Do you want musical fame and money?
UnitedMasters is a music content distribution platform for independent artists.
The main point is that you upload your music to one place (the UnitedMasters platform), and from there, it automatically goes to many places with which UnitedMasters has contracts.
For every play of your music, you get royalties as an author. You can see the statistics on your music playback and royalties in general and on each distribution channel separately and receive payments in the form of a single transfer from the platform to your PayPal account.
This is a cool feature that appeals to the habits of the current generation. To distribute your music, you don't need to learn the service's interfaces. Everything can be done through messenger.
In addition to the actual distribution, the platform offers additional advertising opportunities. So far, these are two tools:
- Masterlinks for placing privileged links to your music in different channels
- A free tool for creating sites customized for musicians, including unique templates for information about new releases, performances, and merch stores, as well as one-click uploading of music and video clips.
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The main point is that you upload your music to one place (the UnitedMasters platform), and from there, it automatically goes to many places with which UnitedMasters has contracts.
For every play of your music, you get royalties as an author. You can see the statistics on your music playback and royalties in general and on each distribution channel separately and receive payments in the form of a single transfer from the platform to your PayPal account.
This is a cool feature that appeals to the habits of the current generation. To distribute your music, you don't need to learn the service's interfaces. Everything can be done through messenger.
In addition to the actual distribution, the platform offers additional advertising opportunities. So far, these are two tools:
- Masterlinks for placing privileged links to your music in different channels
- A free tool for creating sites customized for musicians, including unique templates for information about new releases, performances, and merch stores, as well as one-click uploading of music and video clips.
The platform has a psychologically quite funny monetization scheme. There is an option where you don't pay a fixed subscription price, and the royalties for playing your music are shared with the platform in a 90/10 ratio. There is also an option where you get 100% of royalties but pay a fixed subscription price.
On the one hand - greed encourages you to pay some money at once, but then you get 100% of the money. On the other hand, harsh statistics tell us that 99% of music is in the long tail, which nobody listens to.
But in these harsh statistics, none of the aspiring musicians, as it is clear, do not want to believe. However, the availability of a tariff with a fixed subscription cost allows the platform to make money on this long tail.
More amateur musicians are looking to get their music listened to than we realize.
For example, on Spotify alone, there are 1.2 million musicians with over a thousand subscribers. Spotify doesn't disclose the total number of musicians, but judging by the standard long tail - it could be approaching tens of millions.
We're only talking about one platform and only about those musicians who have worked hard and gone through the entire placement process.
If we a) lower the entry threshold (placement via messenger), b) promise the breadth of coverage in one click (placement on multiple platforms), and c) beckon with the opportunity to make money from their music (royalties) - the size of the potential market will grow many times over.
Indirect evidence of the market's attractiveness and potential for expansion is that the lead investor in UnitedMasters in 2017's $70 million round was Alphabet (parent company of Google and Youtube), and this year's $50 million round was Apple.
It's interesting that even now, aspiring musicians are using small distributors to put their music on different platforms. I discovered this even from my 16-year-old son, who, with his band, released his first amateur track - but found and used the services of such a distributor - instead of handling all the technical details himself.
In other words, the market for amateur musicians and small distributors is there, so you can create a big player in this market for the long tail.
- Masterlinks for placing privileged links to your music in different channels
- A free tool for creating sites customized for musicians, including unique templates for information about new releases, performances, and merch stores, as well as one-click uploading of music and video clips.
The platform has a psychologically quite funny monetization scheme. There is an option where you don't pay a fixed subscription price, and the royalties for playing your music are shared with the platform in a 90/10 ratio. There is also an option where you get 100% of royalties but pay a fixed subscription price.
On the one hand - greed encourages you to pay some money at once, but then you get 100% of the money. On the other hand, harsh statistics tell us that 99% of music is in the long tail, which nobody listens to.
But in these harsh statistics, none of the aspiring musicians, as it is clear, do not want to believe. However, the availability of a tariff with a fixed subscription cost allows the platform to make money on this long tail.
More amateur musicians are looking to get their music listened to than we realize.
For example, on Spotify alone, there are 1.2 million musicians with over a thousand subscribers. Spotify doesn't disclose the total number of musicians, but judging by the standard long tail - it could be approaching tens of millions.
We're only talking about one platform and only about those musicians who have worked hard and gone through the entire placement process.
If we a) lower the entry threshold (placement via messenger), b) promise the breadth of coverage in one click (placement on multiple platforms), and c) beckon with the opportunity to make money from their music (royalties) - the size of the potential market will grow many times over.
Indirect evidence of the market's attractiveness and potential for expansion is that the lead investor in UnitedMasters in 2017's $70 million round was Alphabet (parent company of Google and Youtube), and this year's $50 million round was Apple.
It's interesting that even now, aspiring musicians are using small distributors to put their music on different platforms. I discovered this even from my 16-year-old son, who, with his band, released his first amateur track - but found and used the services of such a distributor - instead of handling all the technical details himself.
In other words, the market for amateur musicians and small distributors is there, so you can create a big player in this market for the long tail.
