Featuring.Me Creates New Music Revenue Stream With Customizable Songs
Featuring.Me is a startup based in Nashville that provides a chance for fans to choose from a number of options to create a customized song and, in the process, provides musicians with a new revenue stream. The choices for fans are constrained enough that Featuring.Me is more widely accessible than true remix platforms. While it may not be for everybody, Featuring.Me is one way that musicians can offer fans new ways to interact with their music without giving up monetization.
Featuring.Me is christening their recently relaunched platform with the release of a customizable version of Tom and Hebron's "Zoyugo". While the concepts below are not technically new, since I've encountered them before in other products, this idea has yet to take off and will certainly open up fresh revenue streams if it does.
Here's how it works (click for larger image):
Choose one of the tracks from the album in the left hand column. The landing page for the album starts with the first track "Muddy."
You'll then see your choice in the middle column.
Choose your Toggles: This is where Featuring.me takes on Choose Your Own Adventure tendencies.
Each Toggle represents a series of variations on the song allowing you to choose, in this case, from 5 different forms of instrumentation/vocals (The Music), 3 Rhythm choices, 2 options for The Bridge and 2 options for The Outro.
You can then preview a low quality, mono version and, if it sounds like what you're looking for, you can buy a "premium quality 320 kbps DRM-free mp3 file, that you can play anywhere."
The price for this track is $3.00.
Plenty Of Good Reasons To Use Featuring.Me
In some respects Featuring.Me's customizable songs are a no-brainer. They give fans a chance to play with the music a bit and then feel like they've got their own version of a song by a band they care about.
They also give musicians a potential revenue stream. While it's more likely to increase sales of singles, that likelihood meshes with current consumer behavior.
Plus, as opposed to many remix platforms, Featuring.Me doesn't require any technical knowledge and, important for mass success, not much thought.
It's easy to use. The choices are all there on one page. Sound samples stream quickly by simply hovering over the options.
There are no upfront costs to musicians and Featuring.Me simply takes a percentage of song revenue.
If you're a musician interested in using Featuring.Me, check out:
Keep in mind that some of this material may be outdated. They've rebuilt the platform, the Tom and Hebron album is the first release on the new platform but the signup material refers to seasons and batches of submissions starting with Spring 2014. So the process may or may not have changed but the basic value proposition remains the same.
For more about the Tom and Hebron release and Featuring.Me see this article.
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch) also blogs at DanceLand. Send news about music tech startups and services, DIY music biz and music marketing to: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
Thanks for the great article and comments on what we’re working on, Clyde! We’ve been getting slammed with working on the artists that are coming soon and have woefully fallen behind in the updating of the main page. As of now (mid-Sept 2014) we’ve revamped as many of the pages as we can and want to apologize for any confusion that may have caused!
-greg, founder-type person. 🙂