How Direct to Fan Unlocks Revenue

This week on the podcast, we’re on revenue multiplier 7 on our Rising Tide miniseries: direct-to-fan. 

First, Mag Rodriguez, founder and CEO of EVEN, makes the case that most artists are leaving serious money on the table by skipping direct-to-fan entirely, and why you don’t need a big mailing list to start selling directly to fans.

Then, J Edward Keyes, editorial director at Bandcamp, explains why CDs are suddenly outselling vinyl with younger fans, and walks through some of the free features on Bandcamp that most artists still aren’t using.

Finally, Tim Quirk, SVP at Zedge and general manager of the new streaming app Tapedeck, talks about why streaming has never paid artists what they’re actually worth, and what he’s building to fix it.

Three companies, all betting that the future of music revenue runs through the fan relationship, not around it.

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Episode Transcript

Machine transcribed

Mag Rodriguez- EVEN

[00:00:00] Dmitri: So one of the tech multipliers of music revenue that we've identified in this Rising Tide series is the category of tech that optimizes for direct-to-fan revenue, e-commerce. We know that music streaming services brought people back to paying to listen to music in the digital era, post Napster. But alongside that, we also know that some of the most profitable ways for artists to monetize their music is by selling directly to fans.

It could be vinyl, it could be merch, it could be tickets, it could be downloads. We could talk about all sorts of stuff, but most independent artists and labels start by getting their tracks on the DSPs, the Spotifys of the world, and then working on getting the tracks on playlists, and maybe seeing if they can catch a wave on social media or maybe in sync.

They might dabble in ads, but as soon as you get a small taste for the kind of money you can make when you're selling directly to fans, it's hard to stop. To help us explore this revenue multiplier I have with me Mag Rodriguez, the founder and CEO of EVEN. Welcome to the show, Mag.

[00:01:00] Mag: Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

[00:01:02] Dmitri: I'm excited to have you here. I think you've got a lot to share, and I'm looking forward to diving in. And so for those who don't know, EVEN has pioneered this new model by enabling artists, labels, and distributors to build direct customer relationships through pre-streaming releases and commerce.

Through EVEN's partnership with Luminate, artists can report direct-to-fan sales to Billboard, eliminating one of the industry's biggest historical barriers to direct-to-fan releases and allowing artists to own customer relationships without sacrificing chart position. Things are shifting and allowing for more of this direct-to-fan relationship.

So Mag, listeners might remember that my Jimmy Stone interview that was at the beginning of this Rising Tide series, it pointed out that the main reason the music industry is smaller than it should be is a lack of scarcity. All the music is available from all the DSPs for one low subscription price.

But Mag, at EVEN, you figured out how to reverse that. Tell us how it works at EVEN.

[00:01:57] Mag: Yeah. I mean, well, thank you. I think y- by the way, you described EVEN incredibly. You're hired-

[00:02:02] Dmitri: Oh,

good

[00:02:03] Mag: ... Dimitri.

[00:02:04] Dmitri: Nice.

Yes. Let's go.

[00:02:06] Mag: No, um, yeah, so I mean, essentially, what we're doing is essentially what you're describing.

 you know, we, we don't use that word as much as we used to. It was a part of our thesis, this idea of scarcity, but really, the way we position it is We wanted to build something, and we've built something that actually gives fans a reason to pay for music again. you know, we're seeing it across different verticals in music right now, like vinyl is at, like, what, a 40-year all-time high.

 fans are proving every single day that they wanna buy music, and they wanna support their favorite artists. but doing so has gotten a little fragmented. I think we've fragmented the fan, not because it's anyone's fault. I think innovation just has happened very rapidly, and the music industry historically has never been software-driven or tech-driven, right?

There's why it's one of the most difficult industries to really disrupt. I mean, there's a graveyard of music tech startups, that have tried to innovate, and historically it's because it's a very small industry. and there's very specific things that people are looking for, and building towards those things can become very complex.

So, you know, what we built and the way that we partner with teams is how do we build something that fans wanna pay for? and the Easiest way to do that is by actually not selling anything at all. introducing fans to a community. So all of our releases start with a community chat. These are, think of like Discord, but without a Discord, that either lives inside of the EVEN app or the EVEN-powered site, which are called EVEN Studio Sites.

It's a newer product primarily for like flagship artists. but fans just wanna talk to each other. So how do we build a space where fans could come together and then the artist can also participate in the conversation? Uh, and we have great examples of this, whether it's J. Cole or Jessie Reyez or Lecrae or Ty Myers.

There's these, essentially these hubs where fans are gathered around the artist, and then what we introduce is the digital sale of the album. Now, most of our campaigns include early access to music. a good example of this is Ty Myers right now has a, campaign that we're running for, his latest album, which are essentially covers, that he essentially has put together, and it's on tysociety.live.

It's called Two Braids and The Truth. It's a tribute to Willie Nelson, and it's 10 songs. And every week, he was essentially putting snippets where fans can vote on which song they should-- would unlock if they voted on it, and then they, of course, bought the album. and fans essentially have been buying this album and getting early access to music.

 another example of this was for J. Cole's album. The only way to listen to the first single, which was called "The Fall Off is Inevitable," was by buying the digital album because it wasn't on streaming. the J. Cole album went on to become a, a number one on the Billboard 200, and, I think it did like 280 or 290,000 week one units with close to half of those sales coming from the EVEN campaign, both across digital and physical.

And again, a lot of this is tied to this idea that if you give fans a destination where they're welcomed and you create engagement, they're willing to spend and buy music again, but you have to make it worth paying for. Uh-

[00:05:20] Dmitri: Mm-hmm

[00:05:20] Mag: ... and that's essentially the model. Hopefully that makes sense.

[00:05:23] Dmitri: Yeah, totally makes sense.

So let me just make sure I've got it right, though. It sounds like EVEN's created this kind of, like, fan engagement with a tiny bit of gamification, community building, build-up to a release. It's your technology, but it's skinned with an artist's website.

[00:05:40] Mag: Yeah. So, I mean, that's the EVEN Studio product. it's a newer product line.

 we primarily have been known for our marketplace, which is everything you see inside of the even.biz website, it's our marketplace. but what we found is that artists want to grow into their own destinations, and instead of growing out of EVEN, they wanna take all the cool features and modules that live inside of EVEN, but they want it in a custom environment.

Uh, and that's essentially what we launched. So we've done about a dozen of them so far, and these are custom domains, custom branded to the artists, where artists, labels, and teams are using our infrastructure to power their essentially super fan platform, uh-

[00:06:19] Dmitri: Mm

[00:06:19] Mag: ... or direct-to-consumer platform. But these aren't apps.

