The New Direct to Fan E-Commerce (Live from Music Tectonics 2025)

What role should technology play in helping artists build stronger relationships with their fans?

As we wind down and recover from last week’s conference, we’re bringing you a panel from last year's Music Tectonics conference that still holds up. Moderated by Taylor Mims of Billboard, the conversation brings together Josh Stone of Stuff.io, Fabrice Sergent of Bandsintown, and Shannon Herber of Wise River Consulting to explore the future of direct-to-fan and the role technology should play in helping artists build stronger relationships with their audiences.

From digital ownership and new ways to monetize music to fan data, artist strategy, and the challenge of finding tools that actually solve problems, each panelist brings a different perspective to the conversation.

A year later, we're revisiting these ideas to see what still resonates, what's changed, and what the future of direct-to-fan might look like.

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Episode Transcript

Machine transcribed

[00:00:00] Christian: I'd also like to welcome you to the New Direct-to-Fan Ecommerce, moderated by Taylor Mims, senior editor at Billboard

[00:00:07] Taylor: Thank you.

Thank you everyone for being here. I'm gonna let our panelists do a quick introduction, if you wanna start, Josh.

[00:00:13] Josh: Sure. Hi, I'm Josh Stone. I'm the CEO of Stuff.io.

[00:00:17] Fabrice: Hello, I'm, Fabrice Sergent. I'm co-founder and managing partner of Bandsintown.

[00:00:22] Shannon: Hi, I'm Shannon Herber. I'm the CEO and founder of Wise River Consulting, um, and we work in the intersection of music and tech. I've been in music for 20 years, and so now I help tech companies, who need to understand the music landscape for their products.

[00:00:35] Taylor: Perfect. I think that's actually kind of a really good place to start, Shannon, because you have been doing this for such a long time. I'm curious, how have you seen, like, the music and tech world evolve over the course of your career?

[00:00:48] Shannon: I mean, my goodness, when I started, I was a publicist in the catalog division of Universal Music where what I mostly did was sent out CDs to journalists every day.

So, I mean, from-

[00:00:59] Taylor: We actually

miss that.

[00:01:00] Shannon: Yeah.

[00:01:00] Taylor: So if you could send a few more.

[00:01:02] Shannon: That's right. Well, Bob Lefsetz sure doesn't. Uh, but, um, so I mean, from a, you know, a physical format standpoint, all those things, obviously we've all seen it shift from the music is what we focus on, and we're telling a story, and the album cycle is multi years long, to now s- you know, somewhat Gen Z's, the way that they're looking at something and their attention span is, like, mere seconds.

It's how long can I scroll on TikTok? And then, you know, maybe they're deciding whether or not they like a song or they like an artist in a few minutes as opposed to, oh, let me listen to an entire 12-track album and see how I feel about it. so we're having to do things a lot faster. and then I think we're also recognizing that there's a lot of onus on artists nowadays to do much more work in terms of social media, and so I know that, you know, these gentlemen here have really worked hard on, the intersection of, music discovery and fan engagement, which I think is the real crux of what we're getting to now is how do we break through the noise?

How do we get someone to pay attention to us for longer than 30 seconds? And then how do we turn them into a super fan using your platform or your label marketing?

[00:02:07] Taylor: Great, and I know that you also have- Plenty of, experience in this department as well. I'm curious if you could talk about, you know, maybe a couple of the artists that you've worked with and a couple of the e-commerce, things that you've been able to do so far.

[00:02:18] Shannon: Yeah, absolutely. So I was at the GRAMMYs for a long time, and when I left the GRAMMYs, uh, I left because I had a really interesting opportunity come to me, which was Steve Aoki's manager said, "Hey, we're building a fan engagement platform. Would you wanna come and run it?" and I said, "Well, I don't know anything about Web3," 'cause it was very Web3-focused, as we all know, about, you know, four years ago.

 and he said, "Well, that's fine. Nobody does. It's brand new." So was able to run an entire fan engagement community based on Web3, which then turned into mostly Discord, if we're truly honest. Um, and then you know, understanding, oh, okay, there actually is a product here. It's just that it's less so giving them, you know, a, token that they really don't understand how to use, and more so the aggregation of where are fans now.

 and so once I was doing that with Steve, and then Steve kind of decided, like, "Oh, I'm done with this," you know. That was a fun thing for a minute. I started working with a couple other companies, and so I worked with Tokimonsta, so she had her own streaming company. It was called Sona, and it was also based on,

 music discovery for fans. and then I worked with a company called Campaign, and so we worked with some larger artists like Sean Paul

[00:03:21] Taylor: Incredible. And, Josh, this is gonna be the part where you talk about what it is you do-

[00:03:27] Josh: All right. Let's do it. Let's do it

[00:03:27] Taylor: ... and go a little further into it.

So can you please explain to everybody what, uh, Stuff IO is?

[00:03:31] Josh: Yeah. So, the most, basic explanation is we are a retail marketplace for creators, both on the music side and the video side, and kind of the crossover of those things, and then also even in books and photography, documents, all these things.

