Audiomack CMO Dave Ponte’s Plan to Grow the Pie for Artists Trapital

It’s been ten years since Dave Ponte co-founded Audiomack alongside Dave Macli. The decade has been strong in international growth for the music streaming platform — Audiomack recently became Nigeria’s number-one overall iOS app in a given week — but if Ponte has it his way, Audiomack will next become THE “home base” for artists, a place to begin their entire musical journey. The platform has rolled out numerous features to support those lofty ambitions, plus has several others in the works. 

One of the features that is live is the Supporters monetization tool. Launched in December, the tool allows fans to directly pay artists in exchange for a “badge” that memorializes their name in their profile and that of the supported artists. In the four months of being live on-site, Supporters has created $30,000 in new revenue for artists on Audiomack. As Dave told us in the episode, unlike competing streaming services, Audiomack is concerned with increasing the “size of the pie” for the entire music industry — not merely finding additional ways to ”slice the pie.”

Dave and I spoke at length about artist monetization — and how Web 3.0 possibly fits into the equation — throughout the episode. Here’s everything else we covered: 

[0:00 Big Start To 2022 For Audiomack
[0:55] Evaluating Audiomack’s Supporters’ Monetization Tool Post-Launch
[3:38] Updating The Supporters’ Product Over Time
[6:47] $30,000 Created For Artists (So Far) With Supporters Tool 
[10:25] Artist Campaigns On Audiomack
[14:28] Audiomack’s Newly-Launched Creator App 
[17:50] Mobile App “Stickiness” 
[20:23] Audiomack’s “Home Base” Aspirations
[24:05] Artist Resource Guide On Audiomack
[27:52] How Brian Zisook’s Twitter Threads Influenced Artist Guide 
[30:20] Different Dynamic Between Audiomack & Other Platforms
[32:55] Audiomack’s Biggest Challenges 
[38:42] How Does Web 3.0 Factor Into Audiomack’s Future?
[46:26] Audiomack Motivated To Bring AfroBeats To America

To listen to more Audiomack Trapital episodes, check out the two below:
Audiomack Co-Founder & CEO Dave Macli: 
https://trapital.co/2020/11/16/dave-macli-on-audiomacks-role-in-music-streaming-partnership-with-djbooth-and-global-expansion/

Audiomack VP of Product Charlie Kaplan: 
https://trapital.co/2021/12/10/charlie-kaplan-on-audiomack-supporters-artist-fan-monetization-and-streaming-business-models/

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Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co

Guests: Dave Ponte
 
Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. 

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TRANSCRIPTION

David Ponte 00:00
We cultivated all this. We aggregated all this. And now we're providing all of this for free. We're not charging anyone for it. If you go on the Audiomack app, you'll be able to access them. And you'll be able to learn and find out the answers to these questions because, frankly, I didn't even know a lot of these answers. I mean, there's so much to learn in the music industry. And you know, I know some things but there's a lot of things that I don't know. And I’ve, when going through this guide, learned a lot. And it can be one small decision that an artist would make, that can make a huge impact on their career in their life.

Dan Runcie 00:39
Hey, welcome to the Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. Today's guest is Dave Ponte. The Chief Marketing Officer and co-founder of Audiomack. Audiomack is a music streaming platform and a music discovery service that reaches more than 20 million people across the world. It was great to chat with Dave because a few months back, I had talked to Ch