{"id":4374,"date":"2017-03-19T02:22:03","date_gmt":"2017-03-19T06:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/tradiio-a-music-stock-market-turned-direct-to-fan-funding-platform\/"},"modified":"2017-03-19T19:00:56","modified_gmt":"2017-03-19T23:00:56","slug":"tradiio-experimenting-with-crowds-in-the-music-industry","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/tradiio-experimenting-with-crowds-in-the-music-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Tradiio \u2013 Experimenting with Crowds in the Music Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

The music industry is struggling to find a business model for the digital era that balances fan access to material with appropriate artist compensation. The rapidly changing industry has become a testing ground for new ideas, technologies, and platforms like Tradiio<\/strong>, a Portuguese music startup founded in 2014 by a Universal Music label manager, an innovation consultant, and a serial entrepreneur. Tradiio has always billed itself as an \u201cartist accelerator\u201d designed to help emerging artists build connections with their fans, gain credibility, and earn money for their art. However, it switched from a crowdsourced A&R model<\/strong> where fans invested virtual currency in their favorite artists to a direct-to-fan crowdfunding model<\/strong> where fans pay a monthly subscription fee to their favorite artists in exchange for access to special rewards. This post explores both models and the challenges that they face.<\/p>\n

Tradiio Then: A Musical Stock Market<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The music industry is slowly recovering after years of decline due to piracy and falling prices thanks to growth of paid streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. U.S. streaming revenue grew 57 percent to $1.6 billion in the first half of 2016 and accounted for almost half of industry sales (i).<\/p>\n

However, some\u00a0successful artists like Taylor Swift claim<\/a> that many of the larger platform streaming services do not properly compensate them for their music; many smaller artists also complain that these platforms do not serve emerging musicians. The advent of streaming and social media have also resulted in an extremely crowded digital music space. Countless new channels for artists to promote their music have popped up and it\u2019s never been easier to put music online as an artist or to access music as a fan. With this plethora of options, however, it\u2019s become much harder for new artists to cut through the noise and make it big as they are faced with competition on a global scale.<\/p>\n

Tradiio was launched as a rewards-based music discovery platform designed to solve these problems through a model of crowdsourced artist development. Unlike Spotify and other streaming services that offered passive listening, Tradiio allowed users to listen to and virtually invest in up-and-coming artists. In turn, artists who rose to the top of the Tradiio Chart received benefits including festival slots, record label connections, and access to studio time. On top of this, the most successful users at spotting new talent received recognition from peers and the chance to earn rewards like exclusive perks, products, and experiences.<\/p>\n