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Nathan Hubbard has all the time been on the vanguard of determining learn how to leverage new applied sciences and music trade ecosystem shifts to turbocharge artists’ careers. After a stint as a musician, he switched gears within the early 2000s and joined the startup Musictoday, which was determining learn how to use the rising web to get music and sports activities merch to followers.
When Hubbard was tapped to run Ticketmaster within the mid-2000s, he did so with the aim of figuring out learn how to use the behemoth to convey followers and musicians collectively. Within the mid-2010s, he jumped to Twitter, the place he spearheaded its international media and e-commerce efforts. Three years later, he based the Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup Rival to reimagine digital ticketing.
And final 12 months—together with Nat Zilkha, his cofounder—he launched Firebird, a brand new form of company for musicians that’s mixing knowledge science, entry to capital, and conventional artist administration to assist musicians construct their manufacturers and maximize their revenues on this new multi-hyphenate creator-performer world.
Greater than ever, Hubbard says, musicians should be entrepreneurially minded and consider themselves as manufacturers that must be leveraging all of the instruments and methods that client product corporations use to construct their audiences. We turned to Hubbard for a learn on the most recent scorching subjects within the music trade, and to present us a glimpse of what lies forward.
Courtesy: Nathan Hubbard
All through your profession, you’ve thought of learn how to handle artists, discovering new methods to assist them develop their manufacturers—and their companies—in mild of the continuous modifications within the music ecosystem. What are you doing right this moment at Firebird that couldn’t have been executed 20 years in the past?
It’s not a lot artist administration as it’s serving to artists construct direct relationships with their followers and reaching what Elvis and Colonel [Tom] Parker have been occupied with again within the day, which was, How do I take what are among the greatest and most beloved direct-to-consumer manufacturers on the planet [i.e., musicians], and assist them operate in that manner? That’s work that I did as an artist myself popping out of school, it’s what I did at Ticketmaster, it’s what we constructed at Twitter, it’s what I did at Rival, and it’s completely what we’re doing at Firebird.
The distinction from the time that I began as an artist to right this moment is there’s been such an evolution of expertise—coupled with structural modifications within the trade that got here out of COVID—such that all the instruments and expertise at the moment are in place to assist artists construct that coveted direct and owned relationship with the followers.
Firebird, on the core, is a platform to assist artists construct longer-lasting, extra impactful, and finally extra worthwhile careers. By way of artist administration, it was a man with a cellphone. On this new panorama, the artist supervisor is now actually the central level for constructing and activating an artist’s model and for figuring out and rising an artist’s viewers. That’s a operate that traditionally had been managed by file labels. Again then, recorded music was a minimum of 90% of an artist’s revenue stream. At the moment, 80% of an artist’s revenue stream comes from the street. In order that’s a really totally different set of companions.
Since 2000, actually since Napster, artists’ representatives have turn out to be fragmented. There hasn’t been a centralized place occupied with an artist’s model. A few of these artists’ manufacturers are as huge as Nike, as distinguished and highly effective as Apple. So we’re attempting to construct an organization that has the assets and instruments and capital to assist help an artist in that manner.
So if I’m a 25-year-old singer-songwriter right this moment, and I’m occupied with constructing my profession, how do I want to consider it otherwise than if I have been doing this within the 12 months 2000?
Within the 12 months 2000, you have been touring to help an album. And right this moment, you’re making music to help all the different revenue streams that exist, principally touring. However over the course of the subsequent few years, in a extremely accelerated manner, your presence within the digital house—your presence as a bodily, client product model and the identify and likeness that you simply possess—that’s adopted by an viewers, you’re going to have the ability to convey to new platforms as they emerge. That’s the basic core shift.
Additionally, in 2000 you had no solution to talk straight together with your viewers. At the moment, there’s no excuse for not proudly owning the direct buyer relationship. What’s distinctive concerning the music enterprise is, due to the explosion of stay occasions, you as an artist now have the power to have your whole most passionate clients standing in entrance of you. You actually get to fulfill them within the flesh. There’s virtually no different enterprise on the earth the place you get to do this.
That places the duty on the artists to do the work to construct and handle these relationships, in the identical manner that each different enterprise model does, i.e., Let me make certain I perceive who these individuals are. Let me perceive what they like. Let me perceive their traits, in order that I can service them and ship an incredible expertise throughout the spectrum of age and revenue and geolocation. Then let me use the instruments which are accessible to advertisers and types to go discover the audiences that appear to be those I do know right this moment to develop my presence. That’s the kind of science of digital viewers progress that the enterprise world has capitalized on during the last 20 years that we at the moment are serving to artists capitalize on.
So it feels like musicians who may largely simply wish to make and carry out music should suppose deeply alongside these enterprise strains in ways in which they didn’t earlier than.
A few of the most profitable musicians are additionally nice entrepreneurs and unimaginable model managers. Jay-Z. Madonna. Bono of U2. Actually right this moment Taylor Swift is chief amongst them. However it’s incumbent upon all artists to even be entrepreneurs on a go-forward foundation. We’re on this age post-COVID the place everyone has a facet hustle. The place everyone seems to be a multi-hyphenate creator. It’s inconceivable to consider artists sooner or later not additionally being short-form video creators, proper? If you happen to’re going to succeed in your viewers, placing out songs and never having a video presence the place you’re connecting together with your followers is sort of unthinkable. The medium via which followers join with the person behind the music—the soundtrack of their lives—these issues have expanded, and artists must evolve as creators to fulfill these wants.
