Introducing: Love & Loud Music
A Web & Mobile App That Allows Everyone To Be Their Own Record Label
The Problem —
Musicians Still Depend On Record Labels
As technology evolves, so too do the means by which we both communicate and transact with one another. All too often, however, the markets and infrastructure that support that technology lag behind, leaving consumer and enterprise behavior to meander backward towards the lowest common solution. One of the biggest examples of this is the music industry. Artists today have a direct line to consumers via social network and streaming platforms, and yet, the commercial music industry is more monopolized than ever, centralized around an antiquated system of gatekeepers and rent-seekers. The more technical innovations are developed and systematic efficiencies achieved, the more predatory and centralized the systems of the monopoly seem to become in response.
In the modern recording contract, artists commonly sign away upwards of 90% of their equity in exchange for funding and management, and lose the rights to not only all the music they create in the process, but most of the revenue that they produce under the brand. This is what is often referred to as the “360 deal” (or multi-rights deal), a response to the receding record sales of the digital era and major labels’ declining foothold on smaller music markets. Since artists have to rely more on shows, merchandise, and other forms of generating revenue to turn a profit, the labels expect a cut of all of it. In addition to this agreement structure the label is usually given a predefined number of “options” in which they can choose to keep renewing their contract with the artist for a number of albums. That means an artist can get stuck, for better or for worse, with the label and management they choose to sign to unless the label decides they don’t want them anymore.
The lopsided nature of these terms reveal themselves under the scrutiny of analogous comparison, as no reasonable contract worker would ever accept such terms in any other industry; for example, imagine if a driving service offered their drivers an advance on their annual budget upfront, expecting most of it to be paid back over time, and in exchange, they took 9/10 of all revenue generated by that driver. Even worse, imagine that the driver didn’t just give up revenue on driving services, but everything they did that generated income, they lost the rights to any ideas they came up with while under contract, and the company had the option to keep renewing that contract at their own discretion; all just to connect you to others. Many aspiring artists dream of the day they are offered a record deal, but would they accept those terms for a job offer?
The Solution —
Love & Loud Music: Be your own record label.
Love & Loud Music (or “LnL”) is a web and mobile app that allows artists of any financial and technical background to act as their own record label. It achieves this by intuitively connecting them to the types of businesses that can help grow their brand or refine and distribute their content in various ways on a free, open market platform in which all of those businesses and users can transact with one another directly. That includes independent studios as well as freelancers, mixing and mastering engineers, producers, graphic designers, distribution and publishing services, video editors, merchandise designers and manufacturers, PR firms, and more.
Record labels operate in the opacity of their various moving parts via the inefficiencies of the independent work economy, charging you the great white shark’s share of your revenue and intellectual property rights in exchange for simply delegating work to others. It is not uncommon for major studios to outsource most of this work to independent studios and engineers anyways, so in the end if you had simply been connected to these service providers in the first place, you could have saved yourself approximately all of your equity and a proverbial deal with the devil, nbd. Even the most successful artists eventually come to the same realization — in order to maximize potential and take control of their brand they will have to be their own record label and navigate the different aspects of music release on their own; but is it worth it if they are simply passing on the losses to another new artist and perpetuating the broken cycle?
LnL takes the hidden elements of refining and distributing audio and makes them accessible and easy to use for everyone. It is an open record label that provides artists with all the tools they need to be their own record label in an intuitive format, it requires no permission, and it charges nothing. All the independent music businesses and service providers that already form the true backbone of the industry can finally connect directly to both artists and each other on one simple platform that incentivizes and aligns everyone involved. Even artists who are not concerned with commercial music or non-musicians such as video creators and podcasters can benefit from using the application in order to refine and distribute their content.
How It Works —
Handle Your Business.
Using Love & Loud is easy. All you do is log in, choose a service, and pick from a list of service providers. While not every service that is planned for the app will be supported in its first iteration, we are working to make sure that one day every single facet of music release from production to fundraising to management to legal services will be available to everyone.
