest is that you start small and try to move up the curation food chain. Follow the curators who you want to be noticed by closely, so that you can figure out where they get their music from.

Some domains to think of:

  • Radio airplay: start with local and genre-specific, and slowly work your way up. This is probably the slowest process of all, since nationwide airtime is highly valued.
  • Genre-specific publications: there are dozens of decent publications and blogs per genre, perhaps a bit less for younger genres.
  • Location-specific publications: can even be location/genre-specific, like a local rock magazine.
  • Channel curators: think YouTube, Soundcloud.
  • Theme publications: these are similar to genre publications, but generally broader. Might also report on fashion, or a certain set of genres and sounds that can be loosely grouped together.
  • Live DJs.
  • Playlist curators.

There are plenty of other areas to explore, but if you’ve never really thought about this topic, then these are a good place to start.

 

The music business is a network business

You have to build your connections. Start with the more approachable curators. You can find them at events or in online communities like Facebook groups or Reddit. Your music might be really, really good, but when you hit the inbox of a curator, chances are it’s going to look like just another promo. They might not even listen to it.

Be creative about it, like these guys who wanted to get noticed by a prominent DJ in their genre:

If you’re intent on being able to arrange your own publicity, then check out the books Made to Stick and Contagious. They’re great books for learning how to construct strong stories to communicate ideas.

And a little hack: get a free Hubspot account, so you can see when people open your emails and whether they’ve clicked your links. It will help you to determine where you’re succeeding or failing, and adjust accordingly.

Why nobody cares about your free download

You spent years honing your skills. Countless hours putting together your latest song or album. You value your work immensely, so you decide to give this valuable thing away to your fans. Maybe it will even get you some new fans.

But they don’t care.

In the age of constant connectivity, free downloads have lost their value.

Music has become ephemeral

People jump from playlist to playlist, see music shared in their social media feeds, and are presented with a radio station button on each page of the streaming service they use. Research done by Nielsen asked people what they do when the music they want to access can’t be streamed: most people just move on. There is so much music one can access, immediately… a free download won’t make your music stand out.

Nielsen streaming availability graph
Via eMarketer

Why download?

There are certain use cases for downloads, and I’ve written about them below, but if it’s easy to retrieve tracks on YouTube, Soundcloud, or Bandcamp and stream them… then why would you bother with downloading? Especially when the user flow often looks something like:

  • Click download
  • Get sent to another site
  • Click download again
  • Prompted to connect to Facebook
  • Prompted to like the page of the band, label and lead singer
  • Prompted to share the track on Facebook
  • Prompted to do the same things on Soundcloud
  • *curl up in a ball and cry a little*
  • Download starting
  • Select location for your file

Is that worth it? How many times do you expect people to listen to your download?

Overused

Free downloads have become such a standard part of the strategy of artists, that it’s actually not that special anymore. Think about it: seeing FREE DOWNLOAD next to a track used to pique our interest to give it a listen. No more. Now, the only ones who get excited by seeing that are dedicated fans of the artist, label or genre.

Nobody cares about your free download

Or at least less than you’d think.

But free downloads still work in certain cases.

Free downloads can be a good way to please fans

Fans will care about your free download. Make sure it fits into a broader strategy, like I’ve shown with Yellow Claw. For instance, you can use mixtapes to hype an upcoming release and a tour you’re doing. Definitely offer those mixtapes for free.

yellow claw hype cycle social media

Know your audience

There are some easily identified types of audiences that would actually care about a free download, other than hardcore fans. For instance:

  • Very young teens who can’t afford a streaming subscription. This may be changing due to Spotify pushing family plans.
  • Audiophiles. They often complain that streaming audio quality is not good enough and they want higher definition sound, typically best offered by downloaded files.
  • (Bedroom) DJs. If you’re making electronic music, chances are a lot of your fans are also aspiring producers or DJs. Most DJing requires files, whether you use software on your laptop, a USB drive, or burn tracks to CD.
  • Older audiences. Many people in the older demographics want to be able to listen to ‘owned music’. They care less about music discovery – making music less ephemeral for them.
Important features for streaming services by age group
Source: Jackdaw Research

Audience first, strategy second

I wouldn’t want the elderly to get bombarded by trap producers. So, to avoid people thinking “so THAT’S who I need to target with my free downloads”, let’s get your strategy sorted first. I wouldn’t want the elderly to get bombarded by trap producers.

