Amuse has fast become one of the most recognizable names in the independent artist market – not least as the Swedish-born company offers a completely free, no-frills digital distribution service for DIY acts.
Previously, Amuse’s business model was essentially two-tiered: the firm would monitor the artists uploading their music via its free tier, and then attempt to sign the hottest of these acts to its in-house record label. (Amuse’s label signs artists hand-picked by Amuse’s A&R team, licensing rights for a set period while splitting any resultant profits 50/50 with its acts. It has so far licensed over 500 tracks worldwide.)
Now, Amuse is set to launch a third key pillar to its business, offering DIY artists more advanced tools, on top of basic digital distribution, for a monthly fee.
Amuse Pro will offer any artist, label or producer who subscribes features such as: a royalty splits tool; team accounts; multiple artist profiles; what Amuse calls “quicker releases”; and additional support.
Amuse Pro users can also distribute their music to social media platforms including TikTok and Instagram.
A subscription to the service, which is set to launch next week, starts at $7.99 per month or $59.99 per year.
Who might Amuse be targeting with Amuse Pro? Why, a rapidly-expanding independent artist marketplace, of course.
Amuse’s announcement of Pro comes as the company releases an important set of fresh market research, carried out by the respected folks at London-based Midia.
The resultant report, “The Changing Nature of Music Creation”, reveals that the ‘artist direct’ sector (i.e. self-releasing acts using services like Amuse, TuneCore, CD Baby and Ditto) generated an estimated $821m globally in 2019 – up 25% on the $643m the same sector generated in 2018.
According to Midia, that $821m was enough for these self-releasing artists to claim a 3.9% global share of the recorded music market last year.
(To put that into context, MBW estimates that if all these DIY acts were a single major entity, their $821m revenues would have likely made them the fourth biggest recorded music company in the world last year – smaller than Warner Music Group but bigger than BMG.)
What’s more, says Midia’s report, when these self-releasing (‘artist direct’) acts are combined with artists who retain ownership of their copyrights but who are signed to ‘label services’ companies (like AWAL, Caroline, ADA, Believe or The Orchard), the total revenue generated by ‘independent’ artists last year stood at a very significant $1.6bn.
Midia estimated that there were 3.7m artists self-releasing on major digital services last year, with a further 400,000 signed to ‘label services’ companies.
Two other key findings from Midia:
As much as 85% of ‘artists direct’ – 3.1m acts – did not have any form of professional management representation;
Artists with label services deals were much more likely to have representation, with 140,000 (35%) having a full-time manager on board.
Amuse Pro (pictured, main) becomes Amuse’s latest suite of tools for indie acts, following the firm’s launch of FastForward – a platform which advances artists money based on projected earnings from their music on digital platforms – last year.
Interestingly, Midia’s new report shows that, in a bid to increase their chances of making the Spotify Top 200 chart, artists in the USA, UK, Germany and Sweden are increasingly releasing more songs featuring other artists.
Almost one third of unique tracks that reach the Spotify 200, says Midia, include a featured artist or collaboration in a song’s title.
Obviously enough, Amuse sees this fact as prescient regarding the launch of its royalty-splitting functionality within the Amuse Pro toolset.
Diego Farias, co-founder and CEO at Amuse, said: “Modern artists have the ability to create their own virtual labels, but they can’t do it alone. Artists and their teams still face so many time consuming administrative tasks and financial pain points.
“With Pro, we’re giving our users more features to accelerate their careers, at an accessible price. Artists and managers will simply be able to focus on their creativity instead of the admin parts of a music career.”
“With Pro, we’re giving our users more features to accelerate their careers, at an accessible price. Artists and managers will simply be able to focus on their creativity instead of the admin parts of a music career.”
Diego Farias, Amuse
Mark Mulligan, Chief Analyst at MIDiA Research, added: “Traditionally, being signed to a label has been seen as the ‘next step’ of an artist’s career, but the development of digital tools like Amuse Pro has made building your own team and career a very viable option. Yet this collective tendency doesn’t really stop in the emerging or independent artist sector.
“Our research shows that when it comes to creating hit songs, the team sizes creating those songs is increasing, through featured artists, producers, writers and other collaborators – up-and-coming artists will need to compete with this.”
Amuse says it has been working with artists, managers, and labels in a closed beta to develop Amuse Pro.
One of these beta collaborators was the company Jubel – dubbed a “hybrid between an indie label, a live booking agency and an advertising agency” – which works with some of Sweden’s most successful up-and-coming artists.
“Traditionally, being signed to a label has been seen as the ‘next step’ of an artist’s career, but the development of digital tools like Amuse Pro has made building your own team and career a very viable option.”
Mark Mulligan, Midia
Erik Ohlsson, founder and CEO of Jubel, said: “I started Jubel in 2016, and we’ve been collaborating with Amuse since 2017. Our philosophy has always been to give artists back the control of their own music and release process, and it feels very exciting to leave the 2010’s and walk into a new decade.
“Suddenly independent music is as big as major label releases on Spotify’s Top 50 in Sweden, and for the first time it’s actually possible to reach the No.1 spot as an independent artist.
“Being able to try out Amuse Pro and get more tools to change the music industry is very inspiring.”Music Business Worldwide