After choosing a service provider, the user is taken to their online shop. Service providers can set up a custom storefront for users to interact with in order to receive the desired service. These pages have various dynamic modules that can change depending on the type of business using the platform and services being offered and there are several options that can be changed including space for a banner and logo, price point and descriptions of services, a gear list/work history depending on the context of the service, a link to embedded samples, and more.
Pay with Kin —
Everything in the app is paid for in Kin, a new digital currency that can be used across an entire ecosystem of apps and services. In addition to being able to purchase and/or sell the tokens for their local currency, users can also earn them in-app by engaging with designated features and sponsored content, which means anyone of any financial background can participate. By using Kin as the transaction layer between users, developer revenue is generated via an algorithmic inflation on the total supply modeled after “Bitcoin mining”, but based on user engagement. Unlike Bitcoin, however, Kin transactions for users are near-instant and do not require any “miner” fees, so doing business with the currency and navigating short term volatility between cash and Kin should be much more manageable if users wish to simply trade back to their local currency. (Note that it is not recommended that you speculate with this currency.) This next-gen business model for apps also creates incentive to develop brand new features, such as user sponsored bounties.
For example, users can earn Kin in the app by listening to music and offering feedback, which they can then spend on services, in the marketplace, or on various other spend experiences that will be revealed in the future. Available to artists as a service provider option in the “promotion” section of the platform, “LnL Music Promotion” allows users to offer their own tokens in exchange for the promotion of their music and the garnering of valuable insight from other real users. This is one of the several ways that users will be able to earn and spend Kin, in addition to the services being offered on the platform:
After beginning the task, an embedded song is called up using the SoundCloud API, which the user must listen to for a minimum amount of time proportional to the amount of Kin being offered in order to move on.
After listening to the song, the user goes through a number of questions to provide relevant feedback to the artist, and then they are rewarded in tokens. User sponsored music promotion just one of the new features in which we have been able to implement Kin in a way that benefits the users of the app. In addition to providing a secure, encrypted transaction layer that functions without fees between users, it democratizes the financial viability of participation for people of all financial backgrounds, enables the app to be monetized without exploiting user data privacy, allows users to be compensated directly, and even incentivizes the development and iteration of brand new, cutting-edge features. You can expect more updates and elaboration on the integration of Kin into LnL in the future.
A New Kind of App —
The music industry has always been held together by the millions of artists and independent businesses that are interconnected to support each other, but it has been difficult and confusing to navigate for those who don’t have the time or resources to pour into figuring it out, even those who aren’t interested in a record deal. It is in this darkness that the predatory side of music has been able to consume the profits, passion, and creativity from the artists who do seek assistance from major publishers to refine and proliferate their content professionally.
Love & Loud Music takes the inevitable end-point of taking the reigns over the facets of your own business and makes it the beginning-point; for everyone. It is an open platform that anyone can access and utilize, regardless of any knowledge of the music industry, or even financial status. This is not simply a cool new app, it is of a new breed of software entirely. One built on the distributed systems of tomorrow in an effort to contribute to that promise of a decentralized future, in which no one is in charge, and everyone is in control of their own destiny. I believe that the next gen economy will be open to everyone, owned by no one, will not require permission to participate in, and will be impossible to stop; Love & Loud is at the forefront of that paradigm shift.
Visit https://www.loveandloudmusic.com and subscribe to our mailing list to sign up for updates, including details on the upcoming beta and how to register and participate. Be sure to also follow us on all of our social media channels to stay up to date on all the latest news and info on the app as development continues!
Love & Loud Music is still a work in progress, but we hope to have a functioning beta by the end of 2019.
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Follow us on:
Twitter:
https://www.twitter.com/LnLMusicApp
Snapchat:
https://www.snapchat.com/add/lnlmusic
Medium:
https://www.medium.com/love-loud-music
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/loveandloudmusic/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/LoveandLoudMusic
Gearslutz Thread:
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/new-products-coming-soon/1235726-love-amp-loud-music-your-own-record-label-music-business-marketplace-sign-up.html