Look into the data you have on Facebook and Twitter. Look at the faces you see when performing live. Research the audiences of other artists who make similar music. Understand how they use the web, what they do, what they like, whether they’re streaming subscribers or not.

This is your point of departure.

Then set goals: what do you want to achieve? A bigger fanbase? More people at your shows? Make it tangible if you can. Now, free downloads become a method to achieve something. A tactic, rather than just something you do.

Free downloads should be something that makes people excited.

Make it so.

Further reading:

Music Business Growth Hacking 101: How to Scale Your Fanbase & Revenue Sustainably
Click here to continue

10 Lesser-Known Tools for Music Discovery

Radio, streaming services, social networks – everyone has their own way to discover new music. Meanwhile, there are dozens of entrepreneurs out there who believe they have a better way. Here are some of the best ones out there.

 

cmd.to fm

http://cmd.to/fm

cmd.to fm screenshot

How it describes itself: This is not your mothers radio. Listen awesome tunes from cmd.fm’s curated playlists.

How it works: It’s radio powered by a command-line interface. To keep it easy, it lets you click on the most essential commands. Player controls are activated by typed commands. All music appears to come from Soundcloud.

First impression: Fun! And I’m pretty sure this is how hackers listen to music. Does this make me a hacker?

 

MagicPlaylist

https://magicplaylist.co/

MagicPlaylist screenshot

How it describes itself: Get the playlist of your dreams based on a song.

How it works: You type the name of a song in a search box and it automatically generates a Spotify playlist with 30 other tracks.

First impression: It succeeds because it doesn’t let itself fail: generating a playlist from one track doesn’t create huge expectations, so it doesn’t disappoint. The playlists are not amazing, but it works as a quick way to pick a theme and have some music to listen to.

 

Cymbal

https://cymbal.fm/

How it describes itself: Discover songs the world is falling in love with.

How it works: Cymbal is a music social network that looks and feels a lot like Instagram.

First impression: Easy to use, because they make use of familiar interfaces. They make it easy to share content outside of the app, which is important in the early stages of social networks. Upon first try they really show you where the content is, so you immediately have something to check out. The onboarding process has too many steps and needs work. Ideally, you let people use the app ‘immediately’ and guide them through it, nudging them step by step to connect other accounts, etc.

As a social network, you need a certain critical mass to let users retain each other, so they should consider how to improve sharing the content outside the app in such a way that:

  1. Users will use the app, even if their friends are not on there;
  2. The content becomes so engaging that their friends will join.

 

trbble

https://trbble.com/

trbble screenshot

How it describes itself: Discover new music by listening to a song’s best part first!

How it works: trbble sources music from Soundcloud and lets users define the most important part of the song, so others can get a quick impression of it. This 30-second clip is then called a trbble. The playback and upvote count of your trbbles is displayed on your profile. So there’s an incentive for active users to provide music for passive users.

First impression: Found it hard to get used to the interface, but there’s a use case to explore. trbbles could perhaps provide a passive stream for DJs to listen through a lot of music, instead of actively skipping through tracks. I think conceptually it could be interesting, but needs to simplify its interface.

 

A Song a Day

http://www.asongaday.co/

A Song a Day screenshot

How it describes itself: Music from humans, not robots, delivered to your inbox every day. Because people are cool.

How it works: Give your email address, select which genres you like, and maybe select a curator. From that point you’ll receive new music recommendations, every day, in your inbox.

First impression: What I really like about the way it’s designed is that at every moment in the sign-up process, you can either give your preferences or say screw it, just send me some music. Simple and does what it says. I could imagine this having some growth potential.

 

Rising.fm

http://rising.fm/

Rising.fm Screenshot

How it describes itself: Music charts powered by Soundcloud.