We developed a proprietary file format that is blockchain-based, but secures DRM over top of it. So it allows us to set a finite amount of those albums or those videos that exist, and then only the owner that owns them can access them. It makes them tradable, all those sorts of things. So, the way we approached it, and just a little bit about my background, I'm... You know, I'm a technologist, so, like, I actually, I helped build the first version of Fandango for Cinemark back in '99. Worked at some big enterprises, places like lead product at hotels.com and, led marketing at AT&T for a while.

And then I got fascinated with startups, did a couple different startups. and then as Web3 and this type of technology started to, be birthed and created, I started analyzing it from the standpoint of, like, what's the enterprise value there? And I think obviously a lot of that stuff is, like, very scammy, and when you're selling, you know, a picture of a monkey for half a million dollars, like, that's insane, right?

Doesn't make sense. But I think, you know, from a technology standpoint, like, there's something there. And so with the a- approach of what we took was what's... How can we use this technology? Is there an enterprise value to this, and what, how would it apply to license industry? And when you really back up, kinda to the point about CDs, right?

If you had taken a CD and instead of doing a CD run and said, "Hey, we're gonna print, you know, you know, 500,000 of these for a release day" or something, and instead said, "We're gonna print, you know, 100 billion of them- The value of that, after you have it, if you wanted to go trade it in somewhere, would be infinitely small because you would've created an in- basically an infinite supply, and that's what digital licensing basically does.

Digital licensing was cool when we put it in place to stop, you know, pirating and Napster. but you fast-forward 25 years, and that's a really old-- it's essentially an old technology. So we've come a long ways technologically, where back then we didn't have the concept of a unique digital thing that could exist.

So now we do, and so the, the way we approach it is very much, almost similar to-- We don't usually talk about blockchain and all those sort of technologies 'cause the consumer doesn't really need to understand that, right? Like no-- You know, maybe somebody in here, 'cause you guys are educated, could explain exactly how an MP3 file works.

But you're gonna talk about compression and algorithms and all. We don't need to know how it works. We just know that that's, like, a file format, and that's how it functions, right? So similarly, like a lot of the, blockchain stuff that's happened was trying to force, you know, s-setting up wallets and seed phrases and all this, like, nonsense stuff that, like, consumers aren't gonna do.

And so what we really focus on is, like, how do we use this technology, kind of going back to the, you know, the fan funnel, right? At the very top of that is streaming, which is great for discovery. Like, I think of it as like, it's like our modern-day FM radio. the way that FM radio used to exist was you put a single on there with the intent to get somebody to buy the album, right?

You make a music video with the intent so somebody would buy the album. That streaming is great for that. We're not trying to compete with that. But when you go down that, you know, fan to super fan funnel, there's a huge opportunity to monetize that in all kinds of ways, right? So we provide that capacity to monetize that digitally so that it can sit alongside, you know, merchandise and concert and, you know, vinyl, all the other stuffs you, that you can sell.

[00:06:49] Taylor: Like you were saying, music at this point feels infinite. There's always more of it and, you know, you pay a set price per month if you're a subscriber to Spotify, Apple Music, et cetera So how do you get someone to come to your site and spend $10 on an album that, you know, theoretically they're like, "I could get this for, not free, but, you know, for the subscription fee"?

So how, how are you working on that conversion?

[00:07:13] Josh: Yeah, so a lot of it, what's very interesting is, artists as they use social media essentially, right, they have these large followings, but they don't really have a direct way to monetize it, right? It's like, "Hey, you can go to, you know, my Spotify or go to my YouTube to listen to this," and a lot of that stuff is pushing over there.

That's not really making them any money, right? Unless you're at the very, very top kinda echelon of, streaming is, that's, you know, the only spot to make money. Everybody else is using it essentially as a loss leader, right? It's like the only thing that, there's, you know, some quote that's like, "Music can sell everything but itself," right?

It's like you can-- it's used to sell any type of product or anything, but it's never actually, like, itself valued as art. So when you start to look at that social media side, it's like, and you look, and you look at the fan funnel, there's the opportunity there to say, "Hey, here's an exclusive piece of content, from that artist," and they're th- then able to leverage their social channels to sell directly to their audience, and we move from a, you know, a, customer model to, like, a community model where the artist is more connected, right?

'Cause an artist doesn't own their audience on Spotify. Spotify owns that customer. This allow, you know, and the purpose of kind of the direct-to-consumer model is that they have that direct-to-consumer relationship. They can see who owns those things. They can communicate with them. They can create community around them, in entirely new different ways.

So it allows them to, to use their existing sort of social outreach and monetize their fan base. So a lot of times we equate it to, like, what's your average revenue per follower, right? If you have 10 million followers, how do you make a dollar off of all of those followers in some way? so I'll give you for, for instance, right?

 we just, dropped a project with William Shatner, which is film related, but this was, like, last week or something. He sold 6 million units of a video direct to his fan base. He sold them very cheaply, but he, he ended up making about $70,000 in, like, an hour, right? it goes very quickly, right?

