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welcome back, king

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Thank you, boss

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deletedAug 23
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Great points. So you did have instances where labels helped create ancillary revenue streams: internal ads agencies, merch store management, tour support; etc. of course, there were and are varying levels of ancillary stream involvement/creation: (e.g, from Jay Z’s ~100m - ~200m “360 deal” with Live Nation to the production company that signed an artist to a 360 and upstreamed them to a major with no major investment). That’s 1.

2. While there aren’t a lot of public details, my sense here is that the labels will participate in the “superfan” offerings whether through DSPs or their own platforms (or else there isn’t much incentive); this participation would be in ancillary revenue streams. So whether the DSPs outlink fans to a label operated platform/merch store or increase their subscription rates for “superfan” offering and of which the label takes a higher %, it’s still ancillary revenue stream participation, will flow down to artists and artists should be aware and negotiate accordingly.

Soundcloud also just announced an offering that will provide SoundCloud - managed merch stores to select distribution clients.

The way I see it, the only real difference is the third party participations of these DSPs; but it’s still ancillary rev participation; and is still negotiable (or navigable) if you have enough leverage and/or savvy (e.g., Taylor Swift’s deal with UMG which exempted her from UMG’s pull of their catalog from TikTok).

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deletedAug 23
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Yea, but it’s also deal specific. Ideally, that’s how it would work - and what I was alluding to here. If artists know that labels are not satisfied with streaming revenue and are looking to monetize super fans or ancillary streams then artists should understand they need to build out these streams; then any deal that’s presented to them can be analyzed through the lense of whether it makes financial sense. I’m going to get more granular in following articles, it just takes a lot.

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