How it works: It looks at data from “social media sites” and has a simple ranking algorithm to come up with charts. It’s basically an easy way to discover popular and trending music on Soundcloud.

First impression: Works well for the default tags and very popular search phrases, but if you go a bit more obscure, you get no results (eg. psytrance, goa). Even ‘trance’ returned just 6 results of which 3 were not trance. Perhaps it’s just not tracking the right blogs for that.

 

22tracks

http://22tracks.com/

22tracks screenshot

How it describes itself: 22tracks is a brilliantly curated playlist service, run by 120 expert and influential DJs from Amsterdam, Brussels, London and Paris.

How it works: The service appoints curators for genre-based playlists in each city. The curators are mostly local DJs, journalists, etc. with many being known within their scenes worldwide. Each playlist consists of 22 tracks and is updated regularly. You can save tracks to your own 22 track playlist.

First impression: Very cool concept, and so simple. They seem to monetize through brand partnerships, but I imagine they should be able to monetize part of their userbase at a low price point (between $1 and $4 per month) for additional mobile features like offline syncing, personalization, and perhaps exclusive premiers.

 

Chew.tv

https://chew.tv/

Chew.tv screenshot

How it describes itself: DJs everywhere. Right here.

How it works: DJs can livestream their DJ sets on the platform, but you can also rewatch sets later. You can find all kinds of electronic music on the site, basically: if you can imagine it, they’ve got it.

First impression: Fun. Takes me back to when I would put Boiler Room sets on my TV all day long. This is a bit more personal, as you can follow DJs and also engage with other listeners through the chat function. In terms of music discovery, it would be nice to have some type of dynamic tracklist, but having a phone with Shazam handy has done the trick for me so far. And else you can always just tweet a DJ to ask about that track you must find!

Check out my interview with Will Benton from Chew.tv.

 

Wonder

http://wonder.fm/

Wonder screenshot

How it describes itself: Wonder is a platform that simplifies indie music discovery — a place to hear what’s new as soon as it’s released.

How it works: Wonder uses some ranking mechanism to find trending tracks on Soundcloud and then presents 99 one of them to the user. Some research suggests that after the algorithms surface tracks, some human curation is involved.

First impression: Wonder is a great way to find hot new tracks before they make it to the charts. I personally enjoy Primary and Whitelabel off-shoots more, which represent hiphop and dance music respectively. Very high quality tunes. Throw out your radio.

 

Muru

http://murumusic.com/

Muru screenshot

How it describes itself: Create your own music journey.

How it works: You pick a genre as departure point, another genre of where you want to go and then the app creates a playlist that builds from the former to the latter. You can adjust the tempo, energy, popularity, and vocal-drivenness of the tracks in your playlist, as well as the length of the playlist.

First impression: There’s quite a bit of work to be done. For one, it’s currently iOS-only, and you have to connect to Spotify. The authorisation process is a bit of a pain in the butt when first launching the app, especially if you just want to try it. I’d move the ‘Connect to Spotify’ step to after playlist creation. That way you already have commitment from the user. To avoid disappointment, the necessity for Spotify should be communicated upon launch. I also wasn’t able to find the genres I prefer, because they’re not available in the app yet.

There’s plus points too: the app’s design is neat and the playlists it creates are interesting. This is in part by the concept of genre journeys: you immediately start to wonder how the app is going to transition from Blues to EDM.

Hidden in plain sight: a global underground dance music scene with millions of fans

Are gamers the biggest millennial subculture in music? An exploration of ‘online-only’ music.

With the rise of the internet, music has lost more than industry revenues. Music has lost its cultural monopoly for identity building. Music used to be the only fast way in which people could understand that there are other people around the world, with similar ideas and feelings. People who are just like them. Now, social media & internet communities have stripped music from that. A Google search can instantly connect you to people who think the same things you do. Music is simply not important for that anymore.

A large aspect of music’s identity building nature used to be subcultures. Music was at the core, and perhaps the fuel for these subcultures. Subcultures still exist though, but not in the massive way they used to and have less appeal for the middle class. Many that remain are porous, intertwined with all the shades of ‘hipster’ you can imagine.

