{"id":1203102,"date":"2025-02-11T18:58:23","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T18:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/?p=1203102"},"modified":"2025-02-11T18:58:23","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T18:58:23","slug":"why-top-artists-are-turning-to-distribution-company-too-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/why-top-artists-are-turning-to-distribution-company-too-lost\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Top Artists Are Turning to Distribution Company Too Lost"},"content":{"rendered":"


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<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
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\n\tLast October, Tyler Brown<\/strong> and Harold Serero<\/strong> launched the independent label Heatwave Records. A few short months later, the company accounted for three of the top five records on Spotify in Nigeria for part of January: Fido\u2019s \u201cJoy Is Coming\u201d<\/a> and \u201cAwolowo,\u201d along with Kvng Vinci and Zerrdyl\u2019s \u201cHausapiano\u201d remix.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the past, ambitious executives might have stayed inside a major label or management company for most of their careers. (Brown used to work as managing director of Syco Music, while Serero was an A&R executive at Ultra Music Publishing.) But more and more, they\u2019re stepping out to start their own operations, pursuing a path that offers not just more freedom, but more potential upside if they catch a hit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, running a record label is not easy, and all these fledgling operations would once have turned to more traditional record companies for the resources, back-end infrastructure, and promotional support that are required for success. These days, however, many of them have decided that partnering with a major is no longer necessary. And recently, a number of them are turning to a relative newcomer, the distribution company Too Lost, for those services.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve beaten major labels to deals because of how quickly we move once we\u2019ve discovered something,\u201d Heatwave\u2019s Brown says. \u201cWe aim to get that deal done within 24 hours. Too Lost backs us charging after these records and supports us fully \u2014 not only from an administrative point of view, but financially and in terms of manpower.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tCo-founded by Greg Hirschhorn<\/strong>, 26, Bjarki Larusson<\/strong>, 29, and Alex Silverstein<\/strong>, 27, Too Lost has grown rapidly since launching publicly at the end of 2020. More than 300,000 labels and artists \u2014 including established names like Chief Keef<\/a>, Lil Tjay<\/a>, YG<\/a> and Ye<\/a> \u2014 now distribute music through the platform, and its annualized gross revenue, based on the fourth quarter of 2024, was $56.1 million. The company\u2019s emergence has helped enliven digital distribution, an absolutely necessary but resolutely unglamorous sector of the industry that seemed fairly settled just a few years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the most basic level, digital distribution companies provide artists with a technology service: the capability to upload their songs to streaming services and other digital stores around the world. Artists already had myriad options before Too Lost made its debut. The DIY side of the market \u2014 which is often hobbyists who make music for fun and push it to streamers for a low flat fee \u2014 relied on stalwarts like DistroKid and TuneCore. More commercially successful acts often found a home at long-running major-label-owned alternatives like The Orchard or ADA.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe distribution landscape \u201cdefinitely was saturated,\u201d says Connor Lawrence<\/strong>, COO of indify, a platform which helps pair emerging talent with financial and marketing resources. \u201cBut there are so many artists out there, I think if you deliver a good product, people will gravitate towards it.\u201d He likens Too Lost\u2019s appearance and upward trajectory to that of canned water company Liquid Death: There were more than enough water brands around in 2019, but Liquid Death launched and became wildly popular anyway. (Too Lost is an investor in indify.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHirschhorn, Too Lost\u2019s CEO, prefers a coffee analogy. \u201cThere\u2019s Starbucks, there\u2019s Dunkin\u2019, but you can be Blank Street,\u201d which was established in 2020, he says. \u201cYou can still build a great coffee business, even in an ecosystem where there\u2019s already existing competition. You need to execute differently, and you need to really emphasize what makes you stand out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUnlike many of its competitors, Too Lost aims to help both the DIY side of the market and successful artists who have achieved name recognition and charting hits. (Most distributors focus on one camp or the other.) Too Lost delivers music to, and provides analytics from, a number of streamers and digital stores that other distributors don\u2019t always reach, including FLO and Melon in South Korea, AWA in Japan, or the exercise company Peloton, providing independent artists with more chances to earn revenue, and more opportunities to learn about their listeners.