the bySaabye Philosophy - Part 1 - Introduction

Being 100% truly independent in music? You can dream it for sure, but can you actually live it?

The Story of Building a Brand (and Band) of 70s Disco and 80s British Pop… 

For someone who has lived music at 100% since always, that knows nothing better than hitting the first few notes on the piano all the way to doing a final mix of a new song. This someone that stays hungry for more of the same, being in the established music business can be incredibly challenging, to say the least, at times.

Music is the art form that people in some form, or another would not live without. Some don’t watch TV or go to the movies, Netflix it, watch sports, theatre, but it’s hard to find many that have no music in their life. Lots of people use their computers to make their own music, all the way from for fun to the dead serious and ambitious, nothing is impossible, or?

Since TuneCore came out many years ago, it became possible to self-distribute your music, back then at a fee of $10 I think, you could get your music out there in hopes of heading for global fame. What they in reality did was they placed your mp3 file, your song, on a handful of hard disks, and that was it.

Some weeks ago, I read that 50% of all songs uploaded get less than 10 plays during their lifetime and with more than 100.000 uploads a day, that’s an awful lot of hard disk space that is needed for what is essentially a graveyard of un-heard songs. Take about 33% of these out of the equation, that is what is estimated to be fully AI generated, that leaves a number of works that some hopeful musician/singer/songwriter/producer have spent quality time, probably spare-time, to do, and to what essentially turns out to be too no-avail.

These days, you usually pay a flat fee of a minimum of $30-50 for un-limited uploads for a year to a service that is in most, if not all, by now, AI powered and generated. That is rather good business for the sites and hugely annoying for everyone who signs up, but hey, good luck!

Spotify not long ago publicized a 2024 report, proudly, and yes, this is for real! saying that with nearly 12 million (all numbers to be fact-checked) Artists on their platform, a whopping 24.000 made more than, hold your breath, $10.000 a year! Well, with the totality of Rightsholders to a song if you are with a record label that includes publishers, management etc. then merely $1.000 would be a good place to start for yourself, except if you have a band that is, with a 5-piece, that will be delightfully $200 each, a year! But that is not all, Spotify continues, 12.000 or so, hold on! make $50.000 a year. Do we dare to call this a full-blown commercial success? Multiply the above number, $200 with 5, that makes a tremendous $1.000 to each band member a year. Then at the very top, you will find the Weeknd with 5 billion streams on his, great song by the way! Blinding Lights, and you’ll discover that Spotify has paid in the region of $25 million to the right holders for that song alone.

Where does this take us? Could it be that with 24.000 out of 12 million artists, making an excess of $10.000 a year is an incredibly good place to be? But let us put the actual money aside and think about the real, or large, reason for this Exposure! Eyeballs! The lack of it. Most have heard of computer algorithms by now, not many exactly knows much about it, I do, I just happened to enjoy computer programming years back and would probably have chosen computer software programming if I had not been totally bit by the non-negational music creation bug since childhood.

Algorithms are complex matters, but the few bits and bolts that need to be turned and twisted to completely change how the Apps works are in theory so simple that it hurts. A social media platform can decide to display your music video to millions or to 5 (if even), and yes, they do that, as they like. Every single platform, social media, DSP (streaming services) have created fully gated environments, where access to them can be compared to breaking in, let alone breaking out of Alcatraz, except, that is if: 1. you pay! and that is not small amounts we talk about here. Or 2. are a certified partner, read Business Partner.

Point 1. really speaks for itself and will never leave much hope or trail of success, however much money you put it. So, let’s look at point 2. Few know, as they’ve gone quite quiet about it, that the major investors in Spotify from the outset were the three major labels Universal, Sony and Warners. Surprised? Well, you should not be really, they are, after a super worrying start of the digital revolution, back doing what they have always done best, taking a strong hold on the music distribution, a tight grip, because with distribution, all goes down to eyeballs again, it is the key to even the smallest amount of success. If nobody is allowed to hear your song or see your face, then you are bound to fail big time. And that is what a platform such as Spotify does so extremely well, harbouring a closed gated community, Apple Music is frankly worse, they curate at 100%, locking out all independent spirits and all sorts of unknown artists, in reality the life blood of a creating and evolving future music industry are kept at bay uninterruptedly from interfering with the established music business.

Ever wondered how someone like lovely Ed Sheeran always goes to number 1 in an hour after he surprise-releases a new song! See, some 75% of playlists on Spotify are owned, read… has been purchased by major labels. They buy all playlists with a high number of followers to put their own artists on as high profile first track and acts. 50% of all music listened to on Spotify is playlist driven, that is a lot of traction for any new song that independent unsigned artists can only dream of. Take Lady Gaga, a great and a real visionary hard-working artist for sure, she runs in streaming numbers that are nothing short of incredible all within days of release, but put it instead in this way: what if she releases her new album via DIY aggregator Distrokid, CD Baby or someplace similar say under the name Gaga Lady, without any of the million dollar promo of hers, bet she’ll too earn under $10 a year, until someone from the certified partner, the record label, calls Daniel Ek, that should do it.