I think we've seen the extremes in the industry where, like, everyone wanted an app, I don't know, 5, 10 years ago. but launching an app is very complex. Even with AI today, it requires a lot of effort, and Really, the destination should live inside of what we argue is the most valuable real estate inside of an artist's digital and marketing strategy, which is their link in bio.

You know, having one link with one destination that opens inside of the social browser, that essentially creates a world for the fans around that artist, whether it's an album rollout or a campaign that they're launching or a tour. So fans just click on one link, and that's the world for that artist, essentially.

[00:07:04] Dmitri: Got it. Got it. Okay. So there's been these iterations moving from marketplace over to this kind of, custom domain component, that you can link to. What-- why has it been so hard for artists and managers and labels to crack the direct-to-fan code?

[00:07:19] Mag: I think honestly, it's a number of reasons. I think the, first one was they were selling something that fans didn't want.

It always felt kind of like, let's think about vinyl, right? 'Cause I mentioned it earlier, like forty year all-time high, and I think it crossed a billion sales in 2025. the problem with vinyl is you're talking about an eight to fourteen week lead-up time to produce vinyl if you want it out by street date.

So it's a really big, not only time commitment, but it's also a big financial risk. How many do we produce? And often people are producing too much or too many. And you could do a pre-order, but then consumers are smart. They know that like, if I'm gonna pre-order a vinyl, like I'm probably gonna... If I order it in June, I might get it for Christmas, if I'm lucky.

And that has created really horrible experiences for fans. so the, and then the other option is soft goods, which is like T-shirts, which, you know, we've all seen it, right? Mass-produced for the most part, not the greatest quality. There's a lot of like environmental questions around like producing more and more soft goods and more products.

 and for us, the low-hanging fruit is like, let's sell your number one product that you're not selling, which is music. How do we find a way to sell music that doesn't require this crazy lead-up time? And the best way to do that is let's offer them exclusives. Let's offer them early access. Uh, and that's, You know, the way we built EVEN was- We took the iTunes Instant Grat model, which, you know, iTunes introduced, I don't know, over 15 years ago, where you could essentially pre-order an album on iTunes and get early access to songs, that weren't widely available, and we introduced that inside of the artist's website, inside of the destination.

 and what this also unlocks too is fandom is now global. You know, an artist can launch in Indonesia today or Brazil or Nigeria or Mexico and have fans around the world. The biggest barrier that we've identified is payments. How do you make it accessible for fans around the world to be able to purchase that release in native currencies, in native payment methods?

And that actually ends up being the most complex part, and one of the things that we solved very early on was introducing regional pricing, where an artist can launch a campaign and whether it's a superstar, right? Like, we've have superstars on the platform that before we started working with them, they had only sold music in max 20 markets.

Their latest album sold in 190 countries, and a lot of that was driven by supporting the currencies and the payment methods, which I think for the most part in Western markets we take for granted. Like, who doesn't have a Visa or a MasterCard, right? Like, it's just kind of embedded into the way that we buy things.

But when we think about places like Brazil, where if you don't support Pix or in Kenya and M-Pesa, uh, or we're doing a campaign in, Malaysia this week, where we're supporting, I think it's called like GoCash, and it's like again, another mobile pay that's specific to a region in the world. so that, I think that's been the biggest reason.

It's the Lack of tools and understanding around how consumers buy today, especially 'cause it's changing so fast. Uh, you know, when iTunes launched in 2001, less than 10% of the global population had ever even used the internet. Now, we have over five billion people on social media every single day, and we're talking about 25 years ago.

 so everything is drastically changing. the world is becoming more and more digitized. and that's really what we believe is the biggest opportunity in direct-to-consumer. I know that was a really long answer, but hopefully-

[00:10:56] Dmitri: No, it's good ...

[00:10:57] Mag: it made sense.

[00:10:58] Dmitri: No, not only does it make sense, but it's so funny that you're like, "Oh, we used to use the term scarcity and we don't anymore," but I literally think you are solving scarcity.

 but it's in a really interesting way because there's so much potential. When you look globally, when you look at solving problems across different regions, not just based on currency, but actually based on how people s- exchange commerce because current... Like, some of these, these things you're talking about in Brazil or whatever, I've never even heard of those apps or, those units.

 they're not actually currency, right? They're like a form of, of other-

[00:11:27] Mag: Payment methods

[00:11:28] Dmitri: ... currency. Yeah, payment- Yeah.

[00:11:29] Mag: They're like-

[00:11:29] Dmitri: It's the-

[00:11:29] Mag: Payment methods, yeah

[00:11:30] Dmitri: ... it's the Venmos and the, and the PayPals and the cash apps of the rest of the world, which had to be solved. But I still think it is interesting that, like, when you talk about exclusives or, pre-listens, things like that, you are creating a form of scarcity, but you're just saying, "Well, nobody wants to think about it."

Like, fans don't wanna think about it as scarcity. they don't wanna think about the thing that they can't get. Artists don't wanna think about giving the thing that they can't give, 'cause scarcity implies it. But that's literally what it is, and it, it's cool to think about, like, well, when you go deep the way you've gone deep with EVEN, you've been doing this for years now, you figure out these are the little incremental solutions that actually optimize for how to help artists sell stuff.

 So what is the state of direct-to-fan in 2026? Since you're one of the main companies doing this, what percentage of artists are using direct-to-fan at all? What percentages are they ignoring it? how is it changing the whole music economy?

[00:12:21] Mag: Well, look, our, what our data shows is there's about...

Just thinking about the frontline labels, like, let's just think about that 70% of the global market share. There's about 6,000 new albums that are released by the major labels every year. So assuming including the indies, right, and the major indies, don't even think about the DIY self-releasing artists.

There's about 10,000 frontline albums across the majors and the major indies every single year And then you throw the millions of tracks that are being released by everyday self-releasing DIY artists. Let's just focus for the sake of this conversation, there's about 10,000 frontline major albums out in the market.

There's only currently p- based on just public reporting across the major labels, there's about 2,000 storefronts or D2C storefronts that are, again, public information With 10,000 albums going out every single year, it's crazy to believe that there's only 2,000, and many of those are probably legacy bands and legacy groups that have been selling product.

They're not new artists. Only 10%, frontline releases currently are eligible for resources to launch D2C strategies around their album release and their rollout. And I think that's the biggest opportunity that not only we see, but also the industry at large sees. How do we scale direct-to-consumer in a way where it requires less effort from-- or less manpower to launch?

 it's truly scalable, where the amount of cost associated with going direct to consumer today is primarily driven by people, right? We have to bring in an agency to design the site. We need to produce the vinyl. We need to produce the CDs. if we wanna launch community activations, we need another agency for this.

