#18 - We'll never be royals 🌞

Happy Sunlighter Sunday! Bet we got that Lorde song stuck in your head. Don't be shy, sing it out loud. We can't hear you.

Here's what we have queued up this week:

1. 🎹 Song recs based on what we're listening to.

2. 💿 Industry updates from Club Renaissance to Top Albums of the Year.

3. 🎧 Royal is our Sunlighter Spotlight of the week.

4. 📈 Data on UK streaming.

5. 🎡 Railbird Music Festival and lots of tour announcements leading into 2023.

Donya: SOS! SZA returns with a long-awaited third album. From front to back, the listener is on a journey of an all-encompassing musical production with SZA’s classic range and vocal riffs showing off in the front seat. She explores new sounds and themes, from songs that feel like twisted lullabies, to the lyrical gold of classic R&B, to a duet with Phoebe Bridgers that expresses the turmoil of humanity. Speaking of Bridgers, there are a few songs at the heart of the album that almost made me wonder whether I was still listening to SZA–very punk-rock inspired–and it works. Also, this has to be one of my favorite album covers of the year.

Chris: After being snubbed at the Grammy’s for Ctrl and best new artist back in 2018, SZA is back to prove the Recording Academy wrong with her second studio LP, SOS. The most evident aspect that stands out in SOS is its diversity, which Ctrl lacked. SZA expands her sound in SOS by edging towards the genres of hip-hop (with features from Cactus Jack Records) and even early 2000s pop-punk (“FPF”). But don’t worry, you still get plenty of the classic lo-fi, R&B berceuse you’ve come to expect from SZA’s signature sound. As for the album work, it’s a nod to the one and only, Princess Diana in Portofino. Here’s another great review and surprisingly similar score from Pitchfork. The standouts are “Conceited” and “Smoking on my Ex Pack.”

The Sunlighter Playlist 🔀

Songs we're currently listening to 🎹 

Sunlighter Spotlight: Royal 🎧

As an artist, you can market music as much as you want, but ultimately, streaming algorithms and fan listening habits typically determine success, so why not let fans participate?

Founded by DJ and EDM producer, Justin Blau (3LAU), and Opendoor co-founder, JD Ross, Royal is a music marketplace on a mission to redefine music ownership. The platform allows fans to buy and trade music rights, earn royalties, and partner alongside their favorite artists. Let’s break down how they’re making it happen.

Buy & Trade Music

By splitting songs into “drops” or “editions” that represent the artist’s master recordings, Royal gives fans the opportunity to collect music rights. Fans can do this through a simple credit card purchase on the Royal platform in exchange for a Limited Digital Asset (Royal’s version of an NFT), which represents the percentage of music rights owned. While the traditional music industry’s royalty payout model is filled with middlemen–record labels, publishers, equity firms–Royal allows artists to crowdsource funds directly from the fans so artists see that revenue (and more of it) sooner, rather than later. The company’s end goal is for music to be freely traded and for artists to have the ability to develop careers without depending on legacy music industry ecosystems.

Royalties and Shared Ownership

Once fans purchase a tokenized song from an artist, they immediately gain rights to a portion of the artist’s revenue derived from streaming royalties. Artists have the flexibility to limit the number of tokens and customize the royalty percentage shared with fans. This year alone, Royal issued over $100k worth of royalties. The most notable wins of the year include:

• Nas, the first-ever artist to issue and sell out a drop on Royal, shared 50% ownership with his fans on royalties across two tracks.

• The Chainsmokers made history by giving away 300 free tokens to their biggest supporters while gifting their share of secondary sales to their songwriters.

Because fans are invested in the music, they care about the long-term success of the artist. Earlier this year, Royal’s product team rolled out a Portfolio feature, where fans can check on their investments based on secondary sales and streaming data from Spotify and Apple Music. This model not only incentivizes fans to support their favorite artists but also allows them to share the upside of success directly. Additionally, artists know exactly who their fans are so they can better engage the community, giving them priority access to better fan experiences like new releases, exclusive merch, and meet and greets.