He can sell something directly to them. We've had, indie artists sort of, to the point of social that have had very small followings, like under 5,000 followers, that have dropped an album with us that have never made any money from Spotify ever. like one in particular, he dropped an album. I think he had maybe 1,200 followers.

He made 30 grand in like five minutes because all of his thousand followers bought his album, and then he's able to, you know, make an actual, three and a half centuries worth of Spotify royalties basically in an afternoon and allow him to, like, go forward as an artist and make more stuff.

[00:09:31] Taylor: Is this 'cause they're able to get to their fans more easily 'cause they have this data through your platform?

[00:09:37] Josh: Yeah, I mean, what's interesting about it is, and oftentimes I'll say You know, whether we figure this out or it's a company after us or a company after that, when you have people like Larry Fink, right, at BlackRock saying that everything digital will be tokenized, it's not a question of, like, if this will happen.

It's more of a, when qu- type of a question. Everything digitally we have, all of our currency's gonna move to this, all of our, you know, all of our titles for, real estate, all of our stock market, everything is gonna shift to a tokenized model, and digital media's gonna do the exact same thing. And so it, it'll create these new economies that exist that allow creators to participate in different ways, where you could say, you know, "What is the, exchange rate for, you know, Taylor Swift's new album to a music video from The Weeknd?"

Right? Which is a crazy concept to think about, but when you start to, to expand to, hey, we can have a finite amount of these, and they are resellable, they're tradable. and it's not to say those are, you know, like we've seen some celebrity tokens, like Iggy Azalea, those types of things. To me, right, what they really sold you was obviously nothing but is basically an empty jewel case for a CD, right?

It's like everybody can see the cover. but then you open it up, and there's nothing inside of it. It's emptiness, right? This allows them to create an actual asset and deliver it in a way that starts that connection, so then they could, send discounts to.

Like, we do a lot of stuff, too, where you can bundle physical digital things. Like, it opens up an infinitely new way to merchandise

[00:11:01] Taylor: And, Fabrice, can you give a little brief description for anyone who may not know what Bandsintown is?

[00:11:06] Fabrice: Sure. So Bandsintown is the largest, concert discovery platform in the world, with 100 million...

In fact, it's more than 100 million today, plus, uh, registered users. 700 artists created an account on this platform to publish tour dates, and also message and communicate with their fans. It's a very special platform because we never advertise Bandsintown ever, so to get to 100 million user, it has to be an organic and, um, loved brand.

 and it's a very tech platform, so, so only music fans, music geeks, uh, work at Bandsintown, I, I have to say. But, it's still a very strong and powerful, tech platform. What strikes me and, and I'll say that at Tectonics just to launch the conversation, is that, I think honestly that today in the music space, technology is a commodity.

 I really believe, I mean, we're very intense tech platform, but what we'll solve and will help artists make more money over time and will generate new commerce, new form of commerce, is, the ability to create a long-term, and build a long-term lifetime, uh, value with the fans, which is really not a problem of a, of technology.

If you... I'm saying this on purpose here, because people come to the artist world and the music world thinking, "Well, I have this technology that's gonna solve everything. And you, Mr. Artist, if you don't understand that, or you, Mr. Manager, if you don't get it, you're a dummy." So every artist... I get people that reach out to us that says, "We want to upsell this technology to your 700,000 artists, and we're gonna change their life."

And I say, "You, you don't understand anything about the business." It's never gonna work like that. The way that it's, it has to... It's not a tech issue. It's, You have to understand that fans, uh, love the music first and foremost, that being an artist is all about creating the art, and that's a lot of effort.

It's an incredible... you know, we are all entrepreneurs, and there must be a lot of entrepreneurs here. We know how difficult it is to be creative because being entrepreneur is to, requires to be creatives. But the level that is being required from the artist is beyond that, right? We don't have to dance on stage here, fortunately.

And we still can run a company, right?

[00:13:28] Taylor: That's actually the last 10 minutes of this

panel.

[00:13:33] Fabrice: Okay. That was a surprise, the bonus, uh, the bonus thing. No, we don't have to do that. Artists have to restart everything every night, to be creative, to bring something, to contribute something to this world. And on top of that we're gonna say, "Oh, we, need you to be very tech-savvy and to..."

No, it's really providing, a solution that fans can understand, that fans can really get access to. And for example, s- something is going on right now. What I think what is new is that artists and their teams are waking up on the fact that they have to own their own destiny, they have to own their own data, they have to collect the data, they have to, so doing pre-sale, selling merch, selling a number of things.

They have to, probably, uh, they have to manage the data and, and through a s- single CRM platform. That sounds very basic to run a business, but that's fairly new into this ecosystem, and that's happening right now. Now, what to do with the data, and that's fairly easy, to be honest. What to do with the data, that was, I was so impressed and interested when you talk about Steve Aoki, I think it's, it's way, it's another challenge

[00:14:36] Taylor: Yeah, so let's talk about this gap, this knowledge gap between, all the different types of tech that's out there, all the problems that they plan to solve, and then simply an artist on the other side, somebody who knows how to play guitar, a keyboard, something like that.

