Massive Spotify Competitor 1 Billion Paying Subscribers
I was triggered by Emily White’s post “I Never Owned Any Music To Begin With” in which she explains how her generation consumes music without the need to own music. A reality many SMEBBs (senior music executive baby boomers) still want us to ignore.
Quote Emily: “What I want is one massive Spotify-like catalog of music that will sync to my phone and various home entertainment devices… hopefully with more money going back to the artist then the present model”.
Hm, would this be the answer? One massive Spotify-like catalog, aka UberTunes, the size of Facebook (~ 1 billion, 15% of the world’s population) but with paying subscribers only. Of course prices of the monthly subscription fee should come down drastically to get enough people interested.
Spotify’s $10 per month is insane for many people on this planet. So UberTunes will charge $2 per month for an all-you-can-eat digital music service, giving you access to 20 million songs without geographical limitations. Half of them from major record companies, the other 10 million from emerging artists not known to any international audience yet.
Let’s do the math!
This might not sound like the winning business model to you but:
- Artists signed to majors today end up with less than 20%
- Independents, 100% in control of their music, will get at least 40% and even more if they bypass some of the non creatives
So my message to Emily: Thank you for the inspiration!
It will probably take many more years before a Facebook-sized company makes a move, the traditional music industry fully embraces the next generation customer and monthly all-you-can-eat subscription plans are priced below a “tall’ coffee.
But we should continue to question the traditional music industry models. Especially musicians should join the conversation, it’s your life and creativity we are talking about!
Want to continue the discussion in real life? Join me and many other music industry executives at the Trigger ‘12 Creative Conference next week!
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Hessel van Oorschot is the co-founder and CEO of Amsterdam based music licensing company Tribe of Noise. Founded in 2008, Tribe of Noise is an online platform that connects more than 15,000 musicians with business professionals who are seeking all rights included original music for their projects.
