American distribution franchise, UnitedMasters Distribution Platform, owned by its Founder & CEO, Steve Stoute, has struck a partnership deal with Nigerian music producer, Sarz, as the scramble for Nigerian music distribution thickens.
The partnership which was announced at Press Conference on Thursday is an effort to empower independent African music creators and allow them to expand their music globally.
During the presser, UnitedMasters also made their intentions known about signing up more artists from this region. With a plan to “discover, develop, and empower the next generation of African artists”.
The focus however isn’t only on the Nigerian market, as the distribution company is also actively seeking talents in Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, and South Africa as well as other African countries.
While addressing the press, Steve Stoute revealed the approach to support independent Nigerian artistes by offering a one-time fee for unlimited song distribution.
He said; “Our services are tailored to meet the needs of the market instead of trying to force a fit. We want to grow and develop alongside this market. Our subscription model benefits both us and the artists, who retain 100% of their revenue. With half a million or a million artists signed up, everyone wins.’’
When asked about his thoughts on the partnership, Sarz said, “It’s been amazing so far. What I do love about this partnership especially with the United Masters is everything they said they’ll do, they’ve done it and those are the kinds of people I love to work with, those that don’t oversell and underdeliver.”
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With his wealth of experience in the music industry, real estate, and the advertising industry in the USA, Stoute partnered with Google, Apple, and Andreessen Horowitz to create UnitedMasters in 2014, the goal was to enable artists to maximize their creative and economic potential by giving them all the tools and support they would need to directly connect with their fans.
Recall that in a panel discussion with Davido at the UnitedMasters SelectCon 05 which was held at Terminal 5 in New York City in October, Stoute made a groundbreaking announcement of UnitedMasters’ intention to begin offering their services directly to talents in Nigeria by the end of the year.
The team at UnitedMasters will also be unveiling the UnitedMasters’ mobile app which provides many benefits to artists under the organization’s umbrella; such as increased transparency regarding artists’ earnings through the UnitedMasters mobile app, where real-time streaming data will be available.
Independent artists who sign up on the UnitedMasters mobile app can choose from a range of plans that offer curated services to them based on where they feel they are in their career trajectory.
These plans are broken down into 3 tiers as follows; Debut, Select & Partner. The Select Plan, which has become the most popular plan, offering a wide range of services, including 100% royalties retention for all users, will be available exclusively to Nigerian users at a massively discounted price of N20,000.00 per annum.
Users will also have access to unlimited music distribution to dozens of global platforms (Spotify, Facebook, Instagram, Apple Music, Youtube, Snap, Tik Tok) and the most relevant music services in Africa (Boomplay, Audiomack, Muska, Music in Ayoba, Anghami, Joox and more). There are also some additional features like the shareable MasterLinks, customizable ArtistPages, and fan management tools which will help independent Nigerian artists in building their audiences while driving streams. Users can access the UnitedMasters mobile app via Web, Android and iOS.
Beyond traditional distribution methods, UnitedMasters also offers their artists access to new ways to grow their fan bases as showcased by the announcement that UnitedMasters’ partnership with the NBA, wherein the league uses music from the platform to soundtrack their social content, will expand their partnership to cover NBA Africa as well.