That's not necessarily the same skill set. So whose job is it to connect that, to, make it possible for them to be able to do their job while they're still able to, like, monetize and actually make a living?

[00:15:07] Shannon: Yeah, I'll jump in here-

[00:15:08] Taylor: Please

[00:15:08] Shannon: ... 'cause that's exactly where I was. unfortunately, and most of the people in this room I think probably know this, it is the manager and/or label's job to do this.

 labels are already doing it, but I think keep in mind they're doing it for an astronomical number of artists. And so one of the things that you wanna think about is, is your product actually solving a problem that they have or adding to their workload? Because if you come to them and say, "I've got this amazing thing and it does X," and they're like, "I don't really care about X," then all you're asking them to do is pay you money to do something that's gonna add to their workload, which is absolutely not what they want.

Most of the problems that I think we're seeing on a manager or an artist level, or a label level currently is aggregation of data. It's meeting fans where they are, and then trying to, you know, create a story out of that. and then push those fans to data, as we mentioned earlier, that is ownable by the artist.

And that doesn't mean they can't share it with their label. That doesn't mean that the management company can't utilize it in other ways. But, you know, for an example, one thing you don't wanna do is cross-promote, right? Because if a fan signs up for one artist, it is not the platform that can then send them, you know, an email for a different artist, because Obviously for GDPR, which we don't have, but is a big issue in Europe, you know, that's not something that that fan signed up for, so then you end up hurting the relationship between the fan and the original artist.

 and that's something else that I think people have to really be conscious of. the business development that I do for a lot of platforms, they're like, "Oh my God, this is the best thing ever." And Fabrice is so right. You get this very tunnel vision, and they're like... They've spent three years working on this product with no input whatsoever from anybody from the music industry.

And then they hire me, and then I come in and I say, "Oof, you should've hired me two years ago because you're so far down this path." And unfortunately, either no one wants it, or that's gonna be really hard for an artist to do, or it requires an artist to participate time after time after time, which is also something that you wanna watch out for, right?

Fan engagement is a big word, but it means a lot of different things. It means merch. It means early access to ticket sales. It means early access to drops. It means exclusives, right? So that's what the fan is looking for, is a touchpoint with the artist. But what you can't have is a system that requires the artist to come back time and time and time.

It has to be things that the label can do, that the manager can do, without necessarily asking the artist, because to Fabrice and Josh's point, the artist is making the art, and hopefully that's what keeps the system running. So, you know, I think that's something to keep in mind, is that ultimately what you're doing is you're serving as a middle platform, to connect the fan to the artist.

And if you can solve a problem that tells them, "This is your fan. If I geo-fence, these are the places they're gonna wanna go for a show, so you can target them for this. This is how much on average they spend on merch. This is how excited they get when you drop a new single." Like, all of those things you can find, but right now you can really only find them through Bandsintown, Spotify, Laylo.

Like, you're getting them from, you know, Shopify, all different points. So I think if you can solve that problem, you would have people lining up if you're a platform.

[00:18:19] Fabrice: you know, there is no cookie cutter product that will cater to all fans. I mean, when you were saying that this artist that had was very small, sold $70,000 worth of things, I was about to tell you so I have 700,000 artists who would love to know how to replicate that.

But just, like, when you do tech, you really, um, The best advice if you are doing a product or creating product is to really listen to your consumers, is to focus on your consumers, to deeply listen to that. I was reading, a testimony from this platform called Deal, who the guy said that, he was doing something similar that I did in my previous startup.

He had, like, a Slack and a, and a direct email contact with all his users that are able to Slack him real time. And yeah, and I did that. It's a lot of work. I, I cr- I created an ISP, an internet access provider. I had a million subscribers and they were able to email me directly. And so I was, I was on the pulse of what was...

And that's the only way. So for an artist, it's the same thing. An artist, at the end of the day, creates a product and creates an experience. It's a brand that, okay, it's beyond the, the album launch, beyond the merch drop, beyond. it's essentially a,full experience. And so indeed, there is no cookie cutter solution we think except, you know, dropping merch or dropping an album.

That may be what is probably very standard. But what else? And that's where it requires a lot of humility to not... to talk to the fans. So it's, it's to really listen to the fans. Try to... And that's, that's very hard because obviously it's not necessarily the way it works in the music industry. when you create an album, you don't necessarily listen to the fans, so you try to anticipate what the kind of music they like.

That's not the way it works. So but I'd say that's the way it should be, yeah, as far as, commerce-

[00:20:07] Shannon: If I could just jump in ...

[00:20:08] Fabrice: is, is concerned.

[00:20:08] Shannon: I, I wanted to say that I think Fabrice has hit on something really important, and he's done a great job because he's Bandsintown, which comes from the live experience, right?

