Most independent artists struggle and don’t have the resources, network, knowledge or ability to enter the music industry and profit from their music through established major or independent labels. The ones that do, are clouded by limitations and uncertainty about their contract and future at the label, in addition to facing unfair and opaque royalty payouts.
Modern music business “inherently involves millions of daily micro-transactions generating revenues from songs and albums. In many instances, stakeholders are earning fractions of pennies spread across thousands or millions of transactions”, as a Berklee ICE report indicates. The report estimates that 20% to 50% of music payments don’t make it to their rightful owners.
Digitization and globalization may have radically altered the way we listen to music, but the internal plumbing of the music industry is unchanged. The pipes are now digital, but royalties still leak out into the hands of intermediaries who may have been necessary in a regional system, but ought by now to be redundant.
The rise of radio broadcasting in the 1920’s gave rise to a series of intermediaries, such as record labels, publishers and distributors that allowed artists to deliver their music to a broad audience. Almost 100 years later, the music industry is still dominated by a few major players, taking over 70% of the industry’s market share. These “major record labels” have long been vilified. Their processes have been said to lack transparency, their economics are said to resemble those of sweatshops and their royalty statements have been referred to as "works of fiction". What’s most interesting, is that this archaic oligopoly seems to have been bolstered by the digital revolution our society had recently undergone, and this lack of transparency has created friction between the middleman and the artist.
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SUBMIT AN IDEA Describe your project, answer a few questions and provide your fans or investors with the basic (or in-depth) details, requirements and expectations.
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FINANCE YOUR IDEA Finance your project by issuing regulated securities tokens for your project that act as equity, which you can then keep or use to purchase services to complete your project.
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COLLABORATE Pay for traditional record label services in a peer-to-peer service marketplace, using your token (as equity), in order to complete your project. Only distribute the equity you are comfortable giving up.
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RELEASE Release independently through music to market services or independent labels, while retaining your creative freedom, royalties and rights after your project is complete.