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tToo Lost also has a publishing administration option, so artists don\u2019t have to go to another platform to earn songwriting income; a block list function, which will automatically strike an artist\u2019s track if it\u2019s uploaded to Twitch or SoundCloud by a third party; and a breezy catalog ingestion tool, which lessens the technical headaches caused by moving music from one distributor to another. Artist collaborators can easily create free accounts just to receive royalties from projects they worked on \u2014 a featured artist might use this if their duet partner is on Too Lost, for example \u2014 even if they distribute elsewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy idea was always to capture market share by just building a very frictionless product,\u201d Hirschhorn says. \u201cPeople then build loyalty to something that fundamentally just works.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tToo Lost has started to take deals away from established competitors, and that fact, combined with Hirschhorn\u2019s boyish demeanor \u2014 his old Instagram picture was Matthew Broderick in Ferris Bueller\u2019s Day Off \u2014 has sparked skepticism in the music industry. \u201cOther distributors aren\u2019t the biggest fans\u201d of Too Lost, Lawrence acknowledges. \u201cThat means that they must be doing something right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tOn a Tuesday in December, Laurent Hubert<\/strong>, CEO of the publishing company Kobalt, stopped by the Too Lost offices in Manhattan to meet Hirschhorn in person for the first time. Too Lost added its publishing administration option at the end of 2022 to provide distribution clients with a way to take home songwriting income. Over the last two quarters, that part of the business has grown from generating $200,000 in net revenue to $1 million.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tToo Lost currently partners with BMG to collect publishing. (Coincidentally, while Hubert was visiting the office, BMG sent over cupcakes to celebrate the Too Lost founders\u2019 appearance on Forbes\u2018 latest 30 Under 30 list.) Still, Hubert was interested in learning more about the new company on the block. The result was a genial CEO sparring session, heavy on economic jargon, that ranged from the cost of office leases in Manhattan to the bloated executive salaries at the major labels to the increasing importance of catalog.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first time Lawrence got on a Zoom with Hirschhorn, he remembers the Too Lost co-founder \u201cspeaking a million miles an hour.\u201d (\u201cI ramble,\u201d Hirschhorn says at one point, chalking up some of his conversational velocity to the military-grade cold brew in the Too Lost office.) While chatting with Hubert in December, Hirschhorn sometimes fired off a new idea before the Kobalt boss finished a thought.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Hubert held his own. He has a gift for distilling economic wisdom into pithy manifestos \u2014 \u201cWe must crush the majors on cost of capital!\u201d \u2014 and slick catchphrases: \u201cWe build businesses on trend lines, not headlines.\u201d \u201cI might have to steal that one,\u201d Hirschhorn says later.<\/p>\n

In a way, he already has. Because Too Lost was a late entrant in the distribution landscape \u2014 TuneCore and DistroKid, for example, are both well over a decade old \u2014 Hirschhorn says he was able to survey the available options and see what was working, and what wasn\u2019t. His goal was to build \u201ca DIY distribution service that could also service the upper middle class of artists.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHistorically, that has been tough to achieve. Several distributors abandoned the DIY side of the market \u2014 a low-margin volume game that comes with common headaches like streaming fraud and copyright infringement \u2014 to focus strictly on higher-performing clients, where they can take a cut of royalty income. And the distributors that do offer DIY services often lose clients once their songs start performing well: Wealthier competitors or major labels lure them away by offering a large advance or more personalized help with their careers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tPart of the reason it\u2019s tough to cater to the DIY artist market and the \u201cupper middle class\u201d simultaneously is that their needs are fundamentally different. Hobbyists just need basic functionality, the ability to get their songs on a streaming service and ensure that royalties from any subsequent streams flow back to their bank account. But the upper middle class might want advance funding for their next album, help protecting a viral song from bad-faith takedowns, access to Spotify\u2019s Discovery Mode program, or marketing money to fan the flames of a TikTok trend emerging in Indonesia, for example.