The Digital Home Base Every Artist Needs
(If They Actually Want to Get Paid).
This week, I listened to a discussion on my new favorite podcast, Music Tectonics, called “How Will Music Be Monetized in 2030,” recorded at the Grow the TAM summit. Tatiana Cirisano from MIDiA Research led the talk with Liz Moody from Granderson Des Rochers, Mauhan Zonoozy from A Vinyl Bar and formerly Spotify, and Ty Roberts from FanTracks and Gracenote.
They talked about a lot: AI licensing, artist equity in AI companies, the vinyl comeback, gaming, and virtual concerts. One idea in particular stood out to me because it’s the same challenge I help my clients with.
Streaming isn’t working for most artists these days. Roberts put it simply: most musicians make money from live shows, not streaming, unless they’re at the very top. Everyone else is stuck in a system that doesn’t really reward them. So where does the real value go?
Zonoozy said that individual songs are almost worthless now (not emotionally, but financially) because there are just so many. Hundreds of thousands of tracks are uploaded to streaming platforms every day, and with that much music, the song isn’t really a product anymore. What people care about and pay for is the story behind it: who the artist is, what they stand for, and why they make music. He used K-pop as an example, where fans buy into an entire world beyond the music.
That story needs a home. Right now, it’s spread across many platforms that weren’t designed for it. A concert clip might get lost on Instagram, and a short film ends up on YouTube next to random ads. Fans don’t have one place to really get to know an artist.
Roberts gave a real example of someone solving this. The artist Yungblud has been building his own platform, called YBHQ, essentially from scratch. Fans log in and get a private feed of his content, but it goes well past a normal feed. There are concert streams, short films, games, even tarot cards. Roberts called it “his own Netflix.” The platform used, Openstage, also runs a separate platform for the virtual artist Gorillaz, and the two experiences don’t look anything alike because they aren’t supposed to.
I think that’s a part worth exploring more. Roberts made the point that most subscription platforms fail artists because they’re built on a single generic template meant to fit everyone. A general interface, applied to every artist the same way, just makes every artist look the same. And in a market this noisy, sameness is a death sentence. His line on it was blunt: “simple is boring.”
I’d take it even further. Templates make artists look alike, and they actively work against what Zonoozy was describing, because a 
templated site can’t hold a specific story, just generic content. Music is a deep form of self-expression, and you can’t convey that through a layout used by thousands of other artists.
The panel also talked about the return of vinyl and CDs. Moody made a point that stood out to me, just like the template issue. Physical media isn’t really about sound quality, even if people notice it. Physical media support identity. She remembered how her CD and tape collection would sit on a shelf and spark conversations when friends visited. It’s the same reason someone might buy a record they never play because it’s a way to own a piece of their identity as a fan.
Roberts shared something that often gets overlooked in vinyl revival stories. Yungblud’s team sends subscribers a real printed magazine. It’s not a PDF but a glossy publication that arrives in the mail a few times a year. It might not be up to date when it gets there, but that doesn’t matter. It’s something you can hold, made with care, and it gives fans a physical connection that a digital feed can’t.
But none of this matters without great content. Concert streams, short films, printed magazines, games, merch drops should all be part of an artist’s home base. It takes a real library of content, made by people who understand visual identity, not just the cheapest option. This is the tough, behind-the-scenes work that many teams skip or hand off to whoever’s around.
Looking at the bigger picture, the panel also discussed gaming extensively. Moody pointed out that music is behind gaming, which figured out long ago that people will pay for small, in-the-moment items like skins and season passes. Music doesn’t have anything like that yet, and both she and Zonoozy see this as a big gap. It’s the same idea: fans want a place to join in and a place to listen.
None of this happens on its own, though. Right now, building a world like Yungblud’s still takes a real budget and a team that knows how to pull design, development, and content together into one system rather than ten disconnected tools. That’s exactly why the timing matters. This same panel expects the tools for building something like this to get cheaper and easier to use well before 2030. The artists and teams who pick their stack now, and actually integrate it instead of bolting on another app every time a new platform trends, will already be standing on their home base when everyone else is still shopping for the pieces.
When you look at everything together, it’s clear where things are going. The song isn’t the main product anymore (I know, sad) … the artist’s world is. But that world will need a home, built just for the artist, filled with content that reflects who they are, not a template with their name on it.
Listen to the full episode here.
Platforms mentioned in podcast:
