Local buy-to-own Kiwi music platform Lume goes live worldwide with high hopes it can tap into what it believes is waning consumer appetite for subscription-based music services.
Rather than a subscription service like Spotify or Apple Music, the Lume platform, which went live on Friday, allowed users to buy individual albums for $24.99 and store them on the app for life.
In addition to the album, Lume customers would also be able access bonus material provided from artists like song lyrics or b-sides.
Co-founder Sacha Judd said they had gone with a one-off payment approach because they believed consumers were tired of subscription services.
“We feel like there is a bit of subscription fatigue now, everyone is a bit tired of being asked for a monthly fee for everything, so our thesis is that people would be supportive of the idea of going back to buying to own,” Judd said.
The initial launch would focus on New Zealand artists and includes albums from musicians including Bic Runga, Reb Fountain and Tiki Taane.
Judd said they were deliberate about starting off with Kiwi musicians.
“We think New Zealand is a great test market for us to test a lot of things about which artists this is going to succeed for, so whether that’s new releases or legacy re-releases. We have got in the launch slate some classic albums and some new emerging artists and we want to test all of those things.”
Judd said the next step would be to onboard Australian artists.
Lume was unashamedly focused on so-called superfans – in other words, diehard fans who may also want special additional album content such as photos, box sets and handwritten song lyrics.
Judd believed focusing on albums and superfans could make it a complementary product, rather than a competitor to the likes of Spotify or Apple Music.
“We are focused on a small group of an artist’s fan base and those are the fans who are already followers of those artists, they are already people who want to spend to support those artists, so we are not trying to compete with Spotify or Apple Music, we are complementary to that, it’s really a product for a superfan.”
Judd believed the model could also provide artists with an additional revenue stream alongside traditional streaming platforms.
Artists would get 80 percent of the $24.99 album price on Lume.
In recent years, streaming sites such as Spotify have drawn criticism from musicians who claim they do not provide a fair return for their work.
Judd said streaming sites such as Spotify worked well for the top one percent of artists, but many other established and emerging artists found it difficult to make a living from streaming and were told they must focus on things such as touring, merchandising and social media to survive.
“We were trying to come up with a format that would let them share the material they already had, it’s not like an extra burden on them to be filming TikToks and writing letters and so on, this is all stuff they made in the course of making the album. And also to make a home for all of that to come back together, so it’s not scattered all over YouTube and Instagram and various different places, it’s one home for the whole world of the album,” Judd said.
The company raised around $1.3 million in its initial fundraising round and has been backed by several New Zealand tech founders, including The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive and Substack’s Hamish Mckenzie. Kiwi artist Lorde was also a backer.
Judd said the people who backed the company could all see this was something whose time had come and that it was important to try new things in this space.
“They backed us in September last year and we will be going out to investors to try to raise more capital to really accelerate our growth in the coming months ahead.”
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