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Anthony Rose: Hello, I’m Anthony, founder at SeedLegals and every day I meet amazing founders on SeedLegals and today I’m talking to Russell from SongBits. Now, Russell, I know from like ages ago, like another era back in my BBC iPlay days, even before I think. So Russell, tell us about yourself and about SongBits.
Russell Sheffield: Hello, Anthony. Thank you very much for inviting us along and big fans of SeedLegals. SongBits is all about solving the problem for artists and fans, putting them together in the room the way that we believe they should be. In essence, we all talk about sort of fan economy and getting super fans, but we’ve taken it to another level. We’ve created a platform that enables fans to become super fans, but not just through added value and extras that the artist maybe, but actually they can own a bit of the song alongside the artist.
Anthony Rose: That sounds amazing. How does it work?
Russell Sheffield: Absolutely. So there’s two sides to it. Effectively, when the artist releases a song with us, they put the song up to sale for their fans and the fans can purchase up to 50% of that song. The best partnership can have as a 50-50 partnership. So this puts the artists and fans as a true partnership where as that song makes money in the future, then that fan also benefits from those revenues shared with the artist. So once upon a time, music labels would find a small number of artists, spend huge amounts on that artist. so you end up with small number of artists with massive promotion, everyone else with zero.
Anthony Rose: So it sounds like you’re democratizing it. So this is like fundraising for artists. That they are raising investment to get to repay revenue from sales of the song later, just like a startup would raise from investment. It sounds amazing.
Russell Sheffield: I think that the technical phrase that a counter-de-slut uses is discounted cash flow. So effectively by releasing a song with us, the artist gets some money upfront for that initial sale of those bits of the song. And over time, that fan gets an opportunity to participate in the revenue that song makes, as well as the other great fan things like merchandise and ticketing, really exclusive events that they’re invited to as part of that golden circle relationship they have with the artist. right.
Anthony Rose: And if I’m an artist, I would go to SongBits and then register. Is that right?
Russell Sheffield: Absolutely. So you register with us. We have a dedicated artist relations team that will actually work with them to position their proposition for their fans correctly and explain how it works to their fans. And then ultimately the marketing is, they are fans of the artists. So it’s up to the artists to tell their fans that this is an opportunity they can participate in.
Anthony Rose: So this fits right in the essence of the creator economy where creators, now artists, are being empowered to not have to go through centralized existing control structures and can engage with and build a business with their fans directly and then go to streaming platforms presumably distribute in a democratized way as well.
Russell Sheffield: Yes. So when the song is released on SongBits, we automatically handle all of the streaming connectivity for that song. So it gets released at the same time on those streaming platform the day it gets released on SongBits. And from that point on, every time it generates revenue on the streaming services, we capture those revenues and royalties back for the artists and the fans alike and manage the distribution of those funds.
Anthony Rose: So you’re acting as the accounting for that, for the artists, which is probably not to get out of bed to do accounting. So that’s going to solve a huge pain point for them as well. Absolutely. That’s amazing. So tell me how far you are in development on SongBits.
Russell Sheffield: We are live. We’re in beta. We’ve done, I want to say, 10 releases so far. We’ve been sort feeling our way for this last year or so, making sure the technology is up to spec. We had some incredible investment from SWE, the blockchain, at us the end of last year. We’ve been deploying that capital to move our Alpha product onto their chain and that’s now finished. And so we’ve been lining up releases for next year and we’re hoping that will be significant releases happening several times a month.
Anthony Rose: All right. Now you’ve been in the music business for years and your co-founders as well. So tell me a bit about your background and your founding team’s background.
Russell Sheffield: So my father created the world’s first eight track recording studio in London and that was a place called Trident Studios. And his vision was when he was working at Abbey Road was to build a studio for musicians by musicians. And the success of Trident is incredible. mean, Hey, dude was done there. All the Ziggy Stardust, most of David Bowie’s first albums, Elton John’s. So I was lucky enough to grow up in this environment as a young boy, realising how important it was that the relationship is connected between your fans and musicians. And the Queen fan club, which dad discovered Queen in 72, was probably at the time the biggest fan club in the world.
And what we now call data enabled Dad and the team to make decisions about where Queen went on tour. So if you relate that thinking to where we are now with SongBits, the data that we capture on behalf of the artist enables them to make decisions where they should be touring and where they should be putting their efforts. We still have a previous business called Trackd, which is about supporting up and coming talent for an eight track recording studio. And we had this thought that how do we help an artist go from that level of a ground starting out artist to the next level? How do we build a platform that empowers them and gives them the opportunity to earn funds? And so I came up with the idea behind SongBits of taking the asset, i.e. the song, and allowing the fans to participate in ownership of that asset.
Anthony Rose: That sounds amazing. And you’re fundraising at the moment. Where do people go to find out more?
Russell Sheffield: SongBits.com.
Anthony Rose: That’s it. And how people contact you?
Russell Sheffield: There’s a section on SongBits where they can message us about if it’s fundraising, they can message me and I personally get those emails. And I’d love to talk to people that are interested in helping change the music industry for the better.
Anthony Rose: All right. Amazing. That’s a noble aspiration. All right. Thank you so much, Russell. It was great talking.
Russell Sheffield: Thank you very much.