But there is one massive subculture that remains: gamers. It’s an identity and producers are providing it with a soundtrack.

Emblematic of the music culture among gamers is the label No Copyright Sounds. It was created to discover and provide royalty-free music for gaming videos. By now, it has grown out to a YouTube channel with millions of followers, and hundreds of thousands of followers on their other channels, adding up to millions. They’re now part of AEI, a full-stack music company which also runs a handful of other well-known music networks.

No Copyright Sounds is emblematic, because it comes from the subculture itself. It represents the gamer, which is the epitome of the digital native. They expect free access to music, which is why you’ll see most of the music targeted at this audience offered as free downloads. They don’t expect free music, because they’re unwilling to pay. They spend lots of money on their computers and games. They want free music because of the convenience. You might pay for Spotify, but if you want to share music with other gamers, it’s still more effective to drop a YouTube link.

YouTube copy permission

Another aspect of the digital native is that they exist in networks. If you want information to spread in networks, you have to remove the barriers. So to serve them, you have to go free-first. This means producers in genres specifically targeted at gamers are either looking for alternative revenue streams, or are happy to do it for the love of it. Most are gamers themselves: they’re producing for people like them and get fulfilment from that. It can be that simple.

Perhaps the largest online-only genre is something called nightcore (nxc for short). Nightcore is a remix culture. Most commonly, producers take a pop or dance song, raise the BPM and pitch, do some additional editing and that’s a wrap. Here’s an example of Kelly Clarkson’s Since U Been Gone getting the nxc treatment. But sometimes the BPM is not raised, sometimes it’s rock or metal, sometimes it’s an original production. It’s basically the opposite of vaporwave.

To some, nightcore edits can look like blatant rip-offs, but what they’re doing is they’re translating a song and sound to a different audience. Would I listen to Kelly Clarkson? No. Would I listen to nightcore Kelly Clarkson? Well… Yes. 😅

The spectrum of music for gamers has a lot of gradients and you can go deep into niches. For instance, related to the gamer subculture is the phenomenon of furries, basically people that enjoy role-playing in custom-made anthropomorphic animal suits. There’s also an online equivalent, cyber furries, which is probably best represented by the Lapfox Trax label. All the producers on the label are avatars of the same guy.

Numbers mentioned earlier already showed that this is not an underground movement, and services are taking note. Twitch, a platform for streaming games, created a music section. Spotify has a whole section of playlists aimed at gamers.

Spotify gaming playlists

The most exciting or inspiring thing about this subculture is that people can be themselves without compromise, make the music they believe in, and find audiences for it. Music that you’ll never hear at a liveshow, like the Undertale soundtrack, but finds resonance with millions of people online. And then there’s the cross-overs.

Due to the sugary nature of nightcore, it found lots of sympathy from artists inspired by the music of SOPHIE or the PC Music label. Both have been important to pop music in recent years, with the former producing for Madonna, and the latter resisting an offer from Skrillex. Their sounds can be described as a kind of artsy, over-the-top, hyperpop music. Nightcore artists are happy to incorporate that, to provide a more accessible version of the style:

Speaking about accessible… You know what’s not accessible? Hardcore. Gamers enjoy the high energy offered by happy hardcore, an offshoot of 90s hardcore rave. So, that too, finds an audience:

I’m by no means trying to make an exhaustive list. The music is diverse, and I want to focus on the trend and the business aspect.

The most important thing is: most of the people who listen to this music will never see these artists live. Partly because they just might not be interested in going out to a club, but also because there’s just not really a scene for it, despite these artists having online followings of hundreds of thousands or millions.

Outsiders are taking note, but the music scene’s very much defined as ‘by gamers, for gamers’. While now it’s niche in business terms, and hidden from plain sight if you’re not involved with it, it has three trends going for it.

One is the rise of virtual reality and tools that allow for ‘cyber raves’.

