✖ How SoundCloud should tackle fan-artist payments and reconquer lost ground from Bandcamp, Instagram & TikTok
✖ How SoundCloud should tackle fan-artist payments and reconquer lost ground from Bandcamp, Instagram & TikTok
And: Fan-first strategies; Clubhouse's inevitability; Nyan Cat is an NFT now; Spotify becomes remote-friendly; K-Pop's new livestreaming platform Universe
2020 was the year of digital monetization for creators. Musicians flocked to Bandcamp, writers flocked to Substack, and a wide variety of creators flocked to Patreon. As a creator-centric company without meaningful monetization options, SoundCloud was not well-positioned and missed the boat.
Recently it became clear that the company is looking into “letting fans pay artists directly” which some believe means that SoundCloud is exploring a user-centric payment system for its royalties.
That would be a terrible strategy, since most creators would barely see more money than they’re currently making on SoundCloud. It would cause the brand to lose more time and fade further away from the center of music culture.
👉 Here’s how SoundCloud should tackle fan-artist payments instead.
Find out:
Why user-centric payments are a bad strategy for SoundCloud;
How the current digital landscape shapes SoundCloud’s options;
How SoundCloud could use its community features to drive monetization;
Why concepts from gaming and blockchain culture must underpin this strategy.
TECH
👛 Balaji S. Srinivasan penned down his thoughts on why India should buy Bitcoin, instead of ban it. It’s a great primer on the current dynamics and thinking around cryptocurrencies, from one of the most influential thinkers in the space (or at least one of the most quoted).
🌈 Nyan Cat is an NFT now and will go on auction soon. It’s a picture we’ve all seen and many have remixed. We can see Nyan Cat around the web, but one person will get ownership of the NFT. An interesting experiment, since this dynamic would also apply to songs.
📣 “If artists are ready for more holistic marketing approaches, where to start?” asks MIDiA’s Keith Jopling in a piece that explores modern fan-first strategies for artists. Neil Cartwright & Jackson Bull approached the same topic from a data perspective. I, too, have explored this topic holistically in a 2016 piece about music growth hacking.
👋 Ben Thompson writes about Clubhouse’s inevitability by explaining how media goes through the steps of democratization, aggregation, and then transformation using examples from Instagram copying Snapchat, TikTok’s transformative algorithms, and Spotify’s podcast strategy. Takeaway:
“Sometimes — a lot of times! — users just want to scroll their Twitter feed instead of reading a long blog post, or click through Stories or swipe TikToks, and Clubhouse is poised to provide the same mindless escapism for background audio.”
🎨 Mario Winans has launched a startup called Artime to provide ‘online music mentoring’ to artists. The line-up of mentors includes accomplished musicians and songwriters, like Kristal Oliver, Large Professor, Fatman Scoop, and Winans himself.
CORONA
🏡 Spotify will let employees keep working remotely after the pandemic. As other companies compete for talent, I suspect this will influence more music companies to switch to remote-friendly. If there’s enough interest, I’ll start a crowdsourced list of remote-friendly music companies (let me know by hitting the heart button 🖤 at the top of this email / page).
📝 WIN (the Worldwide Independent Network) has launched a survey to study the revenue and employment impact of Covid-19 in music. If you’re an indie company active in recorded music, you can answer the survey until March 25.
🎟 Ticketmaster has launched a service to sell tickets for livestreams. [EDIT: corrected the link]
🕺 K-Pop has a new livestreaming platform called Universe (not to be confused with Big Hit Entertainment’s Weverse nor the ticketing service called Universe). The first stream saw 2.6 million viewers tune into the service created by NCSoft, the developer behind online game Guild Wars.
🏟 2021 will be a transition year. While events won’t be completely safe yet, much of the expertise acquired throughout the pandemic can be put to good use this year. Pollstar spoke to agents and promoters on the challenges ahead for live music in the next 9 months.
Music
If you’re into rave music with an artistic edge, the Berlin-based label & collective Live From Earth should be on your radar. They’ve just released an EP by MRC-T called 4 Tha Culture. It provides a 20-minute nostalgic trip through classic rave sounds with modern techno influences, with a quarter of that journey being graced by Partiboi69.
“All-terrain vehicle MCR-T aims to restore the long forgotten craft of MCing over techno / gabber / electro beats not only on the dancefloor but also for your recreational pleasure.”
For something less familiar-sounding, I recommend the debut EP of goth-pop / hardcore rave crossover project ascendent vierge, also released on LFE.
✨ You can become a MUSIC x SUPPORTER on Patreon for €5 / month.
✍️ Today’s newsletter was written by Bas Grasmayer.