So there's a lot of different pieces, and that's really how we built our infrastructure, where EVEN's built like a DSP, like our backend. When we think about the actual technology, content comes into EVEN the same way that Spotify receives music, out goes out a storefront, whether it's inside of the marketplace or in the EVEN studio, like custom white-labeled version, and that's really how it's designed for scale.

 we handle publishing, we handle mechanicals, we handle customer support. There's no designers, no developers, no agency. Campaigns are going live in we- minutes to hours and maybe days if it requires some additional clearance. And I think that's really the opportunity of how do you scale D2C without requiring so many resources?

 because that is what most of the market is today. and it's a big... You know, people are getting burnt out inside of labels and in both indies and majors. Everyone is under-resourced transparently. I mean, we're seeing it in the space, the amount of layoffs that are happening. so I think the state of it today is opportunity for innovation and growth.

 and I, think that there is no better time in music industry history to where we have executives and leaders inside of, again, across the majors and the indies that really wanna lean into innovation and wanna lean in to offer fans a better experience because they want to better serve, their artists.

You know, over 25, 30 years ago, the music industry was a fairly straightforward business. You develop talent You release the product, you get it on retail, you get it on radio, you grow, you make the artist a big star. It's not that anymore. and I think the opportunities, I think, in this space are, are incredible.

And again, I think the right people are in the buildings across the board to, like, really lean in and hence that's why we've been able to land some of the partnerships and, you know, we are such a new company and there's so many other companies in this space. I think we just saw, was it yesterday, where Billboard just introduced a new format of, NFC products.

I mean, this is a model that's been proven across the world when we think about K-pop and just global fandom, and now being introduced into the, you know, US market, I think is gonna-- we're gonna see a huge drastic effect on, like, the opportunities for fans, and people really leaning, leaning into innovation.

Which again, I don't think would've been possible 10 years ago, 15 years ago. I think today, you know, there is a strong desire for innovation to see this business grow, in what I consider, like, the post-streaming era of, like, everything has to be the all you can eat buffet. I think we saw what that can look like, and we can see and measure that growth, and we saw, big financial institutions jump in.

I mean, we're seeing catalog acquisitions. There's a lot of excitement, which is amazing for the business. It gave us a foundation to sit on, but now it gives us the foundation to, like, really lean in and explore different opportunities, with even being one of the many other, you know, options for teams to explore

[00:17:16] Dmitri: Listeners, you-- I've never said this on the podcast, but you don't know this.

Most of the time when I interview somebody like Mag, I've never talked to Mag before. This is our first conversation we've ever had, and I could tell, I knew he was the right guy just by watching what Even's been doing and what Mag's been posting. I knew you were the right guy, Mag, to have this conversation about how direct-to-fan fits into this rising tide theme of growing the market.

You told us... I asked you what percentage of artists are using direct-to-fan. You told us 10% of the frontline artists are doing some sort of direct-to-fan commerce opportunity. That means 90% of them aren't. And you gave us very clear information about how this is shifting, how this plays into all these other trends.

This direct-to-fan category is one of the eight multipliers identified of the ways that tech can grow revenue, not only for artists, managers, and labels, but for the industry as a whole. You told us about the global potential for all of this, and I'm gonna push you just a little bit further. A recent guest told us there's potential $2 billion for music rights holders that they could make on video game ads alone.

Another guest told us rights holders could be missing $20 billion from licensing deals with generative AI companies. That's the potential. If the licensing comes through, that's the first year, and they say it'll double year after year. And a third guest, Ola Saras from Soundtrack, told us that the background music business is a $40 billion opportunity.

So on this podcast, in this series, I'm collecting billions. I'm like, "Let's get a billion, two billion here, 20 billion here-

[00:18:46] Mag: Yeah

[00:18:46] Dmitri: ... 40 billion here." I know I'm putting you on the spot, but how much money do you think is being left on the table by artists or labels that are leaving the streaming services to be their primary form of music recording revenue income, and not working the direct-to-fan channels?

[00:19:01] Mag: Uh, this is... I love this question because I have an answer for you. But first-

[00:19:05] Dmitri: Yes

[00:19:05] Mag: ... I'm, uh, let, let's do some quick math. So let's start with the baseline. I like to start with foundations that people can go and, like, listen to and, you know, gather information. Goldman Sachs pub-publishes a report every year, Music in the Air.

 and in their latest report from 2025, they mention that the super fan opportunity is worth $4.5 billion. And the way that they landed on that calculation was they argue that 20% of streaming subscribers are super fans that are willing to spend more money beyond just streaming. There's currently about 800 million paid subscribers globally on streaming platforms, so just, that's that 4.5 billion number where they landed on.

It's a little more complex than that, but a high level number is 4.5 billion Now, our argument is super fans don't just live on streaming platforms. Western market super fans live inside of streaming platforms. So, you know, when we think about Western markets, US, Canada, Mexico, and Europe, we're talking about maybe a billion people, right?

There's eight plus billion people on the planet. There's 5.5 billion people on social media. I would argue that super fandom starts on social, and we see it every day. where does superstardom start? Where is marketing? Where's the marketing dollars? Where's all of that communication happening? It happens on social.

So if there's five billion daily users on social media, and that number is drastically growing year over year, I would argue that twenty percent of those five billion people are super fans. And I think that's really the opportunity. So what we did is we doubled the number. So like if there's 4.5 billion on streaming, there's 4.5 billion that haven't hit streaming yet.

So we put the opportunity for super fan and direct-to-consumer closer to nine billion globally. and of course, that number is still fairly conservative when we start thinking about direct-to-consumer beyond just digital, physical, and soft goods. Uh, and the example that I'll give you is we recently introduced, hospitality inside of our project, our releases.

And what I mean by that is right now it goes community chat first, digital album with exclusive second. The community chat is free. Digital albums are anywhere between $7.99 to $14.99 as far as like the price, the retail price. Then we go into physical product like vinyls, which is normally between $30 to $50 for a vinyl.

Then we go into soft goods like T-shirts, hoodies. Those can be anywhere between $40 to $80 on average per product. And then we have tours, right? So we launch tour pre-sales where fans can opt into a tour pre-sale. So then there's the tour ticket revenue, which again varies by tour All of that we measure today, right?

The industry can measure every single one of those pieces that I just mentioned. What we introduced was hotels, where artists can introduce hotels for every single day on their tour, and fans can now book their hotel directly on the artist's website. We're seeing the average fan on-- we've launched this product with three tours at the moment.

The average fan is spending $180

per tour, when they decide to travel to see a show. So let's say the ticket cost them $100. They're spending almost $200 on the hotel. How much did they spend on the flight to travel? I think Live Nation estimates that 6 out of 10 fans travel to see shows around the US. and I would argue that the super fan opportunity and, and transparently this hotel product that I'm mentioning, we're building on the chains of what already exists.

