Can Seattle Streaming Service Gyld be the Spotify of Indie Music?
Here’s the deal. It’s never been easier to make music and present it to the public. Conversely, it’s never been harder to get paid for doing it — or even get people to pay attention to it. You may have noticed that the world’s overflowing with music, which presents listeners with an overwhelming surplus. What’s the humble upstart musician to do? Seattle entrepreneur/musicians Christian Fulghum and Justin Pinder (aka rapper J.Pinder) have a plan to help what they call “emergent independent musicians” — basically, artists who can’t afford to quit their day jobs or stop dipping into their trust funds — build an audience and monetize their creations with a streaming community called Gyld.
Artists can begin uploading their content this week, and the alpha version of the site is expected to go live in August.
Interviewed at The Stranger’s office, Fulghum — who used to run Fin Records; Pinder was one of its artists — said that Gyld will offer a better deal to musicians who don’t make livings strictly from their musical activities (yet) than what he calls ISPY: iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube. “Everything that’s been built out in I-SPY is analogous to a big-box store,” Fulghum says. “It’s for consumers. Unless you know the name or song title of an obscure act, you can’t find it except by accident.” He explains that I-SPY’s good for established musicians, but it’s not beneficial for up-and-coming, obscure artists.
Source: The Stranger