London-based gig-finder service Songkick has reached 10 million monthly users as it aims to help match fans with events and provide another important revenue stream for artists.
Songkick’s ticket finder app is available across the web, iPhone and Android and has grown from 8.5 million users in November last year to 10 million in April primarily through word of mouth, according to Ian Hogarth, co-founder and chief executive of Songkick.
Helping artists make more money
Beyond the app the service has generated $100m of ticket revenue since launch across its app and partnerships with all the major music streaming services, including Spotify, Soundcloud, Deezer and YouTube, and is on track to hit that figure alone in 2014 – an important revenue stream for artists struggling with declining sales and small royalty payments.
“If we can help someone who’s listening to music on YouTube or Spotify also discover a gig that they want to go buy tickets for, it provides another way for those platforms to support artists and help them make more money,” said Hogarth talking to the Guardian.
“Before streaming services it wasn’t really possible to be listening to some music and within a couple of clicks find and buy some gig tickets. It provides an adjacent revenue stream to the royalty payments that have been much discussed recently,” he said.
Artists typically make 70% of their revenue from live performances, where they can often make 80 to 90% of the ticket sales through Songkick, depending on the promoter’s deal with artists, according to Hogarth.
Low royalty payments putting on the squeeze
Royalty payments from streaming services have been thrust back into the spotlight by the leaked royalty statement from Beats Music – the streaming music service operated by Dr. Dre’s Beats brand which is said to subject to an acquisition by Apple – showed some royalties as low as $0.000126 per play. Spotify pays something between $0.006 and $0.0084 per play for comparison.
Google has also ruffled the feathers of independent artists recently over contracts for its upcoming music streaming service. The Worldwide Independent Network (Win), which represents indie music labels, claimed that YouTube has been approaching labels directly attempting to strong-arm them into non-negotiable contracts with the threat of being removed from YouTube.
Win claimed that the contracts undervalue the music of its labels in comparison to other music streaming services such as Spotify, Rdio and Deezer.
Songkick has more than 100,000 event listings across the globe at any one time, featuring about 1 million artists. The company, which is based in London’s Tech City and was one of the first startups in the area, aims to have 15 million users by year end, according to Hogarth.
• Songkick started selling tickets within its iPhone app in November, reaching 8.5m users
