QRATES is a platform for artists and labels to sell their music on vinyl and digital formats.
Artists and labels can promote their music online to fund vinyl pressings, deliver exclusive content and items, make their music streamable and offer free downloads and bonus tracks to their fans. We ...
You’ve just found your new favorite artist on SoundCloud. But they don’t have the tracks you love on vinyl.
That’s where Vinylize.it comes in (launch: July 12, 2016). The site interacts with SoundCloud, lets you get on board with other fans of the music, and then lets the artist or label know what you want. It’s basically crowdsourcing vinyl, flipping the production process on its head (though artists have the final call about what goes to pressing).
“Fans get...
You’ve just found your new favorite artist on SoundCloud. But they don’t have the tracks you love on vinyl.
That’s where Vinylize.it comes in (launch: July 12, 2016). The site interacts with SoundCloud, lets you get on board with other fans of the music, and then lets the artist or label know what you want. It’s basically crowdsourcing vinyl, flipping the production process on its head (though artists have the final call about what goes to pressing).
“Fans get to decide what they want, instead of labels calculating what makes the most sense,” explains Taishi Fukuyama, Vinylize.it’s Chief Marketing Officer. “Artists and labels can go into this, knowing there are people who want these records, already signed up. It has profound implications. We’re basically introducing vinyl on demand.”
The way other apps and services match drivers and riders, or extra bedrooms and weary travelers, Vinylize.it matches vinyl-hungry listeners and musicians, tailoring manufacturing to demand. “While only musicians or the people who own the recordings can press a record,” Fukuyama notes, “fans get to have their say.”
The process for music lovers is easy. You can import your favorite tracks or playlists from SoundCloud to Vinylize.it. Then you can call all your friends and fellow fans to get on board. When the campaign reaches critical mass, usually around 20-30 supporters, Vinylize.it searches out the artist. If they’re game, and once they upload high-quality vinyl-ready files (not streams or mp3s, of course), you can buy your dream record.
This new approach to vinyl comes from the folks at Qrates, the Japan-based company that merged crowdfunding and small-batch, just-in-time vinyl production. Their brilliant logistics team makes sure that records are pressed quickly and sound amazing, solving a problem that has long plagued the music industry.
Another problem: Gauging actual demand before embarking on the expensive, sometimes extended journey of making a vinyl record. “We’re tapping into soundcloud API. You can search their database, pull your music into Vinylize.it and that becomes a project on our platform,” says Fukuyama. “Although, the minimum crowdfunding quantity on Qrates is currently 100, once you have 20 people wanting a certain track, we’ll notify the artist via the SoundCloud platform. They can click a button and start a crowdfunding project, to gather pre-orders.”
“Lots of artists don’t know what it takes to press vinyl,” Fukuyama states. “We have worked hard to make the process simple. They also don’t know that fans want vinyl from them. Now, we’re working to solve that problem. We dream that artists will respond to these calls for vinyl, and create cool releases that add other tracks to what fans love.” Vinylize.it may bring artists and fans together to inspire each other--and then get that inspiration on wax.
Vinylize.it launches July 12, 2016.
About Qrates:
QRATES is an on demand crowdfunding platform powering the future of music on vinyl. Through its intuitive online platform, QRATES gives artists, labels and brands the tools to design, fund, press, sell, fulfill and distribute their vinyl within minutes to customers and retailers worldwide.
Producing vinyl has long been an obscure, nearly esoteric process fraught with endless manufacturing delays, unclear market demand, and clunky distribution. Artists and labels often struggle to find someone to help them prepare and press their records, shouldering the considerable costs themselves. They then have to deal with weeks or months of waiting, with no guarantee of quality, in hopes of making back their investment.
Until Qrates. Combining the power of crowdfunding with just-in-time production and expanding distribution channels, the Japan-based company has figured out how to collapse the value chain and make on demand vinyl work for the niche and indie artist. “We are analog on demand,” explains Taishi Fukuyama, Qrates’ Chief Marketing Officer. “There is real demand for small-batch vinyl with world-class turnaround and pressing quality.”
Balancing the supply-chain complexities with tech savvy and musical passion, the company aims to change the way we buy and make vinyl. Within minutes, an artist or label can launch a campaign on the site’s intuitive interface, using the easy vinyl simulator to upload mastered files and artwork, and to select a cool vinyl color. The pricing for each option is instantly updated, so you know exactly what to expect costwise. Once the project is published and has the proper number of supporters, it’s time to press. If you want to get the records shipped to you, Qrates takes 15% of the total earnings. If you want Qrates to mail records out to supporters, it’s 20%.
Qrates sprang from the dance and electronic scene, where small-run vinyl has long been an important distribution channel. Qrates’ founder and CEO, Yong-Bo Bae, was a long-time club music fan, with diverse tastes. “Being crazy deep into the culture, as a very music-oriented group of people, we have always been into vinyl,” explains Fukuyama. They weren’t alone: Though CDs still dominate the Japanese market, many Japanese music fans are obsessed with vinyl collecting, and many rare, sought-after LPs have only been available in Japan.
With this passion driving them, developing Qrates’ online side was easy for the seasoned team. Yet they had to ease one of the music business’ current pain points: the limited manufacturing capacity for vinyl, the worldwide shortage in pressing plants. The logistics maneuvers start the moment a project is published on the site. “When you hit publish, we start ingesting the information,” Fukuyama notes. “When we see you’ve reached a certain threshold of support, we contact our manufacturing pipeline. We’re very selective about our partners, and we’ve built a network of suppliers we know and trust, because we do not compromise on quality.”
The Qrates crew took an approach similar to load balancing, spreading the workload across several producers, the way computation can be be distributed to several servers. “When one plant looks like it’s near capacity, we reach out to our other partners and get them rolling,” says Fukuyama. “This distributes the burden, and makes sure we can keep our turnaround short.” Qrates also sends work to the plant that is closest to the records’ final destination, to reduce shipping costs.
Once a project is published, Qrates offers it for sale in its online store and can also add it to its wholesale catalog, where retailers that work with Juno (UK), Fat Beats (US), HMV (Japan), and Technique (Japan) can order Qrates vinyl. “We’re always pushing to expand the ways artists can get their vinyl into more places,” says Fukuyama. “Retailers can contribute to projects, and artists can get their records in stores without a distribution deal.”
The blend of digital tools and analog know-how plays to the new music industry’s strengths, while avoiding its pitfall: the cost of licensing music from rights holders. Qrates only presses music when told to do so by rights holders.
Though each project has a limited run and may appeal to a niche, the overall model promises a broad, long-term sustainability that is encouraging in a very mixed picture of the music business, writ large. “Music tech has been shunned by investors lately, due to the high licensing risk. We don’t deal with any of that. We have a strong connection to the two growing formats in music, vinyl and streaming, because many of our artists are being discovered on streaming platforms like SoundCloud, Spotify, and others” reflects Fukuyama. “With streaming, you have the component of scale and its benefits if you’re an investor. If we’re speaking, on the other hand, about revenue for labels and indie artists, vinyl has equal opportunity for return in the mid to longer term.”
About Qrates
Qrates is an on demand crowdfunding platform powering the future of music on vinyl. Through its intuitive online platform, QRATES gives artists, labels and brands the tools to design, fund, press, sell, fulfill and distribute their vinyl within minutes to customers and retailers worldwide.