Sofar Sounds made its name with concerts in unique, intimate venues. Now it’s exploring how that can work in partnership with brands.
Tag: Sofar Sounds
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Sofar Sounds launches a video-creation tool called Layers
Sofar Sounds has launched Layers, a “video creation suite that integrates into music recording software” to help artists make short videos.
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Sofar Sounds reveals $30m of post-pandemic payouts to artists
Sofar Sounds faced significant challenges with the Covid-19 pandemic, but the company says it is roaring back now.
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Sofar Sounds snaps up ticketing startup Seated in acquisition
In 2018, ticketing startup Seated made people, ahem, sit up and take notice when it was one of the winners at the Midemlab startups contest. We reported on its winning pitch at the […]
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340k people have watched Sofar Sounds listening room livestreams
Putting on concerts in houses and unusual venues has, understandably, not been a goer during the Covid-19 pandemic. Sofar Sounds quickly pivoted to livestreams, launching its ‘listening room’ earlier this year to broadcast performances online.
Having just put on its 100th livestream, Sofar Sounds has published some stats and lessons. “Overall, 45,000 have viewed the shows live on our website with hundreds tuning in live and thousands more watching on YouTube. Around 340,000 have viewed the listening room videos in total,” explained its blog post.
“One artist, Scarypoolparty from Los Angeles, made $10,000 in donations. The average artist has earned around $500 per show, including the $100 fee from Sofar. Overall, donations direct to artists have reached $38,000.”
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Sofar Sounds launches ‘Keep Listening’ playlist on Spotify
Unsurprisingly, Sofar Sounds isn’t hosting any physical gigs at the current time. It has, however, launched an online ‘Listening Room’ for livestream performances by artists, which it says is earning them an […]
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Today’s positive coronavirus-related industry news (26 March)
Music Ally is trying to write a story every working day, rounding up the good, practical things happening in and around our industry: focusing on relief efforts and other initiatives from the music industry and music / tech communities.
British collecting society PRS for Music has launched an Emergency Relief Fund for its members, created with the PRS Members’ Fund and PRS Foundation. To qualify, applicants have to have been members of PRS for at least two years and earned over £500 in PRS royalties in those two years. Grants of up to £1,000 will be made, and applications are open from 9am GMT today.
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Sofar Sounds explains its business model after criticism
Live-music firm Sofar Sounds has been facing some criticism in recent months around how it pays artists and its volunteers alike. Now the company is responding in some depth, with a blog post explaining “how money works at a Sofar show”.
Its publication comes ahead of some changes to the company’s model set for February, including to artist compensation at its bigger shows.
“The average net income split between artists and Sofar is currently 63/37, with 63% of the net show income going to the artists. Our goal is to move from today’s 63/37 average profit split for our standard show format (3 artists and 20-25 minute sets) to 70/30 across Sofar-operated cities, in favour of the artist,” explained Sofar.
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Sofar Sounds criticised as ‘just another creation of tech middlemen’
We’ve linked to the work of journalist Liz Pelly before: she’s been one of the most eloquent critics of Spotify specifically and streaming generally, with articles like ‘Discover Weakly‘, ‘Streambait […]
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Sofar Sounds raises ‘mind-blowing’ $25m funding round
Live-music startup Sofar Sounds has announced a funding round of $25m, led by VC firms Battery Ventures and Union Square Ventures. “It’s absolutely mind-blowing, and I’m excited for the opportunity […]
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Former Echo Nest CEO Lucchese takes the reins at Sofar Sounds
Sofar Sounds is the startup that’s behind a global network of music concerts held in people’s homes and other interesting locations – according to Billboard it now has shows running in […]
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Sofar Sounds founder explains how it built a global music community
Sofar Sounds has built a big network of people running ‘secret gigs and intimate concerts’ across the world: its events take place in nearly 430 cities now.
Founder and CEO Rafe Offer has just handed over the reins to incoming CEO Jim Lucchese, formerly of The Echo Nest. Offer remains as executive chair, however, and will continue flying the flag for Sofar Sounds globally – including a keynote speech today at the FastForward conference in Amsterdam.