Like, anytime you book a hotel on Amex or Capital One or any of these tools and you get a reward, we took those rewards and instead, we give those discounts to the fan. So fans are getting cheaper hotel tickets, and then the artist and team get to participate in that revenue as well, which has never been an opportunity for artists before.

So there's a new incremental revenue, but also data attribution of measuring the full super fan and the super fan opportunity that starts with joining the community chat, and then we see it all the way through when they book a hotel. And seeing that full picture is incredible. To see a fan start at just opting in and joining a community all the way up to spending thousands of dollars when you look at, you know, the travel that they did all the way to go to, to see the show And I think that's where the opportunity gets really interesting.

 we know that tours drive economies, we know festivals drive economy, but that attribution very rarely makes its way to the artist-superfan direct-to-consumer strategy and, and that's really what we're hoping to introduce. I know I just... You asked a very simple question, the number's $9 billion.

[00:23:49] Dmitri: No, I love it.

[00:23:51] Mag: But to give you the opportunity, I think hopefully when we talk a year from now, that number will probably be a little bit more drastically higher.

[00:23:58] Dmitri: so you th- so you... Nine billion is just based on the kind of stuff that's, that 10% is doing with direct to fan, right? It's four and a half billion is what Goldman said is through the 20% of super fans on streaming services, and then you said, "Let's look at the whole rest of the world.

It might not be as big, so we'll just double it instead of, you know, multiplying by the number of populations the rest of the world," 'cause the rest of the world is living in different economic situations and so forth. So you're, you're estimating at nine billion. A little fuzzy math, but we'll take it. We need, we asked for a number, you gave us a number.

And then you're saying, "But actually, I think it's gonna be even bigger when we realize how artists, once they can, once they have that direct relationship with their fans and they can sell some other things, there's other level..." You don't have numbers for that one yet, do you? For the hotels and the tourism-

[00:24:43] Mag: It's too early.

[00:24:44] Dmitri: It's- Yeah, okay ... the, the

[00:24:45] Mag: data is, it's too early. I think for us in the short term is we wanted to see what the fans say, and what we're immediately seeing in these early use cases is that fans are excited to book their hotel directly on the same site where they bought their vinyl, they bought their T-shirt, they're in the community chat.

It's already a safe space for them. and then they're getting a discount, and then they also know that a percentage of that booking goes back to their favorite artist. There's just a lot of different elements that get the fan excited. And of course, this is just the beginning, I think, of how we're thinking about building our product and being very vertical driven as far as the artists and team should be able to see the full picture of their fandom and their fan community.

 and we're seeing this, like, it's not just on the emerging side, because we work with artists that are making their first $100 in music to artists that are making millions of dollars. And the fascinating piece is the growth of engagement is equally as drastic, right? Helping an artist go from making $100 and collecting the data of 10 fans is equally as impactful that from taking a superstar from low five figures in data all the way up to millions in fan data, because data is a really core, it's a core part of what we do.

That incremental growth shows that even the ones that we think have already hit the peak of their career are only getting started the moment they decide to go direct to consumer and own that relationship with fans, and the opportunity only grows drastically. One of the bigger tours that we did this year, initially the tour had 53 arena dates, and through the pre-sale sign up, that we launched, when pre-sale tickets went on sale, that tour turned into a 72 arena tour.

It became one of the highest selling pre-sale tours, in history in certain markets, and a lot of that has been driven by this opportunity where we took a superstar and now that superstar is using our infrastructure to own that relationship with their fans. And I,think while there's a big conversation around how do we grow audiences, there isn't enough conversations happening around how do we bring the audiences that we already have in and really nurture them and actually know who they are, how they engage, and what do they actually want.

 and that's essentially how we're thinking about the product.

[00:27:07] Dmitri: This is great. I have one very tactical question, and then I wanna expand out before we run out of time here.

[00:27:12] Mag: Yep.

[00:27:12] Dmitri: This is, like I said, this is very practical, Mag. We're gonna have to switch gears here. How big of an email list or a social following does an artist need to make direct-to-fan sales really work?

[00:27:22] Mag: Zero. It-

[00:27:24] Dmitri: Really?

[00:27:24] Mag: You don't need a mailing list to start.

[00:27:26] Dmitri: Hmm.

[00:27:26] Mag: I, I think, I know that, I think that's always the

it's always not the answer that people are expecting, and we have this conversation with-

[00:27:34] Dmitri: Not what I was expecting.

[00:27:36] Mag: Yeah, 'cause I think normally when we think about it doesn't matter how big your mailing list is. what matters is how willing are you to actually wanna own the relationship with your fans?

What are you willing to offer that audience? Because you can have a mailing list of a million people, but if you don't wanna offer them anything that drives some of those things that you're mentioning, like scarcity, if you're not willing to offer them content, experiences, if you're just gonna treat a fan that's on your mailing list the same way that you're treating the fans that follow you on social media, what's the incentive for me to be on your mailing list?

What's stopping me from clicking unsubscribe on that mailing list when you send me that note? And I think when we measure data, we've seen a lot of teams measure data based on total amount of people that are in their list. I would argue that the more impactful number is howing, how much have you given that community, right?

 if you have a million people on a mailing list, or let's say 1,000 to be more practical. You have 1,000 people on a mailing list, but you only send them an email once a year, and it's just to tell them the exact same thing you posted on social media, th- you're not gonna really drive any impact.

 we love-- We actually released a case study with this artist by the name of Nick Jenkins. He's an indie artist. when we started working with him, and, and you can see the full report, it's just on insights.even.biz. and when we started working with this artist, he had zero fans on his mailing list. we helped him grow his list to over 7,000 fans.

This was an artist that was making $143,000 a year from streaming, which is real revenue for streaming. they generated an additional 145,000 in revenue with Even that same calendar year, and his business grew by 88%, nearly doubling. and most of that started with zero fans. He had an audience that was willing to engage, but he had to bring those fans in and offer them something.

And what he did is he offered a mixtape that wa- didn't go to streaming. The only way to listen to it was buying it from him. He turned that mixtape into a vinyl. He then launched another album. so there's different ways to get creative, but it started with actually offering fans something. so yeah, this is a...

We, we talk to teams every single day, and some teams always show up like, "We have a mailing list of 50,000 people. How much money can we make?" And we're like, "Hold on. Let's go back. What are you willing to give those fans before we talk about how much money you can make?" and that ends up being the bigger question that we ask teams.

[00:30:07] Dmitri: Amazing. Wow, this has been so valuable. I wanna wrap up with one last question, Mag. Where is direct-to-fan heading, say, in 2027 or, beyond? Where are we going with this?