And I don't know if anybody saw the Laylo Drop report that just came out about a week ago, right? Amazing. But they literally only focused on live events, and one of the percentages that stood out to me the most was that 70% of a fan base's, uh, email engagement comes from live events. So nine out of 10 folks that sign up for something are signing up for something because they went to a live event or because they're going to a live event.

So, you know, for Fabrice to start with Bandsintown I think was amazing 'cause it's literally hitting on, yes, you're right, there's no one cookie cutter answer in some of these things we've done before, and that's great, and people still want them, like merch. But if you can build an experience around live, that's massive

[00:21:01] Fabrice: I think it's not necessarily around live.

I mean, I love... C- can you elaborate a little bit about your merch product and why are they so unique and-

[00:21:08] Josh: Yeah,

[00:21:08] Fabrice: I mean we- Because as long as you, it's catered to the, it's designed for a specific audience, a specific artist audience, it can work.

[00:21:16] Josh: Yeah, definitely.

[00:21:17] Fabrice: But what matters is the audience.

[00:21:19] Josh: No, I think that's, it's equally the question about, You know, re-burdening artists or labels with more technology crap.

 similarly, we have to ask the same thing about the fan base, right? Are we making it, you know, difficult for them? And I think that is, especially for emerging technology, right? 'Cause the struggle with emerging technology is that, uh, you know, a startup's trying to do something. they have some particular idea, but they're not thinking of it in terms of how do we make this approachable to a mass market, right?

 so for, like, us in particular, we approach everything in that way. So it's, you know, it's a credit card purchase. It's you're connecting your Instagram account to create an account. Like, taking down all the barriers and removing all the, you know, any stops that are in place. So like, a, for instance, on a, the bundled merch thing, we did a, a project with, uh, Chuck D from Public Enemy, and he actually created a graphic novel that was, like, a three-part series.

And, uh, we sold a, a bundled product where you'd buy the, digital one, buy it with a credit card, and then you automatically get shipped the, his graphic novel, uh, in the mail. worked great. You know, he sold out in, like, the first day. I can't remember how many, how many units he, he ran through but, you know, makes a couple hundred thousand dollars, like, you know, immediately from his fan base, creating those simple channels.

But then kinda to the point about this shift, it's like it is a... I think what we see, and maybe some of this actually is sort of a derivative from what happened during COVID, is, like, people are able to create real worldwide relationships around particular pieces of content, right? Like, when you look at Discord, and that was to me, like, one of the takeaways of looking at what happened with all the, you know, older blockchain stuff.

It was these communities that sort of form, and they're all over the planet. And so our idea was sort of like, okay, how does that transplant to an actual artist? And then they can move from just, you know, they create something, the label takes it, it puts it on a streaming channel. That goes out to them, and there's, there's not a direct path, but opening up this communication so that the artists can have more communication with their audience as well.

And I think all that's gonna just continue to shift and become, more rich. So a lot of times what we'll do is an artist may, sell an album or something. then the second album, if you own the first one, you get a discount on that second one. if you own both of those, then they might just send you, for free, a, you know, a single or a behind-the-scenes video, or they have all these opportunities to do things that don't exist, in the current framework that just know, excite fans in a way that get them more engaged.

And, and combining that obviously with, you know, the ability to say, "Hey, if you own all of those things, then you could buy a ticket to something, or you get first access to merch," right? We're-- We just signed with, Snoop and Death Row And we're working on some interesting things like that where one component of a thing that we're gonna do with him is that it includes, a certain number of fans getting taken down to his compound to hang out with him and, and meet with him, right?

He can't identify fans on Spotify right now, right? Like, there's no way for him to know, like, who actually has that and qualify that they have done something to, you know, get access to that through this, right? We're gonna sell some, some media that he has. everybody that, that has that, then he can identify some people to then, you know, give them some exclusive fan experience

[00:24:31] Taylor: Was there something you want to add, Shannon?

[00:24:34] Shannon: I mean- Sorry, I was just laughing at Snoop's compound. I was like, "Okay, great."

[00:24:37] Taylor: Yeah. No,

[00:24:38] Shannon: you're not wrong.

[00:24:38] Josh: He goes to the compound, yeah.

[00:24:39] Shannon: I mean, Snoop and Steve are friends, and so, you know, we did a lot with Snoop in the early Web3 days, on Sandbox and, you know, on a lot of those types of platforms.

And the only thing I would say is we did the same thing with Steve, and it's unscalable is the problem because you can really only do it a certain amount of times, and the artist gets tired. They don't wanna bring hundreds of fans through their personal house, and they certainly don't wanna do it multiple times.

And so, I mean, we did that with Steve, and it was great the first time or two, but then by, like, time five or six, he's like, "Do I really have to lead strangers through my house again?" And I was like, "Well, that's what you promised. Sorry, buddy." You know, so you know, so as much as we say, like, "Oh, these interactions with, you know, fans are so great," it's like honestly I'm thinking, "What's scalable?

What is something that you can replicate? What can you do if you're a manager? What can you do across multiple artists?" And that doesn't mean it has to be the same thing. Obviously, you want it to be authentic for each fan base and for each artist, but what is an easy touchpoint that you know that can be part of your arsenal?

