Transcript
A (0:00)
Foreign. Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive podcast. Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Ashanti Abdullah. Ashanti Abdullah is the founder and CEO of Turnwheel. Ashanti is changing the way musicians approach their careers by addressing two of the biggest challenges artists face. Making a sustainable income and managing the complexities of touring. Turnwheel is helping musicians focus on what they do best, creating and performing well. Good afternoon, Ashanti. Welcome to the show.
B (0:38)
Oh, thank you so much for having me, Brian.
A (0:40)
Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. And you're hailing out of the great city of San Francisco up in Northern California, Bay area. Love that place. When I visit, I'm in Kansas City now, so. But we're just a couple time zones apart today. And Ashanti, if you don't mind, I'm going to jump right into your first question. And as a founder with firsthand understanding of the music industry, what were some of the hardest lessons you learned as a manager that influenced Turnwheels design and tackle these challenges?
B (1:06)
Yeah, I mean, thanks for asking. That's. That's really what it is. In a nutshell. You know, I spent 20 years, just under 20 years managing artists and getting people on the road and touring. And throughout the process of doing all of that was realizing that there are so many opportunities for us to come home with a few more dollars than we did, but we wouldn't know that until the end of a tour. And so I said, there's gotta be a way to kind of model this out and think about it in real time. And that's really what kind of spawned this whole idea, this whole world of Turnwell.
A (1:36)
Thank you. I appreciate that. And that is a lot of grinding. You know, 20 years as a manager, a lot of tours, a lot of grinding, a lot of shows. And I could just see at the end, people are probably tired and, you know, cutting quarters maybe, whatever. But you saw that opportunity, the there's gotta be a better way. And of course you implemented a new process and looked at that, and now we're going to talk a little bit more about what you've built, so I appreciate that. Ashanti, how does Turnwheel help artists shift from surviving to thriving financially, especially in today's streaming dominated music economy?
B (2:06)
Yeah. So, you know, really, touring is kind of the only way, or not the only way, but it's the major way that artists make money these days. Right. Streaming has taken away this album sales, things of that nature. There's something to be said for the merchandise sales as well. Something that people can take home with them. But really, touring is how artists make their money. It's where the labels stay out of their business and kind of let them make the money that they make. And so this is the game, right? And unfortunately, a lot of artists, when they step in, they kind of jump into it. They get a couple of guarantees on a couple of venues, they get out there and then they overspend or they spend more than they should have when they're out there and they come home with no money. So if this is your only way of making money and you're overspending, it's going to very quickly not be your only way of making money anymore. Correct. So what we wanted to do is make sure that artists had the ability to budget prior to kind of see what the tour looks like just based off what they're getting offered, and then be able to follow that along the way every single day, every single moment. So if they need to pivot and maybe stay at a different hotel or do something a little different, they can stay specifically on that budget and know exactly how much money they're going to come home with. So that's really what this is in a nutshell, with the added benefits of being able to communicate with your team, specifically individually, knowing exactly where you're supposed to be at what time. Everybody's on one page. It's kind of the one single source of truth for the entire group.