James Blake, musician and producer, has launched a new streaming platform known as Vault in response to the current royalty rates from record labels and streaming services. The platform serves as a direct artist-to-fan service where users can subscribe to their favourite musicians for a monthly fee and receive unreleased music in return. Blake has already added three new unreleased tracks on the platform which subscribers can access for $5 a month.
Blake released a series of social media posts earlier this month, highlighting the unfair pay rates major labels, streaming services, and platforms like TikTok impose. In a Tweet, he stated that “streaming services don’t pay properly, labels want a bigger cut than ever, and just sit and wait for you to go viral, TikTok doesn’t pay properly, and touring is getting prohibitively expensive for most artists”.
The launch of Vault allows artists to release music on their own terms, providing a solution to the current monetisation of music. Vault enables artists to make money directly from their music, allowing them to directly reinvesting in their music. Blake gave some statistics on the amount paid to artists per stream, explaining that it ranges from $0.003 to $0.005 depending on the platform, before taxes and label cuts.
Despite the backing of Tyler, The Creator and Kanye, Vault faced scepticism online since its launch. Some people compared it to OnlyFans for musicians and questioned whether it just makes music more expensive for the consumer. Blake stated that there will be ways to discover artists on the platform in future iterations.
Vault allows musicians to connect directly with their listeners and to release their music freely. Blake highlighted the current climate by stating that “music is free” and added that the Vault platform will allow artists to drop “more music”. Find out more about Vault at the official website.
Gemma Ross, Mixmag’s Assistant Editor, believes Vault is a positive step for artists to have control over their monetisation of music, particularly in the current climate of streaming and unfair pay
Read the full article from Mixmag here: Read More