Not what are these shocking things that we can throw out and make waves about, but that honestly if you're a fan two years later you'll never get.

[00:25:48] Josh: I think that that's part of the challenge, right? And that kind of back to your original point of, like, a lot of that does come down to the label and figuring out how to use these technologies to come up with new, interesting ways to engage.

Because, like, I think about it in terms of, you know, if you went back, 20 years, the idea of every band having a website would be insane, right? You could go further back than that, and it's like the idea of a company having an email address was stupid. It's like, "Well, we have a physical mailing address.

Why would we need an email address," right?

[00:26:16] Shannon: Exactly.

[00:26:16] Josh: So it's like as these, types of tools continue to develop and open up the opportunities, then it really does come down to, which I think is kind of the, the cool part, it comes down to the creativity of those artists, right? Some of them will take advantage of that and come up with new, different ways to engage and, and use it.

There's obviously ones that don't, which is cool, too. But it, like, providing that tool set and all the, you know, all the tools that are being created. 'Cause I think, again, back to the core issue, it's like a lot of money has been drained out of the entire music industry when you go back to pre- pre-digital, and how do we get back to having a value to the art in some way?

And it doesn't have to be, you know, you go meet somebody. Um, it could be just as simple as, "Hey, I'm a really, a big fan, and I wanna see behind the scenes at a concert," or "I wanna, you know, go to a live event, and then after that, I wanna actually get that whole live event that I just went to delivered to me as part of my ticket experience," right?

There's all kinds of interesting things that are gonna change that dynamic-

[00:27:14] Taylor: Was there something you wanted to add, Fabrice?

[00:27:15] Fabrice: Yeah. I, I think that it all starts with the goal that you want to set for your initiative. So, if you want to acquire new, fans, let's say, you have acquisition strategies.

And, and on that one, there's no better one than live, for sure. Presale, we are one of the largest presale platform in America. we did 1,600 presale this year. Presale is a great moment to acquire first-party data for artists. It's true. It's related to live. It's true. During the live event, you have technologies that, display QR codes to collect first-party data at the live event, for sure.

Merch. So there's a number of things and moments like that because there are drops, that are eventized, where they, you drop a piece of merch, you drop a tour, you drop an album. These are incredible moment, emotional moment with- when you can capture, collect first-party data. Step number one. Then what do you do with it?

And that's, that's engagement. That's all about-- 'Cause all these ideas, at the end of the day, should enable artists to either increase the level of engagement from their fans, and that can be emotional engagement, not necessarily financial engagement, so that the brand continue to grow in the fan mind over time.

But it could be also financial engagement, and it better be at some point when the fans will try to, uh, to-- will, will engage with the artists along the life cycle of, the journey, right? And for that, you need to probably segment those fans. And sorry if I, I, I cut things into pieces, but that's, you know, this is not very classical, so to talk like that about music.

But segment those fans and look at the top fans, which now so a lot of people are obsessed with, the super fans, which we call. Like the, the super listeners, for example, the one that, uh, listen to at least, to five tracks, uh, five times on repeat. There are a lot of qualifiers that you can use to identify the super listeners.

Then you'll go and identify the one that super listen, plus the one that buy the ticket, and et cetera. You create your segment, and you see if you can increase the lifetime value of those segments by 10%. Not more, but do something. And that's when the meet and greet, that's when the digital asset comes in because you'll say, "All right.

For those who came, maybe I can increase the life-- the ARPU at least, not the lifetime value, at least the ARPU, which is the amount they spend at that moment of time by 10%." And having, putting these, the fans into buckets, helping the artist or the manager or their teams do so, and really segment and really differentiate the moment when you acquire and the moment when you engage, will help probably create a whole strategy.

And that's, uh

[00:29:57] Shannon: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think also you just hit on another really good point, which is you had said this earlier, right, about, you know, we have to think about fan first. But what you just said is not always financial engagement, and definitely we saw a lot of that. You know, there was more engagement for Steve's fans, there was more engagement for Sean Paul's fans, any of the major artists that I've worked for or worked with.

Whenever we would give them a surprise drop or we would say, "Hey, we're not asking you for any money. Here's something for being a fan," then not only would we see shared increase because they would then say, "Oh my God, look what I got for free. That's amazing. I'm so excited to be a part of this," but they would talk about it with other fans.

So definitely have a community aspect, 'cause again, keep in mind, going back to the you don't wanna have it be a touchpoint with the artist every time. You want it to be self-propelling, and the way it's self-propelling is if those fans can talk to each other, and they can build community with each other, and then they will then...

You know, that's where fan fiction comes from, right? And all these other things that we all know as people who engage in the fan economy. When we can talk to ourselves and geek out amongst ourselves, then it's like UGC. It's something for free for everybody, but it then creates a more, a, like a stronger community.

And from that, we were then able to pull ideas and say, "Hey, what would you guys like to see next?" So then we're literally talking to the community and, you know, gauging their interest in certain things, and then we can use that to say, "Okay, now could you give us some money?" Right? But it's something that we know that they're anticipating and that they actually want.

