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Mike Wright
November 21, 2017
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In the wild, wild, west of the digital music world, where practically anyone can sell their music on a bevy of online platforms, SongCast helps scores of unsigned artists get their music on the likes of iTunes, Spotify and Pandora - and helps them sell it there as well. An indie musician himself, Mike Wright decided to help out friends in the area who were also in bands. He helped them so well that he decided to go full-bore with SongCast, and now he services bands of all stripes, from Hip-Hop to Country and Blues. Here's his perspective on the indie music business.
What were you doing before SongCast and what inspired you to create this company?
My background starts as a guitar player in a rock band in the '90s. We were based in Northeast Ohio near Cleveland. My rock star dreams didn't pan out so I moved into the business side. Well before the Net boom, I always had a calling for tech, so when services like iTunes hit, I started SongCast and brought in indie bands from Northeast Ohio who were interested in getting their music on the Net. Back then, that was not easy to do, and it evolved from there
Was there a turning point when you knew this company would succeed?
It was slow motion for a couple years, but once we gained traction through word of mouth and our grassroots efforts, bands started coming to us literally from all over the world -- from European countries to Japan. When we started to get international clients, I knew we were going to succeed.
I bootstrapped SongCast from the very beginning with my own savings. I never took on any outside investment, which helped me reach profitability a bit earlier. So while it wasn't profitable from the very beginning, it didn't take a huge amount of time for that to happen.
What separates SongCast from other places that offer the same basic services?
Well, first off, CD Baby and Orchard want a percentage of all sales and royalties. I started my business by charging a small recurring fee, with the artist always keeping 100% of all sales revenue across the board. That differentiates us from everyone else. That difference would put us in a position, after aggregating sales data, to create our own competing music streaming platform specifically for indie music. SongCast's own music service offers a platform for the complete indie experience.
Getting music on iTunes, etc., is one thing. Does SongCast offer its users any advice or tools to help sell their music once there?
We have what we call "SongCast University," our blog that has article upon article on how to succeed in the business, from touring and merchandising to using social media platforms. We offer certain tools to help artists broadcast their new releases to all major social media platforms that's quick and easy.
Bubba The Love Sponge uses SongCast ... does a radio personality use SongCast differently?
We've had Bubba lined up for a very long time ... eight years now. He's done really well with his stuff. At the time, he was a first for us. We met him in Tampa; although we're based in Akron, I was in working in Florida at the time and that helped cultivate a relationship.
Bubba likes to record his shows and he gets to sell various segments of it to people who miss the show when it aired. I can't say that we have many radio jocks in our service, but we do cater to a lot of spoken-word product and we can always handle more.
Is SongCast good for EDM artists, DJs and mixers?
We do have a lot of remixers. With that type of content, a lot of licensing issues used to have an impact on their product. The problem was if you had, for example, a 10-second sample of someone else's song in your remix, it was really hard to collect on that for the composer and publisher. Fortunately, a lot of new technology has been put in place where all those samples can be detected, so when the music is uploaded to Spotify, iTunes or wherever, it recognizes the writers and publishers. In the past, a lot of those mixes had to be turned away because they couldn't be ID'ed.
Are there genre differences in your clientele in terms popularity?
Although we don't market the specific genres differently, our biggest genre is hip-hop and it's always been that way. It's hard to drill down exactly why that happens, other than there being a huge pool of Hip-Hop artists out there who want to be the next big guy. I can't explain just why so many of them have flocked to our service, but I'm sure not complaining - and I certainly don't turn them away.
Who are the most successful artists on SongCast?
Player, who had the hit "Baby Come Back," has been one of the most successful artists we've worked with, as well as Doug E Fresh and Jimi Jamison (Cobra and Survivor). Sy Ari Da Kid is one of the most popular artists in R&B. In Country there's Crabapple Lane and Ben Rue, who we've also seen do well. In Blues, there's Blue Shady and 60 Grit. Some might not be household names at this point, but they've done quite well on their own. We'd certainly like to see them get to a higher level and keep them as clients. Once artists get really popular, though, they usually get signed away; it's tough to lose them.
SongCast does offer exclusive distribution for interested artists. How does that work?
We work on exclusives with artists, but if they also want to go to CD Baby or The Orchard, they're free to do that. In comparison, iTunes would turn away duplicate content.
There was a scam perpetuated on SongCast in 2012, when a party uploaded their music to SongCast and other music distribution companies only to buy their own music with stolen credit cards to earn money from the royalties. Has Songcast done anything differently to ensure that doesn't happen again?
From what I understand, a couple of guys did it. To come up with an idea of stealing credit cards, uploading music, then buying music with those credit cards certainly wasn't something we ever dreamt of happening. Since then, we have extended our team, put in more content screening and more people to watch what's coming in real-time. Our music service can detect, for instance, 5,000 in sales of one song on a certain day; we can see who bought it and if they were selling near that in the beginning. If it turns out to be wrong, we can totally squash it. It's amazing that there are people like that who think they can use the system; it's really unfortunate.
Do you still play music? Is it possible for you to balance a music career with this business?
I still love playing and writing music, but I don't actively perform with any band members. These days I never rule anything out, but I feel such a passion for helping independent artists, and it's satisfying to help them achieve success.
And what about your and SongCast's future? You've been asked about the possibility of selling out to a larger company, and you resisted that notion. Have your thoughts on that changed?
Not to any big extent. I don't have any plans to sell or pursue that route, but I would love to get involved in more partnerships, whether it's having our team with someone else or having our app bundled with the release of a new mobile phone. We feel we can complement another exciting young consumer brand; any partnership that can bring good music to the forefront is an opportunity to capitalize on.
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