[00:30:17] Mag: I think where it's going is we're going to see the adoption of direct-to-fan exclusives, being driven by some of the biggest artists on the planet, and I, I've been very vocal about this for the last two, three years, telling artists that the opportunity as an independent artist is you don't have anybody stopping you from being creative, and now the majors are playing ball in this idea.

I mean, as of last week, we announced it, across the network that, the model that we essentially normalized in the past two years has been formalized now by the Billboard charts, and Luminate, where beginning October 2nd, artist teams can introduce up to four early access tracks with their pre-order, and all those sales count towards your week one.

These aren't physicals where you can buy a physical and get early acc- These are digital sales where fans can pay for a digital album pre-order and get up to four early access tracks that they can't find anywhere else. Uh, you're gonna see some of the biggest albums in the future be released with this type of offering, and I think we're also gonna see these destinations transform from your traditional, like, transactional grid that's an artist website today into these full-fledged fan destinations inside of the artist.com where fans can engage with each other.

There's exclusives, there's content. we're moving into a world where the artist is the platform, and we're gonna rely less and less on the algorithm platforms, that, as you've seen, have been fully consumed by just AI slop, and we're gonna see the revolt of humans saying, "We don't want that anymore.

We want real. We want engagement." so yeah, that's what I'm seeing. That's at least from the conversations that we're having, the work that we're doing, I think the, the future of direct-to-fan is gonna be one where adoption is being driven not just in the indie sector. It's gonna be across some of the biggest artists on the planet.

[00:32:19] Dmitri: Amazing. Mag Rodriguez, founder and CEO of EVEN, you have hit a home run for us on the Rising Tide series, shared specific numbers with us, really got us thinking about the role that direct-to-fan can play for individual artists, for labels, from artists of all sizes, whether you've got an email list or not.

And for the Rising Tide theme that we're attacking at the Music Tectonics Conference this year. EVEN's gonna be there with us. We're excited to have you at Music Tectonics. Luminate's gonna be there as well, talking about transmedia. If you, are checking out our pre-conference, which is airing this week, you'll get a chance to hear from Mark Mulligan from MIDiA Research, who also did just do a report about the growth of the music industry from $74 billion in 2025 to $121 bi- billion 2033.

And of course, check our show notes. You can see some of the insights that Mag shared there, as well as, links to the Goldman, report that hopefully they'll have an update on that one soon as well. Mag, what a pleasure. Thanks for being here.

[00:33:19] Mag: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited.

J Edward Keyes- Bandcamp

[00:00:00] Dmitri: So we've been talking about how direct-to-fan e-commerce unlocks revenue for artists, labels, and the music industry as a whole. And with each of our eight technology revenue multipliers, we like to talk to companies that are part of each example. And nobody can deny that Bandcamp is a huge part of today's topic, direct to fan.

I have with me today J. Edward Keyes, the editorial director at Bandcamp. and with Bandcamp, fans buy vinyl or a CD or even a cassette, and they get a download and streaming within the Bandcamp app as a bundle, or they can buy a download a streaming bundle on its own as well.

Hey, J. Edward, good to see you.

[00:00:38] J Edward: Hey, how's it going? Thanks for having me today.

[00:00:40] Dmitri: Yeah, great to have you. So people know Bandcamp, I think, and I, like, we had to talk to you for this episode. You've been there for a while. but I'd like to get your perspective. What's Bandcamp seeing in 2026 as far as these sort of direct-to-fan purchases go?

[00:00:54] J Edward: So, and I think that this is a thing that is probably happening industry-wide, but the main thing that we're seeing is a increase in the purchase of CDs on Bandcamp. And I call that one out specifically because vinyl and cassettes, uh, historically have done very well on Bandcamp, and CDs just kind of existed on Bandcamp.

Um, but now what we're seeing as the pricing of vinyl gets higher, as the shipping of vinyl gets higher, more and more fans are gravitating towards CDs as their physical medium of choice. and so that's probably, I don't wanna call it an irregularity, it's more of a trend that we're noticing, is that more people are, moving towards CDs, with tariffs and shipping and everything, especially overseas.

But that's probably been the biggest increase in, direct-to-fan purchases. And fans always love unique and exclusive T-shirts and merch as w- like, that always does well. But the biggest thing that popped is just CDs are, going up. So if you're not making CDs, you might wanna change that.

[00:01:54] Dmitri: Wow. That is so interesting because that whole rise of vinyl, you know, like some, some traditional industry folks or vinyl lovers were like, "Yep, we knew it.

We were never getting rid of our vinyl," or, "We kept putting out vinyl," or all that kind of stuff. But the, the number just kept growing into the billion-dollar range and, uh, I think some people were like, "This is a nostalgic thing," or there was always somebody who was saying, "Most of the people who buy vinyl don't even have a record player," you know?

But CDs, there's probably some, a lot more CD players still sitting around.

[00:02:23] J Edward: Well, you know what I think is happening actually is that as the music-buying populace continues to skew younger... So there were older folks on Bandcamp who have the nostalgic attachment to vinyl, and certainly, as you mentioned, you know, people like Taylor Swift who sell nine million different variants, and a lot of the young kids do like to buy it and they don't have a record player to hang on their wall.

But that specific point Vinyl's becoming expensive for younger kids these days.

[00:02:50] Dmitri: Mm.

[00:02:50] J Edward: And if you just have a part-time job or X amount of set allowance, whether or not you wanna drop $27 plus shipping on an LP, but you can buy this CD, which is a lot cheaper and often just as cool, and certainly we all know, you know, used...

It's not quite the same with Bandcamp, but used CD bins, with $5 you can get a record collection. And so when they're going to the artist's Bandcamp page and they're looking at the options that they have, and they're seeing 27.99 for an LP or I can get it on CD for 10, I think a lot of that is attributable to younger music buyers and vinyl just becoming increasingly-

[00:03:28] Dmitri: Yeah

[00:03:29] J Edward: increasingly out of their reach, price-wise.

[00:03:31] Dmitri: Super interesting.

What else have you learned about fan behavior when it comes to buying recorded music? Anything else emerge

for you that, that you wanna share with us?

[00:03:39] J Edward: Well, so the main thing that we noticed is just an overall, shift to the physical, and also I wanna emphasize, since Bandcamp is, if you choose to, you can download the MP3s directly to your computer, or FLAC files or whatever, whatever.

You know, I think we've seen in the discourse in general- an increase in conversation about the unreliability of streaming, uh, and the fact that, you know, TV shows and movies can be on certain streaming services and then they just sort of disappear forever. And people are noticing that with albums as well.