So I think, you know, that feedback loop is super important as well.

[00:31:25] Josh: I'll add onto that real quick. we see that a lot on our platform with, with a lot of artists. It's, is the excitement of getting something from them for, from your artist for free is huge. and I think, not to pick on live events, but just to play devil's advocate Why is it that live events are the primary revenue driver, right?

'Cause they don't make money on the actual, selling the actual music. the problem is you have a lot of bands that, you know, start a show, they only get through half their tour, and then lead singer's, you know, voice is done, and that whole thing's canceled. 'cause they're trying to cram in more shows 'cause they're not making any money on that thing.

But when they're able to, like, engage their audience in these different ways and, um, you know, either sell them things directly or, you know... I guess, like, Kind of going back to just, like, the pure, like, creator side of it, it's like how do we get back to really allowing the creator to be creative and create, and not just, you know, pimp them out on a, you know, an even- event tour with, you know, 60 stops, and they can only make it through 20 before they disappoint, you know, the other 40 venues that all had to cancel the tour, right?

So, and I'm not picking on live events 'cause I like live events. but it's like we've... the world has shifted to that point where it's like, you know, the thing that's crazy to me is that, you know, the number two driving revenue is vinyl. It's like a technology that's, like, 100 freaking years old is somehow the se- the second biggest, like, revenue driver in music.

That's crazy, you know? Like, and it's cool. I have a big vinyl collection 'cause it's fun to, like, own something and, like, know that I directly contributed to that artist. And so I think as we're able to do that also digitally, going back to kind of the scalable question, right? It's like live events aren't scalable.

You can't do 1,000 live events as an artist a year. It's impossible. It only scales to a certain amount of your band, and the travel, and the schedule and, you know, venues and all that stuff. So it's like, how do you come up with something that is scalable, that does excite fans, and, you know, puts money back so they're able to create more and more stuff that we want?

Like, I want my rock star to be, you know, tearing up hotel rooms and screwing off, doing crazy stuff- ... 'cause he's got so much money that he can do whatever he wants, and he's not, you know, put through the meat grinder all the way.

[00:33:33] Taylor: Okay, but they shouldn't be throwing these... You know, stuff out the windows.

That's, that's where we draw the line.

[00:33:37] Josh: That's where we draw... Yeah. They can kick holes in walls, no TVs out the window.

[00:33:40] Taylor: Yeah. Plaster's a lot easier than dropping something. Um, so this is the part where everybody dances up here. No? Okay. Why don't we actually just go to a couple of Q mates, 'cause we, have only so much time left.

Is there anybody who has a question?

[00:33:54] Lisa: Yeah. I think that Bandsintown, so simplistic but so incredibly powerful. Whatever you at Gearty, your algorithms, there is a moment of delight when you are turned on to a tour that's coming into your town and that domain guidance of careerify. That piece I think is incredibly important. But if you could talk a little bit about what you shared the other day in terms of your marketplace in order to be able to collect all that data, it'd be super

[00:34:29] Fabrice: Well, we don't know each other. But thank you.

[00:34:32] Shannon: Hi, Lisa.

[00:34:34] Fabrice: This is music to my ear.

[00:34:35] Shannon: No, Lisa and I know each other.

[00:34:37] Taylor: She paid her.

[00:34:38] Fabrice: Okay. All right. So I promise it's true. thank you very much. This is probably, uh, you made my day. the... Okay, so we have-- it is simplistic, but there is a huge machine behind. we start from data, and that's an AI actually that we built.

It's a proprietary. We've been building this across the hundred million profile to make those recommendation. We send, and we make four hundred and fifty million recommendations every month, and we send about twenty million people to concerts. Roughly it's, uh, probably something around a billion dollar worth of tickets sold a year.

So, so that's, that gives you the... So the machine is very significant. I love this idea that indeed it ev-eventually delivers something very simple. so that's, that's very important. Now, in order to, expand and help artists, especially independent artists, build a tech stack, we launched indeed a marketplace, last week.

And that's, uh, so it's one of the very first time. It's not the first time because at the MMF on Monday we talked about it. that marketplace re-reference companies that have, that help artists, either because they are directly connected with us, Spotify, YouTube. So if you publish your events on Band in Town, it goes onto Spotify, YouTube, or the Google.

I don't want to forget anybody, uh, Apple, Shazam. So that's a direct integration we have with these people. event publishing is made simple. You publish once and for all. same thing with Squarespace, Wix, event build, website builders. we added, tools like Roster. I see Matt here with Artist Growth.

 Groover, I don't know if they're here. So tech companies that are helping artists promote their music and stuff. Last but not least, we indeed also added CRM platforms, Open Stage, Rivet, co-brands that we, we, with which we have direct integration. So if fans, if artists use our widget on their website, they can collect first-party data.

