How we raised $125,000 in 02:45 mins. The case of HELIX Records.

Most likely you haven’t heard of Helix Records yet. In short: it’s probably the hottest new dance record label in the world.

The reason why? Helix’s founder is Patrick Moxey. Moxey who launched the careers of Kygo, Steve Aoki, Mr. Probz, DVBBS, Lost Frequencies, Benny Benassi and Klingande under his former record label Ultra Records. And if you don’t like to listen to dance, you might know Jay-Z and Mos Def — two artists who were signed under Moxey’s hip hop label Payday records.

Moxey sold Ultra Records to Sony in late 2021. Shortly after, he revealed his plan “to make Helix bigger than Ultra within the next 5 years.” — 100% independent.

One pillar of his strategy: entering the NFT music space as Moxey is convinced that NFT technology will significantly change the music industry as we know it now and influence it for the better.

“We really plan on making these NFTs open a whole new door for you, the fan, that go way beyond the door that was available through the traditional record business” — Patrick Moxey

Helix teamed up with us, FUEL, a Berlin based start-up offering what Moxey was looking for: the software to build his own NFT platform. Without any coding knowledge and with all data and control being with him and his artists.

To kick start any kind of project at a music label, usually you would have (1) a project team ideate and plan the project (2) pitch the project for funding/ a budget, (3) try to secure a budget and in case this worked — (4) invest into marketing/visibility and (5) hope that fans will buy into the idea. The throughput rate from idea to fans actually liking the project is far from a 100%.

Let’s have a look at how we faced the challenge:

1. We ideated with fans inside our community
   In the first 2 months, 10,000 messages were exchanged in our community, with far more than 95% coming from fans. Fans who hold the Helix NFT get: tickets to concerts, access to limited merchandise and vinyl records, and, for the first time ever in the music industry, they have direct access to the Helix records A&R team, which means they can submit their music for professional feedback and book time slots for sessions at all the Helix studios around the world.
2. Our community actively promoted Helix
   Fans were so involved that they started sharing our content on their own social media profiles. Our social media posts were shared more than 10,000 times within a span of 2 months.
3. We landed in the hottest press
   Thanks to all the extra exposure, we got covered in Billboard, invited to Sirius XM’s podcast and OpenSea (#1 NFT player worldwide) positioned the Helix drop on their front page.
4. The project got funded by fans within minutes.
   We raised 80 ETH (at point of writing roughly $125,000) within 2 minutes and 45 seconds. Then all 3333 editions of the NFT drop were sold out.

Banking on the power of communities isn’t groundbreaking news. Leveraging the power of communities to create ideas, distribute them all over social as well as traditional media and getting funds from fans in record time is though.

If you are interested to learn more about Helix or cooperate with FUEL, feel free to reach out here.