As rights move around, as artists gain and lose and gain again control of certain albums, it's not uncommon for you to go to your favorite DSP and discover the album that you want to listen to is no longer there. So we are seeing consistency in the number of people who are, not only accessing but downloading the physical files because there's been this uncertainty about what the streaming of non, quote-unquote, physical or owned media is.

 so that's another trend that we're certainly seeing hold steady. again, you know, the, purchase of physical media in general. And then also, you know, one of the interesting things is that as the marketplace continues to become... We talk a lot about the death of the monoculture, and I think as the, market continues to become atomized, interesting little niches start popping up on Bandcamp.

So one of the other shifts that we're seeing is away from even more sort of the, you know, globalized notion of, indie and metal and electronic music, but towards smaller things that are hybrids of all of them. You know, there's a lot of conversation about hyperpop. That's video game music plus emo plus other things being smashed together.

I just listened to an artist the other day called Over Tonight, who's like a combination of bi- like stuff that's not part of my generation. You know? The, it is very much video game soundtracking type stuff, but it's mashed with early 2000s pop punk and emo. And so another trend that we're seeing, you know, when it comes to buying recorded music is people are diving into the niches more, discovering, stranger and stranger little rivulets.

And I think the internet helps encourage that. They can find these other communities to tap into that, that like the same thing that they do, and they're not as reliant on top-down, broad genre things. So, you know, between an increasing value in ownership and that move toward the niches, I would say are, are two big things that I've noticed.

[00:05:59] Dmitri: I love that you brought up that trend 'cause I've got a 17-year-old and I'm seeing this too. It went from punk to hardcore to metalcore to deathcore to sasscore and-

[00:06:09] J Edward: Exactly

[00:06:10] Dmitri: ... I can't r- I can't remember what the video game, metal music is. But what I like about it, it's like for any new generation, it's a chance to say, "Yeah, we're as cool as that old stuff, but then we're gonna put our own fingerprint on it.

We're gonna put..." And then it has that whole mashup culture component-

[00:06:23] J Edward: Exactly

[00:06:24] Dmitri: ... that was big with hip hop and electronic music, but it's applying it to human-made music, you know, like acoustic/analog guitar music, whatever, which is cool. I, I wanna bring this to the rising tide theme of our conference this year.

I'm trying to figure out how much more the music industry could sell if we optimize for direct-to-fan e-commerce. I know that's a crazy way to slice it, but I'm, curious, like, do you come across labels or artists that start off with just distribution through the DSPs, the streaming services, and then they discover the opportunity to sell physical and digital bundles?

They hear from somebody like you, like, "Actually, there's this whole opportunity with CDs. Oh, by the way, cassettes, T-shirts." What do they find out about their own revenue growth when they just... I mean, uh, I think that might be a cool use case. It's sort of like, "Oh, we did streaming 'cause that's what everybody's doing," and they're like, "Wait a second.

We just unlocked something else."

[00:07:12] J Edward: We hear about that over and over and over again, that once people tap into the Bandcamp community, their, eyes are opened to the value that they can find there. we have had a lot of labels come in Bandcamp skeptical, and they just sort of think, "Well, we're on the DSPs, but we'll just put it up on Bandcamp."

And when we meet with them and talk with them and say, "No, you can, you know, add this, add this, add this Bandcamp exclusive cassette colored variant, add this Bandcamp exclusive T-shirt," you know, things that people can only get on Bandcamp, they find that it does tremendously well and they start seeing the value and gravitating more and more to it.

I don't wanna, you know, disclose names or put anyone on shout-out, but We're in the process of experimenting with a larger label who before had just been sort of dormant on Bandcamp. And we reached out to them and said, "You know, we think there's a lot of potential here with our, with our community."

 and we're seeing that already within just a couple of days of experimenting. Um, they put some Bandcamp exclusive stuff up and it's-- You can see the numbers of people who are buying it, and their eyes are kinda opened a little bit. The other flip side to that is that because Bandcamp, our entire ethos is supporting artists, purchasing, so that the money...

You know, one of the main distinctives with Bandcamp is that when you buy something on Bandcamp, 82% of the money that you spend goes directly to the artists and labels in that you're buying. It doesn't, like, go into a big pot like it does to the DSPs and they break it all out. If I go on and I buy, you know, a Fatboy Slim record, Fatboy Slim's getting the money.

 and fans really respond to that. So when you've got that community there and you're putting That merch and that music in front of, folks who are willing to buy and who like that feeling of supporting the artist are naturally gonna see a greater increase. Whereas with the streamers, it's a lot of, you know, more lean back listeners.

 the Bandcamp community recommends things to each other. If I follow someone on Bandcamp because we have the same taste, and then I see they bought something, and I'll check it out and be like, "Oh, that's interesting. I trust this person's taste. Let me give a listen to what it's like." We send out a email newsletter at the end of every week of like, "This is just what all of the people that you follow bought, and you can check it out."

So it's not just putting the music on Bandcamp, you're unlocking that community of people who wanna support the artists they love. Bandcamp fans typically pay 50% more than the asking price on things that they purchase on the site. So the benefit is gaining access to a community who wants to spend money on you and, support you.

[00:09:39] Dmitri: This is so interesting because what you said about the niches kind of applies here, right? Like, if you're talking about streaming services, you know, a lot of independent and DIY or local community born and grown artists, they have to get their stuff on the streaming service so their fans can listen to it at all.

But then because of the market share payouts, because of the thousand-stream limit, they might have, like, a core base of fans locally who come to their shows, that buy their T-shirts, uh, and even listen on Spotify, but they're not really getting paid from it. And, uh, it points back to something from our very first interview in this series on Rising Tide.

We talked to Jimmy Stone from Alderbrook about why the industry's so small, and he said scarcity is the problem. We've lost all scarcity. And so these exclusive color-specific vinyls or, you know, Bandcamp-only T-shirts that have a special edition, you get that sense of... And even, like, what you said, people want to own it.

They don't know if they're gonna lose it on a streaming service. They wanna own it. So it all ties together beautifully. What were you gonna say?

[00:10:44] J Edward: That's a good question. I forgot.

[00:10:46] Dmitri: Oh, oh, no problem. No problem.

[00:10:47] J Edward: Let's keep going and it'll come back to me. Yeah. This is my aging brain.

Yeah,

[00:10:50] Dmitri: yeah, no worries. I'm gonna move to our last question.

When you look at this category of direct-to-fan e-commerce, where do you think the biggest growth opportunities exist?

[00:10:58] J Edward: I can answer that and I just remembered what I was gonna say, which actually kinda ties into this. we've also seen, um, you know, talking about artists tapping into the community, we've also seen artists who start on Bandcamp and then get signed by labels.

