UnitedMasters has announced two head-turning new finance tools for indie artists – thanks to partnerships the firm’s struck with a duo of potentially game-changing music tech companies.
The first tool, launched in partnership with beatBread, enables UnitedMasters to offer qualifying artists advances ranging from $1,000 to $1 million.
Utah-headquartered beatBread’s ChordCash tech engine evaluates artists’ streaming and social data to generate advance offers which – when combined with a “streamlined” verification and documentation process – leads to advance funding landing in artists’ bank accounts within days.
“The team at beatBread has a shared vision with UnitedMasters. Our mission is to empower independent musicians by expanding access to capital in a way that doesn’t sacrifice artist ownership or choice,” said Peter Sinclair, CEO of beatBread. “We are excited to partner with this forward-looking team to advance the cause of independence in the new music industry.”
UnitedMasters isn’t the only distribution/services music company to partner with beatBread: the likes of Symphonic Distribution, Horus Music and Indie Amplify have also all recently inked agreements with the company.
“The team at beatBread has a shared vision with UnitedMasters. Our mission is to empower independent musicians by expanding access to capital in a way that doesn’t sacrifice artist ownership or choice.”
Peter Sinclair, beatBread
Where does beatBread get the money to advance artists cash? Investors looking for returns.
BeatBread’s website encourages accredited investors to hand the firm money to invest in artists, while suggesting that this model offers “high growth with high potential yield” for funders.
BeatBread reassures investors that its “data science team has has hundreds, sometimes tens of thousands of data points on every artist we fund”.
Sinclair confirmed in a Medium post when beatBread launched in late 2020: “Some artists may qualify for advances equal to 8x their annual revenues, some less, some more.”
The second of UnitedMasters’ major new finance-related partnerships is with Paperchain.
Founded by Australian Daniel Dewar, Paperchain uses algorithms to predict an artist’s royalty earnings based on their latest streaming data.
It then pays out this money to acts in real time, via Paperchain’s digital wallet and card. (Paperchain is not itself a bank, but partners with Evolve Bank & Trust and Stripe payments to provide its services.)
“UnitedMasters is an ideal partner that shares our vision for making streaming revenue instantly accessible and joining us in setting the expectation that creators should not have to wait to get paid.”
Daniel Dewar, Paperchain
Daniel Dewar, CEO and founder of Paperchain, said: “We are excited and honored to announce the collaboration between Paperchain and UnitedMasters to launch instant payments for independent creators.
“UnitedMasters is an ideal partner that shares our vision for making streaming revenue instantly accessible and joining us in setting the expectation that creators should not have to wait to get paid.”
BeatBread and Paperchain join SplitPay, the financial tool built by UnitedMasters, that enables the platform’s subscribing “Select” artists to share their earnings with collaborators and team members, and calculate who should get what.
Steve Stoute, CEO and founder of UnitedMasters, said: “One of the biggest roadblocks for independent artists is access to funding and financial tools. UnitedMasters is the #1 destination for creators to make a living and build a career while remaining independent, and providing financial solutions for these artists is just another step in leveling the playing field.
“UnitedMasters is the #1 destination for creators to make a living and build a career while remaining independent, and providing financial solutions for these artists is just another step in leveling the playing field.”
Steve Stoute, UnitedMasters
“With these pioneering products and partnerships with beatBread and Paperchain, we are democratizing access to capital and we will continue to invest aggressively in building a marketplace that unleashes an economic model for the 99% of artists.”
Utah-headquartered BeatBread’s advisors include Philip Wild, an artist-side music lawyer and former SVP of Business Affairs at EMI, Colin Finkelstein, former COO of EMI North America and CEO of music management firm COFINK, and Vibs Abhishek, former Chief Data Scientist at Sequoia Capital.
Since launch in November 2020, beatBread has funded well over 100 artists across multiple genres.