I remember when Facebook started with Pages, 15 years ago, that was amazing, you put up a new page and people from across the globe followed you in high numbers, you posted a new video, or a video from YouTube, yes, back then you could actually see YouTube videos on Facebook, or even better a 30 second clip from Spotify also direct into your Facebook Page that most of your followers saw. How naive we all were, Facebook, obviously used us all to build up momentum, today you are lucky if a single percent of your followers actually gets to see your posts in the first place, unless, yes, you guessed it, bingo, you pay! And even when you pay Facebook is useless, so is Instagram with its no links allowed rule. How do all the well-known actor and actresses’ gets likes in the hundreds of thousands when posting a picture from a yacht in the South of France when an image I post gets 5 yet most likely 0 likes. Oh, that is called, preferred, or certified partners.

A year ago, I signed up, admittedly, to try it out, to what is called an aggregator, someone that would distribute my songs to the major streaming services, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon etc. for $50 for the year! That sounded fair, so I signed up, and distributed a set of 10 songs, singles, that I was, and still am, very happy about, and I did all as suggested, posted shorts and reels on my social media channels, did videos with links back to Spotify. I did not expect much, but they seemed cool, well, all the artists on their website looked like they had the best of times. A full year on, I have now earned $1.80! Wow! What a business plan of theirs! Of course, for them it is a business, a big great business, they earn their $50 and you as an artist get 100% back of what for example Spotify pays you after they take what is pretty standard, as the Apple App-store, a 30% commission. So, if you earn $100 on streams on Spotify and you get $70, well, that is not bad at all. However, to earn $100 via streaming distribution, which is now a largely AI driven aggregator is as unlikely as anything. For real you could and should, though being placed on Spotify is nothing more than having your song squeezed onto a hard disk in a network of datacentres, probably powered by Amazon. Your aggregator distributor does absolutely nothing to help you in any way to get a play or two, however they do keep trying to charge your credit card even after you have cancelled, as in not renewed, your annual subscription, and that is also after a countless emails sent. Help from Spotify to all their much-loved talented self-releasing artists, nope, send your new release to our curators! Pew!

See, my Dad, me aged 9, he told me, listen son, ‘I got a life lesson for you…,’ ‘Oh,’ I replied, he said, ‘One… Always do the opposite of all others!’ Wow, being brought up in Scandinavia, a lovely society that is immensely proud of “we’re all equal” (at least in our dreams), that was a very odd advice, but in hindsight a very clever one. Then ‘Two… Never sign anything!’ Okay, great advice for someone that from his early teens already knew that life would be music and the music industry till the day I’d die. However, again, a great great advice. And that is where my story begins, my travels in music, my voyage with my brand of music, the vibe that I got in me when it comes to my great love in life outside family, MUSIC! Pop music, mostly 70s Disco and 80s British Pop. Sure, I did sign many years ago deals as all did, and yes, sorry to say, to no avail, cause most of us did, without really knowing what we signed up for. Let me make this clear, in fairness, I have naturally nothing against contracts, partnerships, agreements as such, it’s only fair that everybody involved in projects shares both common goals and proceeds in an orderly fashion, which is nothing but normal. However as someone who is behind, in my case, as the only one, the creation of the actual IP, intellectual property that counts all from the song copyrights, the composition of the songs and the master recordings, as producer/arranger and performer, I would be mad not to follow my beloved father’s advice, why on earth should I part ways with ownership in any form if I’m not getting something great back. Sadly, there is one really good answer, well, a bad answer more it being… access to eyeballs, airwaves, remember radio, entry on playlists, the list is long. Because only if major players out there have a (fully signed) interest in you, then gates open up for you. Do you wish to be fully independent? Do you want to keep your ownership? Then you need serious good luck!

However, despite mountains of obstacles, I’m absolutely in no way bitter, sad or anything near, no, I’m happy, I know deep down in my heart that I am doing the right thing and what I want the most in life, to do music! Without anyone delaying or rejecting my releases, forgetting my name, telling me my songs are not hits, stop taking my calls, move to other partners for a better salary without taking my music with them… that list is endless. No, I can do exactly what I want with my music and when I want to do it. I can make videos where I make a total fool out of myself and release it to the world tonight, I can write an album and release it next week, I don’t even need Spotify for that. Nobody listens to my songs there anyway, they don’t go there. The list of things you can do when you fully own and control your music, the song copyrights and master recordings is as long as your imagination, and do you know what? IT’S GREAT!

Now it is time I tell you about what I’ve been up to since some time, what makes me the happiest independent singer/songwriter/producer/arranger/artist/performer in the world… I’ve created my own brand of music (and band), established a fully owned highly professional catalogue of hopeful wannabe hit songs of sorts, 150 songs and counting, created live shows, a portfolio of social media channels with millions of ‘hits’, some 100s of videos, reels, also an eBook, digital songbooks and album downloads with booklets and so much more…. and the best thing is, I have such fun. Let me start with how I go about it every day.

to be continued…