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- [00:00]
Andre Gleason
Foreign.
- [00:04]
Dan Runcy
I'm Dan Runcy and you're listening to trapital. And you're about to listen to a conversation from our Trapitol Summit on distribution data and dollars. And it's with the CEO of TuneCore, Andre Gleason, and the senior editor at Billboard, Taylor Mims. TuneCore has paid out over $4 billion to artists all across the world as of 2024. I was eager to have this conversation at the summit for a few reasons. A lot of the discussion about where things are going in the industry tends to look solely at the recorded music revenue, even though there are so many different parts of the industry. Independent music is one of the largest growing parts of the industry and we're seeing a lot of that growth happen in the global south where we expect a lot more of the revenue growth in this industry to come from. So the trends that we see on platforms like Tunecore can often indicate what happens elsewhere. And we've seen artists as successful as Russ and artists that are just starting out rely on TuneCore to push their music to the masses. So you'll hear both Andrea and Taylor talk about trends happening in music distribution. What's the latest with TuneCore and what it may tell us about the broader industry moving forward? I really enjoyed this one and I hope you do too. Here's our conversation with Andrea and Taylor. This episode of Trapital is brought to you by Beatbread, which helps artists make smarter funding decisions. By connecting you with multiple funding sources all in one place, you can compare real offers side by side, understand the long term trade offs, and choose the deal that's right for your career. With tools designed to help you see every pro and con, Beatbread ensures that you stay in control of your financial future. Don't settle for the first offer you see compare before you sign. Discover how beatbread can help you find the right funding on your terms, explore your options and make your best deal with Beatbread today. Go to the website@beatbread.com that's B E A T B R E A D.com or click the link in our show notes.
- [02:14]
Taylor Mims
I think we should just start off with maybe the most important question which is why did you decide on that walkout song?
- [02:20]
Andre Gleason
I just think that one it's when we talk about the meaning behind that song, it's about the tension with technology, with change and with human experiences. And I cannot think of a better representation of really what defines innovation and disruption. And as a leader, I really try to embrace change even when it's hard because I think that necessity is the mother of invention. It really pushes you to new places and it's really a reminder that disruption shouldn't be feared, it should be embraced. And I thought it was fitting to our talk.
- [02:56]
Taylor Mims
That is such an elaborate reason and I love it. It's great. Let's talk a little bit about TuneCore. What would you say the makeup of Tunecore and Believe is globally?
- [03:05]
Andre Gleason
If you don't know, TuneCore is actually a part of the Believe group and we really play on a global scale. TuneCore is available in 17 languages in 17 markets. And what's been so interesting to see over the last seven years or so is the growth that has been happening outside of the U.S. and right now, 75% of my new artists that join TuneCore come from outside the U.S. so fastest growing markets are the ones we're all talking about. India, Latin America, Southeast Asia, but also France and Germany in Europe. So we're really excited to see the diversification that it's making in what music is being put out into the world and connecting with audiences on a local level. For those of you who may not know it here in the US as well, but around the world, often in most markets, it's in the either one or three slot for market share, especially with local repertoire. So we're very global.
- [04:02]
Taylor Mims
It was announced in 2024 that tunecar artists earned a record breaking $4 billion, which is incredible. And that was after the year before when there was a record breaking $3 billion. Are we expecting to see more record breaking this year when we get an announcement?
- [04:23]
Andre Gleason
Yeah, we're going to hit our next milestone soon. I'm going to wait for the actual when to be able to announce it, but yeah, it's been very exciting to see our artists growing and rising based off the merit of their music. And we're just really excited to be a part of that and helping them find audiences and make money.
- [04:41]
Taylor Mims
Speaking of what's coming next, next year, I believe TuneCore turns 20. And like we just said, you've had two years of record breaking, possibly another one. We'll see. How do you keep breaking records two decades into this company?