In addition they must evolve as entrepreneurs and businesspeople, as a result of they’ve the duty to handle that model—partly due to the way in which that the trade has developed. The change within the financial construction at file labels means no one else is choosing up that ball. Now there are many artists who’ve an entrepreneurial bent, however they don’t wish to get up every single day and go sit in an workplace chair and spend an enormous portion of their time on this. In order that’s why the operate of artist administration is changing into extra vital than ever and increasing when it comes to the necessities for what it takes to assist service an artist.
How is AI going to impression the music enterprise? Will it assist? Damage? Neither?
I believe a session mandolin participant in Nashville most likely has some issues to fret about. On the entire, although, AI music could be a great accelerant for artists, serving to to show kernels of concepts into full-fledged music. I don’t suppose there’s any debate that AI goes to have an enormous interval of dislocation and basic societal, systemic change over the course of the subsequent 5 years. It might be on the identical scale as World Conflict II, the web, and cellular entry to the web when it comes to the way it modifications our day by day lives.
We really feel very certain that what does not change is human beings’ want for a soundtrack to their lives, and for the position that music performs of their lives. And, importantly, the connection to the artist who’s behind that. There’s a cause the Bored Ape Yacht Club band has not taken off but. Perhaps it can. However the cause Taylor Swift is the largest artist on the earth, the rationale individuals are filling up stadiums for Beyoncé, is that at a time of a lot division and confusion, we love these monocultural moments to come back along with different people who find themselves totally different than us and have a good time the identical factor. So we consider that whereas AI goes to be an accelerant for the creation of music, it won’t change the basic human infatuation and fervour with human artists and creators.
How concerning the live performance increase: Do you suppose it can final?
I do. On this age once we are so tightly tethered to screens and to digital communication, and to nonhuman interplay, we’re nonetheless chemically wired to be collectively. Live shows—simply as with stay sporting occasions—permit us to come back collectively in a single second and have a good time that with different folks. There’s a via line between the elevated digitization of our human communication, and the vitality, enthusiasm, and demand for stay occasions as a result of it’s one thing that retains us human.
Plus, social media creates these FOMO moments—like the “secret song”—that make folks wish to be there. However I don’t suppose it’s nearly that. We have to get out of the home and go be amongst different folks. And it’s an expertise now with the evolution of expertise that makes a stay occasion higher. If you happen to noticed the Eras tour, that factor is a visible marvel.
Talking of expertise, I don’t think about different cities are going to construct their own Spheres, however is there something they need to take into account implementing, given the success in Las Vegas?
Yeah, 100%. I’ve been within the Sphere. It was a magical expertise. The fascinating takeaway is this concept that the live-event expertise goes to proceed to evolve. A part of that’s going to be the venue itself. The venue as a canvas for the artwork is an interesting thought, such that the canvas of the bodily house is part of the present.
There’s all the time going to be a spot for a stadium present. However you’re more and more seeing artists enjoying smaller, totally different sorts of venues both to super-serve a sure section of fan, or as a result of it’s that venue itself that helps to create the expertise. So the Sphere for me is the tip of the spear of the subsequent evolution of the stay expertise, the place followers are going to demand one thing extra developed than standing in a area. If I’m each different venue on the earth, I’m a bit anxious. Now I’ve bought to determine learn how to sustain.
As you already know, music-discovery darling Bandcamp was recently sold to Songtradr, and half of its employees was laid off. What does that imply for the way forward for indie music?
I fear about that a bit bit, however there are such a lot of platforms right this moment that convey viewers to artists that I’m extremely optimistic about alternatives for impartial artists to handle their very own careers.
All of that mentioned, there may be numerous noise on the market proper now. It’s nice that everyone can decide up an instrument and begin creating, and that a few of these folks flip into Justin Bieber. It’s also true that a few of these individuals are not nice artists. More and more, with a glut of provide, what’s going to be actually fascinating are the platforms that assist filter out the stuff that’s good. It provides us alternatives to resolve democratically what we’re all going to finally come round.
So I don’t suppose Bandcamp has a monopoly on the surfacing of nice expertise and nice artists, and I definitely don’t suppose they’ve a monopoly on liberating impartial artists from the capital constraints of the music trade. There’s all the time going to be a trade-off when it comes to how a lot of every greenback an artist makes, and the viewers that comes with it. There will likely be different platforms that step up.
Okay, final query. TikTok: Good for the music trade? Unhealthy? Different?
So neglect the impression on the minds of kids—and on the minds of adults who act like kids—due to the knowledge they course of on the platform. TikTok is unequivocally a very powerful platform within the music enterprise. It’s a platform that has labored to reintroduce previous music to new shoppers but additionally to interrupt [new] artists.
On a go-forward foundation, I’ve three considerations. One is algorithmically, is it, the truth is, surfacing one of the best stuff? Two, is it paying artists pretty? And three, is the trade over-reliant on a platform that’s comparatively unhealthy for many of the free world? If that’s the case, how do we start to not turn out to be overly reliant, as an artist group, on a platform that’s going to go away, both via authorities regulatory imposition or in any other case?
For instance, numerous Web3 was full BS. However one of many enduring ideas of Web3 is that creators and artists ought to personal fairness within the platforms that they assist create. And so TikTok most likely would be the final platform that artists don’t have some possession in. No matter is subsequent is extra fascinating than TikTok, whilst vital as TikTok is right this moment. No matter is subsequent is extra fascinating as a result of for a similar cause that Taylor Swift doesn’t seem like on Threads, she is going to convey an infinite viewers to no matter platform goes to be subsequent. She deserves to be paid and compensated, not simply in {dollars}, but additionally in fairness possession, for that viewers. And each artist beneath Taylor does too.
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