From Cardi B To MusicPromoToday, Everyone Agrees Artists Need To Become Subscription Services
People pay Netflix for access to content they can’t get anywhere else and because people believe in Netflix’s brand enough to trust the company will have content for everyone of their interests. With the prevalence of new platforms like OnlyFans and Patreon, artists can now earn residual income by offering fans exclusive content and turning themselves into a subscription service.
“If you’re a content creator by nature, you can now choose which portions of your life are interesting that you think fans should come for, and you have opportunities today to monetize it all”, Anto Dotcom, co-founder of music marketing agency MusicPromoToday, said. “These are solutions that weren’t available to stars or talented people 30 years ago who couldn’t break because of lack of budget or revenue”.
Becoming a subscription service on platforms like OnlyFans and Patreon allows artists to be content creators, moderators and distributors, wittaking home between 80%-90% of earnings generated, as opposed to Google keeping 45% of YouTube creators’ earnings and less control over pricing of content. MusicPromoToday client Tyga’s sexually explicit music helped create a brand where fans would be interested in getting a look into the explicit real-life antics behind the songs they love. In a month after creating an account, the artist MusicPromoToday helped generate 25 million YouTube streams for his 2015 single “Show You”, making nearly $8 million on OnlyFans. This is without releasing a single song or performing at a single show.
“If you’re not touring and doing shows, how do you make money if you’re a good content creator? What if you’re super talented and you get your guitar to play acapella covers? Does that mean because you’re not in an arena you can’t monetize? MusicPromoToday believes with these technologies you can monetize. There’s no better era, this is where we come in and help an artist just getting started” Anto said.
Patreon allows creators to offer tiered pricing which usually offers more personalized content for subscribers the more they pay. Home Free is a moderately popular singing group with less than half a million monthly subscribers on Spotify, yet is the third highest earning music artist on Patreon earning $30,000 a month over the last year and over $61,000 a month over the last six years. According to MusicPromoToday’s calculations, the band would need to generate millions of streams on Spotify each month to match its output from going directly to their fanbase on Patreon.
The band’s lower tier offers song downloads, music videos, and even a karaoke track of every song they release for fans to make their own personal songs. But, they also have hundreds of subscribers paying between $50-$1,000 per month to get anything from live streams chats with the band and individual lessons to learn their music to a dinner backstage at a show catered by Home Free once a year.
An agency like MusicPromoToday, with decades of industry experience, has never seen a level of content and price control as exhibited in platforms like Patreon and OnlyFans, with the latter starting to shake off its ‘adult only’ image and attract major stars. Rico Nasty, The-Dream, and Fat Joe and DJ Khaled are a few of the major artists who have created OnlyFans accounts to monetize the same content they share on social media. And it has direct effects on an artist’s music success.
Cardi B started an OnlyFans account in August 2020 promising behind-the-scenes content of her “W.A.P.” music video, less than a week after the song and music video premiered. Within a week of starting an OnlyFans account, her “W.A.P.” song would become the first female rap collaboration song to debut at #1 in the history of the Billboard 200 charts generating the most streams in a week in Billboard history. This was all after she explicitly informed fans that she would not be posting any nude content on the platform known for adult content.
“From behind-the-scenes videos and personal stories to tabloid rumors and non-music related deals, fans’ access to an artist’s life inside and outside of music has always been integral to them feeling the level of connection with an artist to warrant fandom, and essential in any marketing effort on social media”, said Raffi Keuuhnelian, CEO of MusicPromoToday. There is now technology and strategies implemented by music industry experts such as MusicPromoToday to help artists gain more control over how they connect with their fanbase and how the many facets of their personality can become revenue streams, and we are in for a future unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the history of music.