Five Unconventional Approaches to Digital Music

It's news to no one that streaming has radically changed the face of music in terms of both consumption and business models. In 2022, for the seventh year in a row, recorded music revenues grew to (ahem) record heights thanks to the wide adoption of streaming by companies, artists, and fans; streaming accounted for 84% of the industry’s $15.9 billion in recorded music revenue, according to a year-end report by RIAA. But many musicians and industry vets yearn to see the industry grow in more ways than just financially.

Thankfully, there’s still plenty of room for experimentation, and has been demonstrated in this industry time and time again, sometimes the biggest ideas come from the bottom up. Here, we take a look at a new crop of digital-music providers who are stretching the idea of what a service can look like.

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Resonate

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Resonate is a music-streaming platform that operates a little like your local farmers’ co-op. Listening fees are structured on a system called "Stream2own": The cost of one stream for a song starts around $0.25, and the price per listen doubles with each successive play. If you listen to the same song nine times, the track is free forever (ie, you "own" it). It’s a simple way to guarantee streaming revenues for every artist on the platform, and for listeners to have visibility into where their money is going—70% of revenues go directly to the artist. As a democratic, cooperative organization, Resonate is owned by a community of musicians, listeners, and developers who each provide their own contributions and have a say in key decisions made by the co-op.

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Marine Snow

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Logging into Marine Snow’s interface can feel like entering an exclusive, high-end auction house, with an emphasis on undersung but innovative art. That’s how cofounder Tony Lashley (who has industry experience working at SoundCloud, Spotify, and Frank Ocean’s Blonded) sees the experimental streaming service, which pays artists an upfront sum that he claims is equivalent to 500,000 US streams. In exchange, the artists grant Marine Snow exclusive rights to host their music for 90 days. Listening is free (for now), and the mobile app pushes a music-discovery experience, offering daily digital capsules that open with random songs and chances to earn "shards," which build more song capsules based on interacting with the app.

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Catalog

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Catalog doesn’t offer exclusive streams of music. Instead, it sells non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of lots of unique, one-of-one digital records. Selling music on the blockchain creates a transparent path that will always lead directly to the original digital recording, regardless of how many buyers exchange it with or how many copies and remixes of the work are made. Artists own 100% of the first NFT sale of their work, and can determine the percentage they collect from secondary sales. And since the music copyright itself is still owned by the artist, they can determine if NFT buyers get perks or rewards for choosing to be a part of their musical journey—like when indie-pop artist VÉRITÉ offered behind-the-scenes access to the making of her latest album while it was still in progress last year.

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Sound

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Sound is also a service that operates in the music NFT space, placing an emphasis on community engagement and fan/artist relationships. Artists drop songs via listening parties, which go live on the site a few times a day. While the song is playing through its first public stream, listeners have the option to mint a limited amount of exclusive NFTs of the song and leave a comment on a timestamp as a way to make their early support of the artist known. By creating scarcity in the amount of NFTs available for each track, Sound encourages listeners to back rising artists at early career stages, and build their own collection of unique NFTs. Artists also keep 95% of revenue made from their primary NFT sale and can offer perks for token holders, giving them autonomy on how they want fans to interact with their music. 

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Royal

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At Royal, streaming music comes with an extra perk. This Web3 investment company cofounded and led by DJ and producer 3LAU highlights the ever-evolving relationship between artists and fans by allowing them to have a shared stake in streaming music. Royal allows users to to buy percentages of song or album royalties, giving artists revenue upfront and listeners the opportunity to invest in music they care about and want to succeed. Listeners buy percentages through tokens, which can be sold on secondary markets, and artists can choose what percentage of their rights to offer. While the company is just a few years old, it’s partnered with huge artists like Nas and Diplo and has paid out over $100,000 in royalties from artists to fans.