We are big believer, as I said, that artists should own their data. So we help them collect first-party data, and they can transfer the search data onto their, uh, CRM platform of their choice. And so, yes, it's complex to navigate those, tech platforms and build a tech stack for artists, and so we're just trying to help.

[00:36:49] Speaker: Uh, serious talk about super fan, you know, opportunities. I work in that space too a lot. I, I, I wonder if you guys feel like maybe we're missing the, the opportunity then to look at slightly above that in the funnel, the semi almost super fans, and whether maybe that's where we should be looking next year, you know?

So to your point about the scale, right? So I don't know

[00:37:07] Shannon: Yes. I think yes, but also I think we would need to know who those folks are, so I guess where would you... You know, what was the level at which you would start, right? Is do you see them buying tickets? Are you seeing them buying merch? What is that touchpoint? And then when you see that, can you aggregate that into a story about that person?

And then how can you start to engage them in a more authentic way, right? So yeah, totally. You're not wrong. It's very easy at the top for people who literally will raise their hand and be like, "I'll go to everything that you ever do. I'm your biggest fan." Okay, great. You know, easy to find you. But the others who are like, "Yeah, I bought, like, five of your albums, but I've never actually been to a show."

Okay, so those are definitely folks that you want to engage, but I think the question for most managers and labels is all email addresses look the same. So how do you find, you know, those folks and what their touchpoints are? And most folks are looking at Shopify. You know, I mean, I think the panel before us was labels talking about, "Well, I have to open 15 different platforms, and how do I aggregate- gate that, and how do I make a story out of that?"

So I don't think you're wrong. I think my question is how are we targeting those folks, and then what story are we creating around it?

[00:38:14] Speaker 2: I was wondering if the main value for artists that you're all talking about is the artists that still not have enough of a fan base or is an artist or have a fan base, and then you're creating new ways for them to monetize or make a living. And then makes me wonder that given I have a fan base, then what's the added value in a world where it's very easy to follow your artists and get direct communication with them?

And again, having multiple platforms makes that even harder for the artist. So it's more people are not taking a bite because we're giving value, but it becomes very difficult for an artist to publish on Hacker and Spotify, just different streamer, and building the audience again and again and again. So I guess my question is, is it for more for people with a fan base or without a fan base?

And if it is the first, uh, then what's the added value?

[00:39:13] Josh: For, for, for us it's, I think, kind of a little of both. But the one thing we haven't talked about here or said, right, is AI, right? And, like, what that's gonna happen and what, what that's gonna do, right? Whether artists are for AI or they're against it, or they use it as a tool, or they don't, or whatever.

The entire, you know, I think of it in terms of the entirety of all the content that's been created to date, like, in the whole of human history is, like, the size of a grapefruit. AI's gonna make it go not to, like, two grapefruits or, like, a room full, but, like, a thousand football fields of it, right? So it, it's gonna commoditize and make so much stuff that you as a artist that, maybe you only have a couple hundred followers, right?

If you put-- you have a couple hundred followers, you put it on, on Spotify, you'll never make anything. If you have the ability to, create something using AI and sell it to somebody, to some, you know, friends and family, whoever, like, now you actually have started to, to create that loop. So a thing that we have a, you know, kind of a rudimentary version.

But we're, working on a, a bigger platform. It essentially is, like, almost like a decentralized YouTube, right? So that any small creator that wants to create and sell a digital thing directly to their fan base, no matter how small or how big, right? On the, on-- you know, obviously on the big side it works great.

 but for those smaller creators too, giving them the ability to monetize that, 'cause I think that, you know, we zoom way out, we see all these companies that are using AI to replace lots of redundant and repetitive jobs, and that's gonna continue to, to happen. And those people that are being displaced then, you know, a certain number of them are going to use these new tool sets which are continuing to literally get better every week after week to start using that to create more content, right?

That could be, you know, just pure creator content, which, you know, there's a certain number of bands. But when you look at across all the creator spectrum, there's, like, over 300 million full-time creators. In the next five years, that's gonna go to, like, 1.5 billion. So it's, like, it's gonna be such a massive expansion of content in general, that it's gonna make it difficult to weed through that.

And we're gonna use AI to find, find the content that is relevant to you. So maybe you do find somebody in Germany that has 200 followers, and you're like, "This is awesome." You know? Maybe they used AI, maybe they didn't, maybe it was some combination of it or whatever. But, like, they're now able to make some sort of e-extra income or, you know, maybe at some point a full-time living doing that.

Because especially, you know, not to pick on Spotify, once they you know, eliminated the ability to pay the lower tier artists, right? If you have, like, less than 1,000 streams or whatever you get paid nothing. It's like then the incentive has been removed for any startup artist. That's why, you know, you're putting it on Bandcamp or wherever else to try to get it out there.

 that's kind of, you know, the way that we sort of see it.

[00:41:53] Taylor: Well, we actually are out of time. So thank you all for coming, and I believe lunch was promised? Yeah. Let's come-- okay, great.

Let us know what you think! Find us on LinkedIn, and Instagram, or connect with podcast host Dmitri Vietze on LinkedIn.

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.