Second is the rise of Esports, which has exhibited 50–70% year-on-year growth rates and will continue to grow rapidly.

The other is that it’s getting easier to sample, remix and edit tracks and distribute the music, without the fear that it will be taken down. The former CEO of Beatport now runs Metapop, which focuses on exactly this problem. And there’s Dubset, which has partnerships with major streaming services.

With the trends going for it, this music subculture with all its subgenres, is about to blow up.

Keep close watch.

Why should artists be able to make a living off of music?

Does this question make you feel uncomfortable?

If so, allow me to break your music industry bubble for a second.

People outside the music business are often filled with astonishment by the music industry’s prevalent sense of entitlement.

“I made something, so I deserve money.”

Nonsense. What kind of business is that?

To me, the best way to think of yourself as an artist is as an entrepreneur or freelancer.

You have a business to build, an audience to identify & serve, and a competitive landscape to understand.

The landscape is hyper-competitive and choosing to participate in it, especially without identifying a good niche, means there is a good chance you will not be able to make a good living out of it.

If you make good music, appeal to a well-defined audience, and have a good business strategy for monetizing that relationship, whether that’s through gigs, sales, Patreon or something else, then you’ve got a good chance to make a good living.

But you’ve got to keep working hard at it – just like an entrepreneur.

If you build enough, work at it long enough, you might be able to let the reins go and collect money on your past achievements – just like an entrepreneur.

But if you fail to identify your market or risks, you’ll go broke – just like an entrepreneur.

A recent report commissioned by Dutch rights organisations and a labour union for musicians revealed that as much as 19% of Dutch musicians who live with a partner or family are able to make a living from music (PDF). It’s as much as 31% for singles.

Graph: percentage of musicians making a living from music
How cohabiting musicians (left) & single musicians (right) make a living. Green means they live from money generated by music. (Source: Pop, wat levert het op?)

It’s a decent success rate.

If we look at the survival rate of businesses in the US, we can see that half of them die within the first 5 years. The 20 year survival rate is just 20%.

Over 80% of businesses FAIL.

Why should it be different for music?

Let’s take the 20-30% success rate for musicians who can make a living and think about how we can increase that.

First, we need to shatter the sense of entitlement, that has new artists entering the business with false expectations. It sets them up for failure.

We need management companies, record labels, booking agencies and rights societies who stress the importance of hard work and strategy. Who can communicate the necessity of reinventing yourself when your chosen path hits a dead end.

Many artists choose to continue down a dead end path. Becoming wedding DJs or playing covers of classic rock ’n roll tracks at the opening of a friend’s shop in a local mall or something.

“This is the music I play. I should be able to make a living off of it.”

No. Your entrepreneurial pursuit failed. Start over. Do something else. Pivot.

We need music schools to prepare artists for this.

Artists also need room to fail – just like entrepreneurs.

Look at startup accelerators and incubators, look at tax incentives or cuts from governments. Governments, businesses and the existing music industry could do more to give artists some room to breathe while they work on their music & business strategy.

Many initiatives already exist. Every country, and every city, having its own mechanics or ecosystem.

What I’m particularly interested in are collaborations between people from different disciplines. Take artist managers, musicians, developers, tech entrepreneurs, designers, and organisations in music with a lot of data, like ticketing services, event organisers, collection societies, etc. Divide them into groups and give them 48 hours to hack something together.

We need:

  • More data to help artists & management to understand their markets and to develop strategy to address them;
  • More collaboration to make it easier for entrepreneurs to have their products piloted at scale;
  • More applied innovation – we can talk about blockchain, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality, but how do you apply it to your strategy?

I’d love to live in a world where everyone who wants to make a living with music is able to do so. It’s just not likely. But let’s expand that 20-30%. Let’s push it to 25-35% and then higher.

Rapid developments in technology means we’ll be able to offer a greater diversity in experience. It’s these developments that has led to a situation where more artists are simultaneously earning some money with music, than ever before.

Technology, combined with human creativity, can expand the market.

And that may be just what we need to help more artists make a living.

Hat tip to Marco Raaphorst for the link to the research report.