Andre Benz Fireside Rewind.
“People think I must be some sort of genius, the reality is: Right place, right time coupled with a want to not get a higher education beyond high school.”
Andre Benz got his start in the world of music almost by accident; creating music playlists for Runescape players to enjoy while raiding with their friends. This quickly grew to a massive global brand, bringing in over one million dollars a year. Now Andre spends his time growing SoundMint, the generative NFT platform helping bring new artists and fans to Web3. From humble beginnings to industry figurehead, Andre’s story is an inspirational one about turning a side hobby into something spectacular.
Striking Gold on YouTube
Andre began creating playlists on YouTube; online mixtapes consisting mostly of dubstep and early trap music, designed specifically for gamers. Seeing the success of other channels in the space, Andre worked to turn his channel into a specific brand, naming it ‘All Trap Nation’ and uploaded consistently for a year.
“During that time I was mostly doing it as a hobby. I was already spending all my time before and after school just playing games and listening to new music. It wasn’t based on me trying to succeed as a company, it was based on me having a good time and enjoying myself.”
At that time, Vine was the social media platform of choice, and following a chance upload of a Miley Cyrus remix to his channel that was doing the rounds on the upcoming video sharing platform drove a huge amount of traffic to the channel.
“Looking back on it I wasn’t a very clever kid. Mostly B’s and C’s; I hated it. I hated learning, I hated school but the one thing I am good at is understanding when a good opportunity arises.”
Andre quickly discovered that people coming to his channel for a specific remix could then be turned into fans of EDM and in turn, Trap Nation. Sharing remixes, whether it be Miley, Charlie Puth, Drake or Dua Lipa eventually helped the channel grow to over thirty million subscribers and a steady revenue stream.
“As a sixteen year old, when you see $200 a day coming in you start doing the maths and you freak out. That was when I realised it was a life changing moment that I needed to take full advantage of. So I just started to upload more videos and the more videos I uploaded, the more money that I started to make. Then it got to a point where it was profiting a million dollars a year.”
Seeing the massive amount of potential and revenue these channels could bring in, Andre quickly created more to cater to different genres. Eventually scaling up to eight different channels, Andre reached out to friends to help run them, effectively hiring his first ‘staff’.
“I can’t stress enough how strange this part of my life was. I just had friends running these channels and I let them keep most of the revenue and one of my friends is making like $200k a year when he’s eighteen. It was just such an odd situation.”
Creating LOWLY Records
Taking the lessons from building brands on Youtube and having become a fully fledged taste making outlet for those looking for new music, Andre moved to Los Angeles to create LOWLY Records. Despite having developed such a strong online brand, Andre admits that the leap to a label was still a massive learning curve.
“I didn’t realise how naive I was at that time. I didn’t even know what a royalty was. I didn’t know about publishing rights, mastering rights. It was a totally different game.”
Trap Nation would essentially become the marketing arm of LOWLY, and with major labels already scouring the YouTube channel in order to find new and upcoming talent, Andre used the label as a method to stop artists from being poached. The goal of the label was to keep artists making great music, without keeping them trapped in a stifling contract, which at the time was unheard of — keeping their rights while taking a fifty-fifty split of the profit.
“Artists could sign with us, do whatever the fuck they wanted and upload their music and some of these songs were making them twenty grand a month.”
Moving Into Web3
Like many of us, Andre first found out about blockchain technologies and ICOs during 2017, but swore he would never get involved after getting burned in the early days. Fast forward to 2020 when NFTs began popping up, and Andre decided to go back down the rabbit hole.
“I never really understood or appreciated NFTs because I’d lost a lot of trust in anything crypto related after those early days in 2017, and I didn’t think I had the time and it seemed like a lot of effort. But then I saw a lot of people create personalities of Twitter, build followers and then product and it’s like a new era.”
Andre cites Spotify and TikTok for the music industries stagnation over the past three years, coupled with the global response to COVID as more artists were forced inside and live performances shut down. Like many others, Andre saw the potential for NFTs to push the industry forward. This ultimately led to becoming a co-founder of SoundMint, a generative audio-visual music NFT platform, releasing curated music NFTs .
“We take a similar algorithm to Bored Apes, and we apply it to music stems. So when you’re collecting an NFT from one of our collections, you’re able to collect a truly unique one of one thirty second music collectable out of a collection of five thousand. Every time you’re collecting one of these you’re able to own the licensing rights as well, that’s kind of the general pitch.”
Andre stresses that ultimately ‘bad music is bad music’ and no amount of digital extras can lift the integrity of a song, that has to come beforehand and that some principles that apply to some NFT projects, don’t apply to music NFTs. People buy a music NFT because they like the song, not because of any speculation as to its price.
The move into Web3 for Andre and many artists is a refreshing release from the monotony of the current system so many have found themselves in. Now artists are given more power and influence over not just their music but their audience as well.
With their first successful drop under their belt, SoundMint is continuing to edge further and further into the space, growing their brand and preparing for new mints later in the year.
“We want to make sure that we’re not rushing anything. We’re focussed on making this product the best that it can be. Beyond that our main goal is to be the music NFT platform that your favorite artist wants to be on. Making sure that everything comes back to being a curator and taste maker brand.”