- [04:54]
Andre Gleason
Yeah. So TuneCore was really founded on listening to what artists needed. So 20 years ago there was a barrier to entry. It was just getting your music out into the world. You needed to be signed to a record deal in order to be able to even put the music out on itunes at the time. And we really were that solution where you didn't need a gatekeeper. And at the time, just access meant Success, because that's what you needed. Over the years, we have had so many artists that started on TuneCore and become huge artists. Ed Sheeran started on TuneCore, Lizzo, Phoebe Bridgers. Actually, when I joined, she was doing a lot with us. We were really helping her. Jelly Roll, another really great artist. That's everywhere right now. We're just so proud that we have been that launchpad to help artists get their start. Because if a gatekeeper decides and you don't let the listeners decide and they have to build experiences too, it's no different than all of us. Go out and get first job, you have to resume, build. And today you honestly can't even be signed until you're at a certain level anymore. An artist has to come to a platform like TuneCore, build up to a certain level, get their audience to a certain level, and that's where we started. But the market has changed. And in a way, the things that we introduced and disrupted the market with are the new barriers to entry, which Today there's over 100,000 tracks going to the DSPS on a daily basis. Only about 13% of the music on the DSPs gets more than 1000 streams. So the new barrier to entry is actually cutting through the noise. And actually, Midea does a really good study on this, where they survey creators and they ask them, okay, what are their biggest challenges? What do you need? And that's their number one challenge, is that they can't cut through. So when you're asking, you're hitting 20 years. And how do you keep innovating and helping our artists grow? It's about looking at what are those unmet needs in the market. And this is where we have really challenged ourselves to be proactive. What we found is that artists need ways to get their music in front of listeners that have an affinity for their music. And because we live in a digital world, that means that you can actually get music in front of more niche audiences. So what we did was partner with the DSPs, and now we have 20 years of data of understanding what it looks like when an artist is on the rise. What did it look like when Ed Sheeran was starting to take off? What did it look like when Lizzo started taking off? And we can recognize those patterns because of all that history. And we've built ways to select tracks and put them in marketing programs at scale. And we are now helping artists find audiences. So we've made the pivot from just getting the music out to now being able to help our artists find their audiences. And it was in beta for about four years. And then last year we launched the umbrella program called TuneCore Accelerator. And in there we have programs across DSPs to give you a sense of the scale. We have 450,000 artists that are opted in and 110,000 of them had music put into at least one marketing program over the course of 24. And it generated overall, across everybody, 21 billion new streams, 2.5 billion artist discoveries, and 5.5 track discoveries. What that translated to is that one in five of the artists that actually got put into a marketing program actually moved up a streaming segment. Streams are great, but money's better. They 5x their median revenue. And so we are now moving from what is the next barrier to entry. How do you cut through the noise? Helping our artists find their audiences in the various phases of development and be able to grow. We're really proud that what we were founded on 20 years ago to really help artists get their start break through that first barrier to entry, which was just access. Now it's about how do we actually help them find that success and find their audiences and grow and cut through the noise.
- [09:09]
Taylor Mims
Yeah. A ton of reporting at Billboard is all about how do people break through the noise. But I do recall a lot of the conversations last year were surrounding the word super fan. What are we going to do with superfans? How do you monetize superfans? Do you think super fans are still a priority or should artists and platforms be paying more attention to what you were saying? Which are these micro tastes?
- [09:31]
Andre Gleason
I think you need to do both. One of the most special releases I got to work on this year was with our artist Russ and he released his album Wild, which is a beautiful project. And he was able to hit Billboard 200, number 10, number 2 rap album the release week. How he did that is really harnessing his super fans because he hand signed tens of thousands of physical and really leaned into that community that he thought it's incredible. And I think that it's super important to build those deeper relationships that you have with your artists. And Russ is the example of a big artist who can even harness superfans really meaningfully independently, which is super amazing. But also it's great for small artists. We know artists that they will maybe only have a thousand monthly listeners, but then they can do things directly with their fans and and actually make way more money off of platforms like even or if they have a direct to fan business and do things on Twitch. If you play live, it can be beneficial to build Those deeper relationships with those like fans that can really help you, especially in those early phases and could be making more money than the streams, honestly at the beginning. But I think it's shortsighted if you just focus on that. I'm a marketer, I really started my career as a marketer. And you always think about marketing funnels. There's the top of the funnel and then there's like the bottom of the funnel. Going to your superfans and investing in the bottom of your funnel because they're already there, they're already engaged, they already love you and you're just going to them to really sustain you, which is great because they love you. But at the same time, what about the fans of tomorrow? How do you grow to the next level? And you do need to be thinking about how you continue to feed the discovery phase. How do you then build engagement as say someone discovered you, but then you need to then have them like you a little more and hey, you heard this song, listen to this other song and then really build up that deeper fandom. And you have to think about all those phases of development, which is exactly what we've done within TuneCore accelerator. We know which tracks at the track level, at the artist level, what has potential and then are able to make sure that we're optimizing and running them in the different marketing programs that service those different phases of development. Because you can't just stick with just going to your super fans because who's the superfans of tomorrow if you're not helping find them today for tomorrow, just.
- [12:05]
Taylor Mims
Going to keep playing that same song to the same couple of people over and over again. That's the accelerator. Does TuneCore have any more tools, any more programs that they're planning to release?