Royal provides deep fan-to-artist connections, creative power for artists, and financial transparency in today’s broken music industry. It’s a meaningful mission that has the potential to change the music industry in a positive way, and we can’t wait to see what’s in store for 2023.

Industry Updates 💿

We see a lot of “recapping 2022” going on, but the year’s not over yet. Drake and Lil Baby had the most Billboard Hot 100 hits of the year, Childish Gambino joined Billie Eilish on her last mini-residency night at The Forum, The Bocelli family (Andrea, son, daughter trio) performed Christmas classics on TikTok LIVE from a cablecar base station in the Italian Alps, Gunna was released from jail after pleading guilty to RICO charges, Megan Thee Stallion will be the first black woman on the cover of Forbes 30 under 30 (she made $13 million in 2022 👏🏼), Bad Bunny keeps breaking records, this time for highest total tour revenue within a calendar year, generating $435 million in 2022, and Cardi B made $1 million for a 35-minute performance during a private event at Art Basel.

On new music drops, A$AP Rocky announced a new album, titled Don’t be Dumb, Gucci Mane dropped an 80-song album (almost 4-hours in length lol), and PinkPanthress dropped a 3-song EP.

Here’s everything else you missed:

💃 Club Renaissance: Beyoncé, Amazon Music, and Parkwood Entertainment partnered to launch “Club Renaissance” this past Friday and Saturday in Downtown Los Angeles after events in New York and Paris earlier this year.

🔍 Google Most Searched Song: Each year, Google releases its Global (and country-specific) search trends for a variety of categories, including “Songs.” This year, the top song searched was “Tak Ingin Usai” by Indonesian artist, Keisya Levronka. No Western artist broke the top 10.

💿 RIAA Most Certified Singles: Drake, who now has 184 million singles units sold, has surpassed Eminem (166 million singles units sold) as the highest-selling singles artist in RIAA history.

📜 American Music Fairness Act: Today, only songwriters receive a royalty when music is broadcasted on the radio. Producers, performers, and artists don’t, but that may soon change as the House Judiciary Committee has approved the AMFA bill, setting the stage for a full vote by the House. Opposers to this legislation argue that it would place an unfair burden on local radio stations, which are currently operating with little margin.

🎉 The Shaq-tacular Spectacular: Shaq, aka DJ Diesel, will be hosting a one-hour NYE event in Meta Horizon Worlds with Cardi B, Ludacris, Lil Yachty, and Killer Mike.

🌱 Seed Rounds: Music startup GigFinesse announced a $3.6 million seed round to help scale their platform that connects music artists with live event venues. Last month, HitPiece, a web3 music startup focused on growing a community-owned music model, raised $5 million (participation from Pelion Ventures and Rick Ross).

🎓 Cite Your Sources: VEVA Sound is providing university music programs free access to its VEVA Collect platform, a tool that allows up-and-coming talent to properly credit sources and optimize metadata to receive the appropriate royalties.

🥇 Top Albums of 2022: The Fader released their top 50 albums of 2022. So did Pitchfork and several other publications. You can see them all here.

Data 📈

UK Streaming Competition: Last month, the Competition and Markets Authority, a non-ministerial government body that works directly with the United Kingdom’s Department for Business, Energy, and Industry Strategy published their final report on music and streaming within the United Kingdom. Here are some of their major findings:

• 🏆 Consumers are Winners: Between 2009 and 2021, the monthly price of individual music streaming subscriptions fell by more than 20% based on inflation-adjusted change.

• 📈 High Adoption by Consumers: In 2021, there were 39 million monthly active users of music streaming services in the UK, resulting in > 138 billion total streams.

• 💧 Artist Streaming Revenue is Too Concentrated: Artists and songwriters shared concerns about how much they were earning. The study noted that over 60% of music streams came from only the top 0.4% of artists.

