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MUSIC MARKETING CUTS OUT THE MANAGER
GOOGLE BACKS NEW MUSIC SERVICE FOR ARTISTS TO MARKET THEMSELVES
Early Wednesday morning, record label veteran Steve Stoute launched his new music service: United Masters.
United Masters acts as a social marketing and management firm for musicians but the platform lets the artists retain legal creative control. United Masters can do this by providing its artists exclusive access to brands and companies that may be interested in working with certain artists. United Masters will pair artists off with interested clients in an attempt to add branding value to both parties. Plus, since the client will have a larger marketing budget, the artists they work with will get huge exposure as well.
United Masters also acts as management that can help get artists onto platforms like Spotify, VEVO and YouTube. Often times an artist would have to rely on a separate person as a manager or through their own personal social media for marketing. Stoute revealed in an interview: “Brands are spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get to young people by using music as the vehicle”.
Many independent artists already garner decent followings using their own social accounts and the Internet allows fans to be stationed across the world instead of solely being domestic. Chance the Rapper is one of the Internet mixtape stars that managed to break into the mainstream. Other artists still in that plane of existence are Lil B and Childish Gambino served as one before people recognized Donald Glover as a star. Even Hopsin, who despite being signed to a label, left his contract and is actually doing well under his own label.
Artists often create their own labels to conduct their business, which provides United Masters with a growing collection of labels that may be looking to sign new artists or with new brands looking to expand into collaborations.
One may be asking, “What’s the downside?” Well artists that sign up must share their royalties 50-50 with United Masters, however, the royalty fee is what allows United Masters to provide all of its services at no extra cost. On top of that is the fact that artists will remain in control of their direction. As long as the artist is on top of their data, they can see exactly where in the world their music reaches and the exact demographic of their fans. Whether the artist chooses to use that information is up to them, but with the likes of Google and 21st Century Fox funding the operation, why the hell not?