- [12:16]
Andre Gleason
So we have quite a few betas going on right now that we will be announcing in the coming months, which I'm super excited about. And they are really playing at building deeper engagement at those different phases of development. Just this month, while we don't have big announcements, we are always iterating further. Updates that we did over the summer is we actually are communicating with our artists in their dashboard in real time when they get put into a program. So it felt a little like mystery. What did I get put into? We actually are sharing with them. Okay, you're in this program on this dsp. This track went in here, this is what it's doing. And within two days of when it gets put in, you actually start to see the performance, which is really fast. The benefit to that is that as artists can monitor what's taking from the things we're doing, they can also double down and put gasoline on the fire where they see traction on their side with their social channels, celebrating with their fans all the stuff that they should be doing in the native social media organic work that they do.
- [13:23]
Taylor Mims
And that's 20 years of data that you guys have to supplement this to tell them this is what's going on and how to capitalize on it.
- [13:30]
Andre Gleason
Exactly.
- [13:34]
Dan Runcy
Let's take a break for our chart Metric Stat of the week. Bad Bunny was announced as a Super bowl halftime show performer for 2026 and there's been a lot of discussion about how much of his music reaches listeners in the United States compared to other countries. Well, digging into the chartmetric data, there's some interesting insights here. So Mexico is the top country for Bad Bunny's overall audience, which chartmetric measures looking at followers, listeners, views, subscribers and similar data points. But guess what number two is the United States. And it's pretty close. Mexico has 20.36% of his overall audience based on October 2025, and the United States is just under that with 19.37% and no other country is over 10%. Let's not forget Bad Bunny's 2022 album Un Verano Sinti spent 13 weeks on top of the Billboard 200 albums chart. And that's not a chart that measures the popularity globally or even in North America. That is specifically a US Chart. This is an artist that has a massive fan base in the United States, so it's great to see him perform on the biggest stage that entertainer has in the United States. Let's get back to the episode.
- [14:49]
Taylor Mims
So one thing you said when we were talking earlier is that the most innovative people that you know are artists and I'm wondering if you have gotten any ideas for TuneCore for these programs from artists 100%.
- [15:03]
Andre Gleason
During the pandemic, one thing that we saw was how so many of our artists were teasing music on TikTok Instagram and we essentially said why don't we productize that? Because they would put it up on their channels but it wasn't in the platform and they're rushing to release it. And so we productized that we actually made a way to release it the social media platforms first and we launched it product called two Core Social so that artists can just more systemically do that to be able to tease their first get it in the libraries, engage other creators as well as their fans to co create with it before it actually comes out. The other thing that we saw was that artists that were super successful were releasing frequently. And so we actually completely changed the way we do our pricing and introduced unlimited plans because before you would have to pay for every single release. And so with that it helped us innovate and encourage artists to release more frequently. Waterfall build out the product so that they're encouraged to do that in a thoughtful way. And then most recently I would say that what we were observing is many of our artists were doing marketing for themselves but they were making bad choices. So they're upside down on their investments. They don't know what they're doing. To be fair, this is a lot to ask of artists. So for them to be like experts in marketing of their music is a lot. And so that's what really inspired us both. The coupling of just what was happening with the market. The number one need artists have is cutting through the noise. Plus anything artists were doing was like not good. We said let's do this for you. Everything we're doing on their behalf is with growth in mind. And we manage catalogs like we put things in and out, we handle seasonality. It's really catalog management at scale. So it's absolutely is what inspires us is watching what our artists do. What does the market need and helps us innovate.
- [17:01]
Taylor Mims
Some of the inspiration is just bad marketing. It's bad marketing. We gotta fix it.
- [17:05]
Andre Gleason
Yes.
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Taylor Mims
There's also been an industry wide slowdown in streaming leading to less than favorable sentiment in the music industry. What are your thoughts on the music industry right now from the independent side?
- [17:20]
Andre Gleason
I think that there's been never a better time to be independent. And then it's also really hard. A big change. We talked about the superfans. One thing I also want to mention is just the fragmentation of the market that has happened which makes it so much more difficult to actually get in front of audiences. You can't do it in a mass way. We've all seen that just continued trend from the end of year. Illuminate reports where I think it's so interesting how just music consumption for English content has been decreasing. Some of the music that's coming from Mexico, Brazil, India is really representing more of the consumption in the market, globally, in all markets. And local artists in local markets are really gaining the share of the listenership over music and English. And so what this is. It just shows us how fragmentation has happened. But this is not a music industry thing, this is a digital thing. Before I joined TuneCore 10 years ago, I actually worked in retail for over a decade, and I lived through bringing shopping online. And the same exact things have happened with retail and fashion. You think about what was in your closet 20 years ago versus now.