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNevertheless, Hirschhorn set out to satisfy both constituencies. He started working on Too Lost in earnest during the first months of the pandemic, putting $25,000 of his own money into the company. (Hirschhorn started a record label and sold it to Sony as a teen, leaving him some funds to play with.) \u201cIt was the first year I could grow a beard, and I grew a full beard,\u201d he recalls. Subsisting largely on Chinese takeout, he gained weight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHirschhorn met Silverstein, who was working at +1 Records, through a mutual friend and convinced him to join up as a co-founder, offering a chance to be his own boss. (For a while, Silverstein slept on the couch in Hirschhorn\u2019s midtown one-bedroom apartment.) Larusson was working as a freelance data scientist before he came aboard as chief technical officer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile many companies call themselves distributors, they often rely on a third party like FUGA and AudioSalad to provide the digital \u201cpipes\u201d that beam music to streaming services. Choosing to provide services and outsource the distribution work means these outfits have to give FUGA or AudioSalad a cut of their earnings, reducing already thin margins. But this way, anyone can launch a distribution offering quickly and then focus on building a profile in a crowded marketplace \u2014 often by signing prominent artists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFor many distributors, \u201cIt\u2019s less about, \u2018Let\u2019s build this out,\u2019 and more about, \u2018Let\u2019s raise a lot of money and go do a lot of deals,’\u201d Hirschhorn says. \u201cI\u2019m a true believer that distribution is a technology business, not a music business.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs a result, Too Lost \u201cbuilt without dependency on any partners,\u201d guided in part by Larusson, who had a computer science background and worked as an engineer on projects for banks, among other endeavors. The founders even built their own payment processing engine, so they didn\u2019t have to pay fees to third parties for financial transactions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGreg was late to the game,\u201d notes Josh Feshbach<\/strong>, who manages the singer Pink Sweat$ and works frequently with Too Lost. \u201cWhat he did better than anyone was understand how today\u2019s DIY artist operates and how they need to run their business. Then he basically tried to put every piece of functionality they would possibly rely on into one platform\u201d \u2014 analytics for more than 15 streaming services, funding for advances, copyright registration, publishing administration, cover song licensing, Spotify Discovery Mode access, royalty splitting, reports on songs\u2019 usage on social media, and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd it all comes on the cheap: The basic Too Lost account costs $19.99 a year. (For comparison\u2019s sake, it\u2019s $22.99 on DistroKid and TuneCore, though those companies are still much bigger than Too Lost). A label can sign up for an account for just $35.99 a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou can run your entire business from Too Lost\u2019s dashboard,\u201d Feshbach says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tTwo days after the Kobalt meeting, <\/strong>Hirschhorn rolled into the office fashionably late, a little rough around the edges. While it was an especially festive week for him \u2014 an event celebrating Forbes\u2018 30 Under 30 inductees, Too Lost\u2019s holiday party \u2014 he says he\u2019s usually a homebody: \u201cI put sweatpants on after work. I watch Netflix or answer emails from my couch with a blanket over me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the previous night, Leon Morabia<\/strong>, an attorney at Mark Music & Media Law, had invited Hirschhorn to the firm\u2019s East Coast holiday party, which didn\u2019t start until 10:30 pm. Ron Perry<\/strong>, chairman\/CEO of Columbia Records, and Tyler Arnold<\/strong>, president of Mercury Records, had both made appearances. \u201cIt was a very impressive group of folks,\u201d Hirschhorn says. \u201cI was like, \u2018Well done. I can barely get these guys in a room one on one.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEarly in 2024, Morabia had reached out to Corey Goldglit<\/strong>, Too Lost\u2019s manager of A&R, to discuss one of his clients, the rapper Ayesha Erotica. \u201cShe had a lot of infringement\u201d around her catalog, according to Goldglit \u2014 imposters were ripping her songs, uploading them and pocketing royalties from the plays they earned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tToo Lost worked to take down the pirated versions of Erotica\u2019s songs and ensure her royalty income flowed properly to her artist account without even asking for up-front payment. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen it in the music business \u2014 someone said, \u2018Let me just do this thing for you, and then we\u2019ll take it from there,’\u201d Morabia says. \u201cUsually it\u2019s, \u2018Sign your life away here, and then we\u2019ll underdeliver on our promise.’\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tErotica is now earning more than 9 million streams a week on Spotify alone. \u201cShe\u2019d never seen a check off her music,\u201d Goldglit says. \u201cNow she\u2019s seeing a lot of money.