The era of the independent artist is here. Streaming revenue for indie artists and labels grew by over 80% in 2016, reaching $2.1B. Independent artists now account for 40 percent of global streaming revenues. Alongside streaming, musicians often handle every aspect of their business: licensing, touring, social media—being an admin for your own music is a full-time job itself.
Let’s say you book and fund your own tour. Forty cities over three months. You compile all of your assets and distribute them to each venue for their website, piece by piece by piece, email by email by email. Then, a few weeks before your tour, you stage a new photo shoot while recording a video for your latest single. To help promote your tour, you’d like to use these assets. And so back to the computer you go, piece by piece and email by email, hoping that venue admins will take the time to update your page. Then you have to head over to social media and update each site and app piecemeal.
Administration projects are not only time-consuming, but they’re also ripe for error. As Mycelia founder and artist, Imogen Heap, says in the video below, the music industry makes up to $45B a year, yet up to half of those payments don’t make it to the rights holders. Trying to manage your own career and create music might be necessary for some, but it doesn’t have to be so bogged down in bureaucratic processes. I know that I’m always wondering if and when my quarterly payments for streaming will arrive and, even though most of our revenue is from streaming, we have to wait for a physical check. The system is broken.
Mycelia’s solution, the Creative Passport, will change these processes. By using the power of blockchain, soon you’ll be able to update all of your information in one place, then have it populate every digital identity profile you’re managing—all your social media entities and all forty of those venues you’ll be visiting. It’s an artist’s solution for artists. And it can’t arrive too quickly.