So Asher White put out, you know, like 20-something records on Bandcamp and then got signed to Joyful Noise. Master Boot Records put out a ton of records on Bandcamp and then got signed to, I wanna say Metal Blade. So that's another part of the community that you're tapping into is labels are looking on Bandcamp for, people, you know, folks to sign.

So things that artists can do on Bandcamp to increase, their revenue and where the greatest growth opportunities exist, you know, we have so many exclusive features built into Bandcamp that are designed to help artists grow their, revenue. So the first one that I'll, call out is listing parties, and more and more artists have started to use these even on the level of We had John Fogerty do a listening party on Bandcamp, and John Fogerty himself was in the chat.

And that's an artist from a different generation, but I use it as an illustration to let you know, like, how big some of these are getting and the kinds of names we're getting in there. Basically, what happens in a listening party is you can give your fans a chance to hear the album, you know, 24, 48, a week in advance.

All the fans join the listening party. The artist is in the chat with them, talking back and forth, so it puts real flesh and blood behind the music that they're listening to. And what we've seen in those listening parties is we've set up, there's a digital merch table. And of course, as you're in there talking to the artist and the artist's record is playing and it sounds good, your impulse instinctively is like, "Oh, I wanna buy this," or, "I wanna buy something from this person.

This is great." So those listening parties end up being a huge driver of revenue because you've got a captive audience who are talking to you, and there's the merch table. They're hearing how great the music is, and they wanna own it. So that's one. Bandcamp has a subscription service too. So if you're an artist or a label, you can sign up for a Bandcamp subscription, get your fans paying you monthly to support you monthly, and give those fans something exclusive.

Behind-the-scenes video of you recording your next track, early listen to a track that you're working on that's maybe just a demo version that you don't wanna t- to give to the broader public wide yet, but you want feedback from your fans. We've had artists do that over the years as well. and that's another thing that helps build community, and that's something that fans are paying for, and it's, it's a revenue growth option as well.

Little things that don't even cost any money. Believe it or not, Bandcamp has a messaging feature, and all you can do is just send a message to your fans and everyone who follows you. That keeps them engaged. That lets you know that they're a real person, and you, you know, sometimes maybe you'll forget about an artist that you're following, and they'll send you a message and say, "Hey, I just added, you know, 20 more copies of this."

We get this a lot too, "Hey, I just found 20 more copies of this LP in the warehouse on Bandcamp for a limited time." You send that message out, and all those people come in and buy it. So, that messaging feature's a great way to let people know. And then finally, and this is the simplest one, and it's a little bit self-interested, but it's also true, just point people to your Bandcamp in your Linktree, in your, in your Instagram and anywhere else, whether you're an artist or label.

You'd be surprised at how many people who are on Bandcamp aren't linking to us from their Linktree. And we're not saying you have to be- you know, Bandcamp has to be the only one or prefer- but put it in there. You might be surprised at how many people take you up on that. So those are just really turnkey ways to grow your revenue

[00:14:28] Dmitri: Amazing.

 I could probably talk to you for hours. There's so many hidden gems in what you have to say here, so many great ideas that are, I think, super practical, and I think a lot of them will contribute to not only the growth of an artist's revenue, but to the industry as a whole. It's been a blast talking to you.

Thanks so much for jumping on the podcast.

[00:14:46] J Edward: Thanks for having me. I had a great time.

Tim Quirk- Zedge

[00:00:00] Dmitri: Okay. I have another good example, of a company that's kinda trying to address this fragmentation of direct-to-fan and create a stronger relationship there. I have Tim Quirk, who's the SVP of product at Zedge, and they have a brand new app company that he's the general manager of called Tape Deck.

So welcome here, Tim. It's great to have you.

[00:00:26] Tim: Thanks for having me.

[00:00:27] Dmitri: I know you've been in this music innovation and music tech space for a while, so it's exciting to have you here. For most music fans, daily consumption happens via streaming, which historically has broken the direct-to-fan relationship. I'm curious, how does Tape Deck bridge that gap and bring a direct fan philosophy into this streaming era?

[00:00:46] Tim: well, there's two main ways. The first is that we are not marketing this as a mainstream competitor to Spotify. we're going after the sorts of people that turned Bandcamp into a successful business. Basically, you know, I call them above average music fans because the super fans belong to the artists themselves.

They don't need a third-party platform to engage with them necessarily. but they do need help converting above average fans into super fans. And the way I define an above average fan, it's somebody who hates the fact that Spotify doesn't pay musicians for the first thousand plays and pays them barely a fraction of a penny for plays after that, and proactively wants to, make sure the artists they love can make a living in the streaming age.

Bandcamp demonstrated that you can build a business on that sort of fan base. but, you know, my-- And I love Bandcamp, I use it for my own music, but they don't monetize streaming. you know, and they've had two corporate sales, and they've laid off a lot of staff and evaporated a lot of the goodwill they've developed over the years.

So while I still use them, I did sense an opportunity for something that takes Bandcamp's ethos and applies it to streaming as well as downloads. So Tape Deck is a pay-as-you-go, streaming service and digital download store. the second way we, capitalize on the direct-to-fan or try to fill that gap, as you say, is with what we pay.

Uh, we're trying to make a penny per play be the floor, not the ceiling, for on-demand streaming royalties. and we are, you know, actively encouraging fans to pay more than the asking price of, what licensors set. So you can set your own prices in Tape Deck, and we make it, you know, y- with just with a click of a button, you can 2X, 3X, 5X or more, the amount that the artist is asking for.

So our-

[00:02:20] Dmitri: I love it

[00:02:20] Tim: ... our goal is to market to people who, you know, are looking for alternatives to Spotify, encourage them to support the bands they already love in Tape Deck, and use Tape Deck as a music discovery service to find new bands that they can become super fans of.

[00:02:34] Dmitri: I love it. I love that there's this diversification of what the opportunities are for how to engage with artists and even within streaming because the model has matured and it doesn't serve everybody.

It doesn't serve all artists. It doesn't serve all fans. So this is like a pay-as-you-go model rather than the standard pool allocation subscription model used by the mainstream apps. Walk us through how a stream on Tapedeck delivers to actual dollars for an indie artist compared to a mainstream stream.

[00:03:06] Tim: Uh, so basically we use virtual currency. and basically Tapedeck is built with the DNA of everything I learned when I was working at Google Play from, our most successful app and game developers. so virtual currency has a couple of benefits. One, we can give it away for free to our users when they do things that have value for us.

So for instance, if they tell us their gender or their, zip code or things like that, you know, valuable data to us that we can use to target ads better to them. but there's also lots of other ways for them to get virtual currency for free inside of Tapedeck. You can watch a rewarded video.