\u201d She has since signed an official deal with Too Lost, and her team liked the company enough that they recommended it to another act who is now close to signing a deal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs artists like Ayesha Erotica get bigger, Too Lost\u2019s ability to hold on to them will be a test. But Hirschhorn is confident that, as long as his platform remains versatile, current and easy to use, even artists that choose to go elsewhere will eventually return to the fold.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou might not always bank with Chase, but you\u2019re not going to get rid of your Chase account,\u201d he reasons. \u201cThey might leave to do a project with a major, but they\u2019re going to come back, or they\u2019ll keep their back catalog with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tToo Lost has been able to win some deals <\/strong>by undercutting <\/strong>competitors, not only on pricing, but on distribution rates \u2014 offering to take a 5% cut, for example, when competitors are asking for twice as much. Several executives at rival companies, speaking on the condition of anonymity, believe that this strategy is not sustainable in the long run. And these executives did not understand how Too Lost could be making money.<\/p>\n

\n\tFeshbach offers a blunt rebuttal. \u201cThe people that say there\u2019s no way Too Lost is making any money are just stupid,\u201d he says. \u201cDoes [Too Lost] do some deals that I wouldn\u2019t do in order to get people on platform? Sure. But in the long run, they\u2019re weighing these decisions against all of their different revenue streams.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tToo Lost makes money from subscriptions, royalties from distribution deals with bigger clients, and data deals with consumer research companies, according to Hirschhorn. The average customer spends $8 a month between a subscription and other add-on services like cover song licensing, copyright registration and usage discovery, which shows where tracks are being played on various social media services. The company\u2019s adjusted EBITDA for 2024 was $6.5 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tbeatBread, an artist funding platform, has pumped \u201ctens of millions\u201d into Too Lost artists. \u201cI\u2019d like to think that that has at least something to do with their growth,\u201d says Peter Sinclair<\/strong>, the company\u2019s founder, who spent five years at Universal Music Group before founding beatBread. \u201cA lot of guys win deals by promising dream fulfillment,\u201d he continues. \u201cThat is expensive. You need fancy offices, a big A&R force. To really focus on the digital nuts and bolts of something [like Too Lost does] can be cheaper. And I think that word is what drives some resentment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tToo Lost is now in the process of raising $20 million to $40 million, capitalizing on a moment<\/a> when both investors and major music companies are looking to snap up pieces of the independent distribution market. \u201cI have been working off our balance sheet historically [to do deals], which has a ceiling,\u201d Hirschhorn says. \u201cI\u2019ve had to turn down a lot of amazing opportunities just due to a lack of available capital.\u201d He hopes that raising money will provide extra ammunition to win competitive deals.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeparately, Too Lost might also indirectly benefit from Virgin Music Group\u2019s recent acquisition of Downtown Music Holdings, FUGA\u2019s parent company. Some artists and labels still want to build their businesses outside of the major label systems. If they no longer see FUGA as an option because Virgin is part of Universal Music Group, they will search for other independent distribution companies to partner with, including Too Lost.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe majors \u201cconvince artists they\u2019re going to become stars,\u201d Hirschhorn says. But \u201cwhen they don\u2019t become stars, they still have a catalog making a lot of money every year.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAt that point, he\u2019s making a bet: \u201cArtists are gonna think, I\u2019d rather manage my catalog with those guys over at Too Lost than with the guy who said he\u2019s going to put me on Jimmy Kimmel.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.billboard.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n


\n \u2018O artigo anterior pode incluir informa\u00e7\u00f5es divulgadas por terceiros\u2019
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Alguns detalhes deste artigo foram extra\u00eddos da seguinte fonte celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last October, Tyler Brown and Harold Serero launched the independent label Heatwave Records. A few short months later, the company accounted for three of the top five records on Spotify in Nigeria for part of January: Fido\u2019s \u201cJoy Is Coming\u201d and \u201cAwolowo,\u201d along with Kvng Vinci and Zerrdyl\u2019s \u201cHausapiano\u201d remix. In the past, ambitious executives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1203102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-estrelas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1203102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1203102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1203102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1203102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}