• 🏁 Increased Artist Competition: An artist could expect to earn around £12,000 from 12 million streams in the UK in 2021, but less than 1% of artists achieve that level of streams.

• 🤑 Increased Artist Royalties: On average, royalty rates in major deals with artists have increased steadily from 19.7% in 2012 to 23.3% in 2021. For songwriters, the share of revenues going to publishing rights has increased from 8% in 2008 to 15% in 2021.

Finally, here’s an interesting image of the music streaming service participants and their time-to-entry in the UK market. Spotify, being first to market, owns about 40-50% of the total market share by streaming revenue. However, the remaining market is almost evenly split between Youtube Music, Apple Music, and Amazon Music, which indicates that economies of scale and network effects can overcome smaller players who may reach the market first. Less than 5% of the total UK streaming market share is owned by other streaming services (SoundCloud, Tidal, Deezer, etc.)

Festivals & Tour Announcements 🎡

👀 SXSW Announces More Showcase Artists: Austin’s flagship festival recently announced its second wave of musicians for its 37th annual festival coming up next March. Within the past few years, we’ve seen Khalid, Billie Eilish Cardi B, Lil Yachty, Lil Uzi Vert, 21 Savage, Kim Petras, Dermot Kennedy, Megan Thee Stallion, DaBaby, and many others experience career-changing growth after performing at SXSW. It is one of the best breeding grounds for new music talent, bar none.

🛤️ Railbird Music Festival: It’s a delayed year 3 for Railbird Music Festival, but this time, they’re at a new thoroughbred racing facility called Red Mile in Lexington, KY. Railbird, known for country music, Kentucky bourbon, and equine experiences, brings back a star-studded 2-day lineup. In 2021, they drew severe criticism from attendees due to a dangerous combination of high heat and long lines at water stations (and an overall lack of water). As a result, 2022 was canceled, so 2023 is a redemption year.

Tour Announcements 🤘

• After a book tour at Beacon Theatre earlier this fall, Bono recently announced an 8-show residency at one of NYC’s classic venues.

• Janet Jackson announced her Together Again Tour, which kicks off April 2023 and features Ludacris as a special guest.

• After a mini-trek of 12 shows this past fall in support of her debut album, Sabrina Carpenter announces 36 new tour dates for her Emails I Can’t Send Tour, which kicks off mid-March in Florida.

• Joshua Bassett announces The Complicated Tour, which kicks off in San Francisco March 2023.

• After performing his first sold-out solo show earlier this month, Daniel Seavey announces a tour throughout the month of January. It kicks off in San Diego and wraps in Los Angeles.

• After wrapping up his first-ever headlining tour this past November, Walker Hayes prepares to go back on Duck Buck Tour with Ingrid Andress and Chris Lane among the opening acts.

• Zac Brown Band announces From the Fire Tour, traveling across 24 dates starting next June in Columbus, Ohio.

• SZA announced her first-ever arena tour kicks off February 2023 in Columbus, Ohio with special guest and Grammy-nominated Best New Artist, Omar Apollo.

• Key Glock announces the Glockoma Tour, which kicks off March 2023 with special guest Big Scarr.

• Indie rock artist and Vermont native Noah Kahan announces his Stick Season Tour with special guests Ruston Kelly and Joy Oladokun starting January 23 in Houston.

• Jill Scott resumes her 20th anniversary Who Is Jill Scott? Tour, starting up this February 2023.

• Caroline Polachek follows up her debut album announcement with The Spiraling Tour, which kicks off in Philadelphia in April 2023.

Wrap Up 👏

We're closing the newsletter this week with a grammar lesson from eccentric, high-energy H-Town rapper, Tobe Nwigwe.

Lyrical Genius ✍️

Sharing is Caring

If you know any music fans or friends who would appreciate something like this, forward them this email and they can use the button below to subscribe.

Check out our other articles and give us a follow on Twitter!

See ya next Sunday 😎

Chris and Donya