Create Music Group introduces a credit card to help artists access royalties sooner

In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has had far-reaching economic consequences beyond the spread of the disease itself which also severely affected the economy market: significant reductions in income, rise in unemployment, and especially for DJs, cancellation of live shows after live shows.

Los Angeles-based music and technology company Create Music Group saw how artists were struggling and how important payments were to independent artists, and they got to work. This week they unveiled their latest product: a credit card designed to give independent artists, labels and management companies immediate access to those funds.

Co-founded by Jonathan Strauss and Alexandre Williams, the card’s goal is to fulfil the company's wish of speeding up artist payouts while helping pioneer a new financial model for the music industry.

“One of the main segments that we happen to service at Create is electronic [artists]. During the pandemic, they were hit more than anyone else,” says Strauss. “I’d say the mid-level electronic act probably makes 70 to 80% of all their money from live shows. One of the reasons that we expedited this release is because we noticed how many of our artists in electronic were just hit and destroyed from the pandemic.”

The new card, known as Create Carbon, will be focusing on the electronic acts as their main segments in the six-month beta-testing phase of the card, and moving on the company is planning to move beyond the Create Music family.

In the future, independent artists who make their living through music and usually receive their streaming royalties within 60 days or even up to 12 months will no longer have to wait to get paid. The card itself can act as a motivating force for artists to put out more new music just like a daily earning portal.

“Our algorithmic technology enables us to accurately predict earnings for our clients on a daily basis and Create Carbon allows us to deliver that money to them in real time as soon as it is earned. Historically, there has been way too much friction and opaqueness among music companies. The challenges artists face to properly understand how much money they make has allowed the industry to extract unreasonably high fees. Furthermore, the friction and lag to get paid has increased artists’ reliance on well-funded conglomerates as the only viable alternative to accessing the capital they need to invest in their careers.”

Beginning in February, the company would implant the Create Carbon to select Create Music Group clients and in their CEO words, they would like to be “the artists’ bank” in the future.

[via Billboard]