You know, you watch a 10 to 30 second ad and boom, you just got 10 free plays. you can buy plays in packs. you know, you can get 100 plays for a dollar, 500 plays for $5, so on and so forth. and by selling them in packs, basically Tapedeck eats the Google and Apple tax. you know, if you were trying to sell every track individually as an in-app purchase, we'd have to charge 30% more.

So for the artist to get a dollar, we'd have to charge $1.30. so there's lots of different ways. Oh, and users can also redeem partner offers to get virtual currency. So for instance, you can... I just signed up for a, a thing called Cash Kick and I got $5 worth of plays. Um, you can sign up for like a Disney plus Hulu subscription, and get like, I think it's like $15 worth of plays, maybe 14, something like that.

 you can play Yahtzee or Scrabble and get seven plays per minute that you're playing those games. I amassed about $186 in virtual currency just from playing Yahtzee and Scrabble, which I was doing anyway before Tapedeck existed. Now all of a sudden I'm getting lots of free music for my mobile gaming obsessions.

Uh- ... so as soon as you press play, uh, after 30 seconds have, passed on the track that you're playing, we deduct one credit from your account. We call our virtual currency plays. So a play costs a play. and a track download costs 100 plays. That's a dollar. And an album download costs 1,000 plays.

That's $10. so for every time you hit play, and we start all users off with 50 free plays just so you can get a sense of how the system works, and we subsidize those. Artists are get- licensors are getting paid from the very first play. so as soon as you hit, as soon as you pass 30 seconds on a, play, that racks up a dollar in gross revenue to the artist, and we have an 80/20 split with all our licensors.

So they're getting, you know, 0.8, cents.

[00:05:14] Dmitri: Wow. It's really, really intriguing about basically getting these advertiser offers to pay for people's music.

[00:05:23] Tim: Yeah. Well, it's an, it's an idea I had when I was at Google Play, because I'd worked at Rhapsody, you know, back in the aughts. and even when we built Google Play Music, uh, which is now YouTube Music, you know, I knew what our marketing teams were paying for what they call affiliate fees.

So if we could get anyone who could get somebody into the top of our free subscription trial funnel was earning $15. And I was thinking about it, I was like, you know, $15 is more than the digital wholesale price of an album. We could literally give away entire albums as a promotion, and pay the artist $15 for every album, you know, that, we give people through the subscription.

 it counts towards chart sales because they're getting, you know, material consideration for it. Artist is happy 'cause they're getting more money per fan, than they would if they'd sold them the album in the first place, and they're selling more 'cause it's free to the user. User's happy, because they're getting the album for free.

 it just made perfect sense to me. So I started a, a startup called Freeform Development that was basically building individual artist apps. We built one for Lil Wayne, for Chris Brown, for Stick, a bunch of other artists. We built about 18 of them. And this model demonstrated that we were seeing per play rates varied from app to app, but the low end was five cents a play, and the high end was 13 cents a play because of these partner offers.

 and so, you know, it's, And when Rhapsody first started, we were paying a penny, or I, I think actually a little bit more than a penny per play. So I know it's possible, and it's been really depressing to me watching the way the streaming services have evolved in their payment schemes. there's no reason that we can't be paying at least a penny per play, and frankly, it should be more like five cents or even 10 cents as far as I'm concerned, and my goal is to get us there.

[00:06:55] Dmitri: That's amazing. Well, kind of want to skip ahead 'cause I feel like you've answered a lot of what I was going to ask you in this.

[00:07:01] Tim: Okay.

[00:07:01] Dmitri: And you have such a broad background in your experience, both building these custom apps, working at some of the major music tech and streaming companies. if an independent artist successfully integrates TapeDeck into their release strategy alongside other direct-to-fan tools, or just as something like TapeDeck grows, what does the financial future look like for artists, for the industry over the next few years compared to the old industry playbook?

Help us understand how this new model, where you're, you're using this interesting approach to, like, play to pay, basically.

[00:07:35] Tim: Yeah.

[00:07:35] Dmitri: Rather than pay to play. play to pay, model or this, like, kind of like patronage tip, pay as much as you like to get the-

[00:07:44] Tim: Yeah

[00:07:44] Dmitri: ... the downloads, things like that.

How big could that contribute to this theme we have of growing the entire market for music?

[00:07:51] Tim: Well, it can... I mean, I'll tell you, I've been, you know, we've been reaching out to various, sort of established but independent artists. you know, folks who have over a million monthly Spotify listeners but aren't on a major label, uh, and own their own masters in publishing and can license creatively.

 and we've been running projections for them and showing like, hey, you know, if this percentage of, you know, we sort of have like, a pessimistic scenario, a baseline scenario, and an optimistic scenario. So there's like three different versions. and there's three elements to how you get paid.

The first and most important one is that we recognize, you know, I figure my job is to build the most compelling, highest paying, streaming service out there because then artists will do our marketing for us. They'll send all their fans to us 'cause we're where they get paid the most. So if I do that and artists start sending their fans to us, they deserve compensation for every install that they personally drive.

So we have an affiliate program for license... Well, actually for anybody, but mostly for licensors, where every app install that you drive earns you a dollar before anyone, you know, generates any royalties for you inside the app. so If you've got a, you know, it doesn't matter if you're an indie artist or if you're an established artist, if you've got an established fan base, whether it's 500 people or 5,000 people or 50,000 people or 500,000 people or 5 million people, whatever percentage of them you can get to install Tape Deck, you know, we just give you a custom affiliate link, and boom, you get a dollar per every install before they start generating royalties for you.

Then every stream is paying out a, you know, is grossing you a penny per play, and then there's all the downloads and purchases, which are grossing you, you know, at least a minimum of a dollar per track download and a minimum of $10 per album download, but it can be more. So the artist is always getting 80% of whatever the user has actually paid us.

So it's never less than a penny per play, a dollar per track download, or $10 per album download. It's frequently more. and when we do the projections, you know, I've-- So I've done this for about five different artists so far. and I gotta say, I was, like, very pleasantly surprised when I saw the results of even the pessimistic scenarios.

I'm like, literally, if you can convert 3% of your users, you know, and you have over a million, monthly Spotify listeners, you know, we could be making a million dollars for you just from our channel, a year easy, you know, and up to... and it can be more than that. you know, that's if you're already established.

If you're getting established, you know, we can help you get there.

[00:10:04] Dmitri: Interesting. Well, all the talk about plays makes me just wanna say fair play, Tim Quirk. This is really cool to see what you've got brewing. I'm glad to see some diversification in streaming services and music listening opportunities, and a very clever business.

Wish you the most luck. Thanks for joining us on "Music Tectonics"

[00:10:21] Tim: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

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The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Weekly episodes include interviews with music tech movers & shakers, deep dives into seismic shifts, and more.