Sofar exists because of artists. Most of us that work here are musicians and music is what drives us. Our live shows are all about artist discovery, creating a listening room for artists and community in non-traditional spaces across 78 countries. Through our artist services, we’re working to help support artists to directly connect with fans, own their relationship, and build sustainable, creative lives on their own terms.
We want to share a few updates on how we’re expanding our efforts to support artists and allow them to focus on their craft and build deeper connections with audiences ready to discover new music.
Supporting Artists Through Tools and Services
In February of 2021, Sofar accelerated its artist services through the acquisition of Seated, an artist services company offering touring artists ticketing services and tour promotion tools. Today, we provide artists with tools and services to directly connect with fans, own their relationships, and ultimately earn more money.
Artists can use our self-serve, direct-to-fan Concert Listings tool to promote their non-Sofar shows and merch, directly capturing and owning their fan data. Since the pandemic, Sofar’s self-serve concert listings tool has helped artists generate nearly $650M in ticket and merch sales. We also offer artists the ability to create custom VIP packages and experiences for their top fans which Sofar’s VIP experience team brings to life.
Expanding Live Experiences
The vast majority of Sofar shows include three artists playing a 20-25 minute set each for an attentive audience in non-traditional space that Sofar is responsible for filling. The minimum artist payment for most of these shows is $100 per artist, and increases with the size of the audience.
While these shows will continue to be a central part of Sofar, we’re evolving our live experiences and are building out a series of new live formats where artists have an opportunity to reach new fans and earn more money. Since the pandemic, Sofar directly paid artists over $30M for performing at Sofar shows and running fan reward or VIP campaigns through Sofar. In 2023 we plan on putting on thousands of shows around the world, in 78 countries, featuring tens of thousands of performances.
Incubating New Ways to Support Artists – Meet Layers
Our guiding principle is focusing on the artist as our customer. The feedback artists share helps us prioritize what we build. One of the top challenges we’ve consistently heard is that artists are exhausted creating video content to ‘feed the beast’ – trying to keep up with the pressure of constantly posting social media videos that take them away from creating music. Musicians are artists NOT content creators. Musicians are Artists.
To continue addressing artists’ biggest pain points, we’ve started to incubate new products and services. The first of these offerings is Layers, a video creation suite that integrates into music recording software, empowering musicians to seamlessly create short-form video they can share with the world.
Its musicians’-only social network is a collaborative digital space where creators can post their Layers videos, and download and remix posts from other members of the Layers community.
Layers’ leverages its technology to power projects and events – both online and offline – that foster surprising connections, push creative boundaries, and give musicians reasons to create for the sake of creating. Layers’ curated artist projects and unique collaborative experiences are designed to give musicians new and emphatically non-commercial contexts to connect and create with each other.
Layers’ operates autonomously, though we work closely together and will share more about ways we’ll collaborate in the future. Layers is currently in invite-only beta with plans to open to the public later this year. Sofar artists can get early, free access by joining the waitlist here.
We know we have more work to do and plan to incubate and develop more artist services — all of which will be informed by the feedback we get directly from artists. Our goal is to help every musician live creative lives on their own terms so we look forward to continued feedback on how we can best support artists around the world.
Words by Sofar Editorial Team
Photo credit: S.O.U.L.A.S.P.H.E.R.E. at Sofar Houston, photo by Jeff Paxton
