Spotify has just announced reaching a target of 60 million paying users and as a result is now getting ready for a NYSE listing before the end of the year. Although global music sales have started growing for the first time since 2000, music streaming services still have to turn a profit. An example is SoundCloud, which had to let go almost half of its staff last month, and is still fighting for its survival.
In the mass music streaming market, you can’t avoid the big majors (Sony, Universal and Warner) if you want to be a meaningful player. If you are thinking of making some money out of it, you need to be thinking of targeting millions of streamers! But behind the scenes, a new market is emerging for music and video streaming where anyone can monetize any content to a growing audience who are only willing to pay for the material they actually want.
This “pay-as-you-go” streaming business model is getting more and more traction as it not only allows artists to maximise the value of their content, but also enables any business or content creator to have direct access to his or her customers or fan base. And they are the ones who are willing to pay for a service or support their favourite artist. This new streaming 2.0 business model is scalable and can be adapted to cover a wide range of areas such as Education, Sports, Health/Well-being, DIY, etc.
One such company is SupaPass which has refined its business model over the past two years to offer a unique mobile platform enabling monetisation of any content not just music through a subscription paid monthly or annually. Content owners can have their own, fully branded subscription service and receive up to 100% of the revenues (if the owner pays a monthly fixed fee) paid directly to themselves as the channel owner without “middle man” taking a slice.
It’s a white label offering which generates real revenues from day one for the various content owners (such as Football Clubs, TV presenters, yoga teachers, etc) and also helps to foster a new and growing industry of smaller independent and specialised content creators. It is also creating targeted groups of users who will, in the future, prove to be very valuable to advertising agencies and large and small brands around the world.
The Low Carbon Innovation Fund (LCIF), managed by Turquoise, has been supporting SupaPass since the beginning and through its transformation from an exclusive music streaming platform into a white label, SaaS company serving a larger addressable market than just musicians. We hope they’ll find a faster route to profitability than their more famous peers.