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A lot of the new players (~past decade) are VC funded and/or starting off in a highly saturated market, needing to landgrab as many artists & labels as possible to establish themselves. So they end up prioritising marketing their service via slick onboarding, PR campaigns, unsustainable offers (see Stem) and cash advances. A couple years down the line they usually fall short of their core model or pivot, as you say, dialling up the cost of the service. Always enjoy seeing services tout the 'keep 100% of your royalties' when they pipe everything through a third party like CI who take a percentage upfront. Yes I've seen a handful of services across the years with the "sustainable, fair and innovative" USP, often run by volunteers and withering out after a short time. I'm not too sure on the potential of these as they end up being top heavy, with more artists and labels onboard than paying customers / fans. The only people that seem to have got this balance right is Bandcamp, at the cost of 15% of your revenue. I've dealt with a distributor who have been around for decades (physical & digital) and sit under the radar, not focussed on growth, soley relying on word of mouth referrals with high profile, revenue generating clients for years. They're not the cheapest on %age, but are reliable, transparent and are well respected for the curation of clients (no open door policy) so as with everything - you get what you pay for. So they do exist, but you won't hear them shouting their own name. As for labels, I know of plenty who offer a fair deal for artists who end up staying with them in the long term. It's just the bad apples, usually the majors, who have the leverage to offer unscrupulous deals which all comes out in the press when the artists realise how bad the deal was years down the line and they're contracted in for another 10 years. |