Medallion is a platform for artists to have a devoted digital hub for selling album releases, tour dates and merch drops, in addition to promoting digital collectibles and sharing unique content material to foster deeper connections with followers. The corporate introduced at this time that it closed $13.7 million in Sequence A funding, co-led by Dragonfly and Lightspeed Faction.
Musicians are more and more looking for direct possession in their very own communities and avoiding third-party platforms the place interactions with followers are complicated to handle. From a fan perspective, though there are many methods to comply with and join with artists, these on-line interactions might be minimal.
“While streaming has opened up access to music and social media and created new channels for direct distribution, the full potential of direct artist-to-fan connections has not been realized,” Matt Jones, co-founder and CEO of Medallion mentioned. “Medallion’s artist-centric approach and emphasis on digitally native fan experiences is helping usher in a new, transformative period for artists.”
With this spectacular chunk of money in tow, Medallion needs to deal with what many artists consider to be a serious hole within the music trade: lack of management relating to the net relationship with followers and an lack of ability to immediately join. It plans to make use of the brand new capital to introduce new early entry alternatives like listening to pre-released music and providing presale tickets, amongst different member advantages like “video premieres or new updates,” the corporate defined. Artists will quickly additionally be capable of promote new unique and limited-edition digital collectibles/NFTs like poster bundles and buying and selling playing cards.
Medallion not too long ago launched a brand new income alternative for artists within the U.Ok., Australia and Germany—”Digital Deluxe,” which permits artists to promote a digital model of a music album with an embedded music participant and downloadable audio, imagery and video. Artists may also promote bodily gadgets via an integration with Shopify.
Medallion is free for artists to make use of however takes a proportion of all gross sales on the platform, but didn’t disclose how a lot. It’s constructed on the blockchain, and customers can check in with electronic mail or a pockets supplier– Rainbow, Coinbase and WalletConnect.
Moreover, Medallion is a white-label platform, which means artists can customise their digital house with their very own coloration theme, background and extra. When followers arrange an account, they declare a novel digital collectible or membership card of kinds known as a “Medallion” that grants them free entry to the neighborhood. As an illustration, Greta Van Fleet’s image is a spinning, 3D golden ring.
Artists talk with followers via social media posts, whereas followers can reply within the feedback. Some artists even request submissions from their neighborhood, like live performance footage and pictures, to share with the neighborhood and additional enhance fan participation.
There are presently 20 artists utilizing Medallion to energy their fan communities, together with Jungle, Greta Van Fleet, Illenium, Disclosure, Tiga, Mt Joy, Tycho, My Morning Jacket, Girl in Red, and Sigur Rós, amongst others
“We have been partnering very closely with a small number of select artists to help test and refine our core product features over the past year. Even though the platform isn’t open to every artist yet, we’re continuing to invest in our technology and platform so that we can eventually scale across the industry. At this time, we primarily work with independent-minded artists who are among the top 10,000 artists on streaming platforms and have a highly engaged fanbase,” Jones mentioned.
The corporate plans to increase the platform availability to a couple hundred extra artists in 2024. It received’t be broadly obtainable till 2025 or later.
Medallion was co-founded by Jones, Mark McIntyre (CTO), Josephine Yu (CPO), Jesse Bellin (VP of Operations), Adam Ray (CFO and Common Counsel), Ash Pampati (VP of GTM) and Tom Milway (VP of Design) who’re all veterans throughout the tech, e-commerce and music industries, with expertise at Songkick, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, Grailed, Warner Music Group and Stay Nation.
Different buyers within the spherical embody Coinbase Ventures, Infinite Capital, J17, The Chernin Group, Third Prime, and Zeal Capital, alongside music trade buyers Invoice Silva Leisure, Black Squirrel, Foundations Artist Administration, Methodology, and TAG Music. Medallion can also be backed by prime artists Jungle, Mt. Pleasure, Man Lawrence (Disclosure) and Tiga.
The corporate has raised $22 million so far.
“Artists are starting to understand they are not just content creators but brands themselves, and as a result are building multimodal businesses that go beyond simply music and content,” Rob Hadick, basic companion at Dragonfly, mentioned in a press release.
