The Weeknd invests in personalized song creation company: Songfinch 🎧
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What’s good, everyone?
Last week, 31-year-old Canadian R&B Star- The Weeknd invested in a $2 million seed funding round of Chicago-based personalized music creation startup- Songfinch.
Joining The Weeknd in the seed round, were also his manager Wassim “Sal” Slaiby and Atlantic Records CEO and chairman Craig Kallman, among other notable music industry figures.
But what is Songfinch really?
Founded by John Williamson, Rob Lindquist, Scott Kitun, and Josh Kaplan, the last of whom co-manages Pop Star Doja Cat with Slaiby, the company connects its own network of artists and songwriters it partners with to meet customer requests 📝
What kind of requests? 🤔
Buyers looking to gift a custom song submit their request on Songfinch’s website alongside their preferred genre, the mood, and occasion for the song, and a few paragraphs to inspire the song’s content — such as favorite things about the song recipient, inside jokes, and memories.
This is how it works, according to Sonfinch’s website 👇🏻
So how do the economics of requesting a song work?
Priced at $200 a song, not including extra add-ons, Songfinch pays out $100 of each deal to artists.
The artists retain the master and publishing ownership to the tracks while buyers get a perpetual license that allows them to share the song with others.
Talking about the model which seems familiar with Cameo, another Chicago based company that lets fans get personalized videos from celebrities, co-founder Williamson said:
“Some people get excited about The Rock saying happy birthday to a friend — there’s shock value and fun in that, but ours goes a bit deeper and there’s room for both here, We don’t think of Songfinch as simply customizing songs. When we did, that idea fell on deaf ears. What this really is is reminiscing of the times people had together, it’s about those moments in your life communicated in a new way.”
How has the response been so far?
In total, Songfinch says that it has created over 20,000 original songs 🎧
According to Rolling Stone magazine: Songfinch’s revenue was $150,000 in 2019 and grew to $1.45 million last year.
Through two quarters of 2021, the company’s revenue has already exceeded $2.25 million on pace to surpass $5 million this year 💰
How is it benefitting artists?
Songfinch paid artists over $1.5 million last year and attributes its fast-rising growth in part to the pandemic as well as to the growth of other custom-content companies like Cameo, which has evangelized the concept to customers 🤳🏻
The custom celebrity greeting company Cameo flourished last year, and paid out $75 million to its creators, while artists were courted for higher numbers of brand deals.
Talking about the model of Songfinch, Williamson said:
“All of the marketplace models for music, everything’s built from the top down where 5 percent of the talent earns accounts for more than half of the streaming revenue. If you aren’t a big name it’s difficult to earn dollars from streaming,”
“The customers on our site aren’t coming because an artist is popular, they’re here because they want what the artist creates. If you’re a good songwriter who can work with small details, even without a following, you can crush it on our platform.
Those types of artists need 23,000 streams on Spotify before they see $100, but all they need here is one song. We want to give artists a platform that can operate like Uber and Lyft, something that can help keep them in the studio creating and doing what they’re passionate about.”
Our take on this?
With streaming companies like Spotify and Apple Music making it difficult for artists to stand out from a crowd and monetize their work to sustain themselves, marketplace platforms like Songfinch are bridging the gap between fans and artists.
By not relying on existing songs and hoping to monetize those; Songfinch truly is leveraging the concept of ‘many-to-many’ and increasing the net supply of music; in exchange for real revenues generated by buyers who value that music.
How cool would it be to get a song written for you, by your favorite artist? 🤩
We at Incentify share a similar vision to solve some of these teething issues in the music industry.
As part of our roadmap, we are soon going to launch a product that enables users to share and discover playlists in a platform-agnostic manner 📲
Ever had to share a playlist you really liked with a friend, but couldn’t because they used a different app?
We got you covered 💪🏻
DM us on Instagram or Twitter, or drop a comment here and we’ll give you an exclusive sneak peek into what we are building 👀
Originally published at https://incentify.substack.com.