- [18:38]
Taylor Mims
I'm not telling anybody. Hopefully there's pictures somewhere, but we don't need to see them.
- [18:43]
Andre Gleason
I mean, you were confined to what was available in your local store. It's what that buyer decided to put physically there, and that's what you could pick. But now we have the world of the Internet and you can get anything you want from anywhere. I love a good suit. And I have through various things in recommend to me, found this designer called Augie, and it's out of Poland. And now I just. Just buy them directly from the designer and it ships to me. And I think that's incredible. That would have never happened. And music is exactly the same before. Music discovery was related to what was playing on the radio. What Virgin Record Store had in those 25 listening stations. Right. Like, of what decided to go 25 deep, and you're like, okay, otherwise you would have to shelf out 20 bucks for a CD and take a chance. You're like, fingers crossed I'm gonna like this. But today you have streaming. You can kind of actually discover the algorithms who've learned your taste and can surface things to you that cater to that. Just like how I found Augie. And that's amazing, but also super challenging for all of us in this room, because how do you help your artists find those audiences? And you can't do it without technology. I think it's an amazing time and place we live in, but the challenge is you have to invest in the technology and to help matchmake between amazing artists that have potential and they need. They have every reason they should be in front of listeners and matching them with these micro communities, which is exciting but challenging and where we're at right now.
- [20:19]
Taylor Mims
Absolutely. And what do you see as some potential growth areas for independent artists?
- [20:26]
Andre Gleason
Yeah. So the independent sector has continued to grow. I was actually dusting off some of the old media reports because they do a really great job of really classifying between the different segments of the market, between the majors. And then artist direct. It's like the one report. I can see artists that are self releasing how they're represented, and they have been growing every year. And for me, I think that I don't see a reason that doesn't continue. So I'm pretty positive that growth. And independent artists, they're the most innovative because they're unencumbered they use their gut. They don't care about fitting in a box. What shelf do I sit in in the record store? They don't care. They're like, this is what I feel. And it pushes the industry and people resonate with that. I think the independent music has been growing, and I don't see a reason it wouldn't continue.
- [21:11]
Taylor Mims
Okay, last question. What are some of the headwinds you might see coming right now?
- [21:17]
Andre Gleason
It's the same thing I think is positive, which is how do we tackle a more fragmented market? And I don't think the music industry set up for it. I think another headwind that I would say is obviously, AI is we have the music saturation already. I think AI is making it even easier to make music. And so I think a challenge. But when did the DSPs decide that doesn't make sense to have that much music out there. And then who decides? Who decides what can be up there? Does it go up and have a chance to land with an audience? But then after a certain time with zero, it comes down. Do you take a card from the physical world and say, okay, these dcd's haven't sold, so you have to pay a warehousing fee, so you get charged extra. That doesn't solve the clutter problem, but who decides? And I think that it's an interesting challenge and you don't want to block people off who are going to be the artists of tomorrow. So, yeah, I think it's an interesting time because as streaming slows down, when you're in high growth, you don't care about efficiency. When you're no longer in high growth, you start caring about efficiency. So what happens there? And so in seeing this on the horizon, this is why we've really invested in detecting which artists on the rise have the most potential and make sure that we're helping them cut through the noise. So that's our answer to it. But I think the larger market, I think we're all going to have to put our heads together on it.
- [22:44]
Taylor Mims
It's going to take some time to figure it out. I just wanted to get a quick round of applause for Andrea.
- [22:51]
Dan Runcy
And that is a wrap for our conversation with Andrea Gleason, CEO of TuneCore, and Taylor Mimms, senior editor at Billboard. Thank you both for your time for helping to make this episode happen. Thank you to our audio and video producers, G and Eric, for everything that you do to help make this trapital podcast possible. And thank you to our partners that helped Put the Trapital summit on, including the Rain Group 2 Lost, Warner Music Group, Splice, Live Nation, Urban Beatbread, Linktree, Soundcloud, and Luminate. We couldn't have done it without you. But most importantly, thank you for listening. If you really enjoyed this episode with Andrea or any of the conversations that we have on this show, tell a friend about trapital. Send them a link to the show. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow and if you feel inclined, leave a review rate the podcast that helps make sure that the algorithm does its thing and that trapital reaches the right people. Thanks again. Talk to you next time.