Fan economy: Music must be made more exclusive
By: Henriette Szocska // Photo: Line Svindt
Just about everyone has access to streaming services. That also means that just about everyone has access to just about all music. And as a musician, you earn very little from having your music available on streaming services. To discuss new ways of monetizing music, SPOT+ had gathered a panel consisting of director of Digidi, Henrik Leschly, founder of Hun Solo and former lead singer of Blue Foundation, Kirstine Stubbe Teglbjærg, as well as crypto artist Jonas Kasper Jensen. Henrik Leschly began the discussion by listing some quite outrageous facts about musicians’ income sources.
Just about everyone has access to streaming services. That also means that just about everyone has access to just about all music. And as a musician, you earn very little from having your music available on streaming services. To discuss new ways of monetizing music, SPOT+ had gathered a panel consisting of director of Digidi, Henrik Leschly, founder of Hun Solo and former lead singer of Blue Foundation, Kirstine Stubbe Teglbjærg, as well as crypto artist Jonas Kasper Jensen. Henrik Leschly began the discussion by listing some quite outrageous facts about musicians’ income sources.
If you were to live off their music on Spotify, it would take 1,2 million streams a month. And then you’d only just be able to pay the bills. If, on the other hand, you’d prefer trying your luck with TikTok, you’d have to hit 498 million plays a month to make a living. Leschly further pointed out that this is an unfortunate consequence of the internet having effectively made music a free commodity.
That’s why he founded Digidy which makes it possible for fans to make paid subscriptions to artists, thereby gaining access to exclusive content not available on Spotify or YouTube. Krypto artist Jonas Kasper Jensen also added that NFT’s have created new fan economy opportunities. According to Jonas, it gives artists opportunities to release exclusive content or merchandise and thereby gaining greater monetization options than the usual t-shirt sales at live shows, for example.
Kirstine Stubbe Teglbjærg used to be in the band Blue Foundation, whose song ‘Eyes on Fire’ was included in the teenage-vampire film ‘Twilight’, which she still earns a small amount of money from today. Additionally, she’s had success with branding herself more exclusively – for example by releasing her newest record ‘Sitrekin’ as a limited run vinyl.
Finally, Henrik Leschly compared Spotify and streaming services with feature films. “Putting one’s music on Spotify is like having a feature film premiere on DR1. You won’t gain any revenue.” Therefore, he and the other panelists suggest that artists put their music on alternate services like Digidi first, before putting it on streaming services like Spotify later. In that way, artists can make their music more exclusive and gain more monetization options.