Ditto Music Brings Music to the Masses
The music industry has transformed with rapid digitization. With continued strong growth in the digital recorded music sector, music streaming now accounts for most of the industry’s revenue. Goldman Sachs estimates that the recorded music industry will double its value over the next decade, reaching $80 billion by 2030. In the U.S. alone, the industry is experiencing double-digit growth year over year. In 2019, revenues reached $11.1 billion – a 13% increase from 2018.
Ditto Music is a global online music distribution company that partners with 160 digital music stores, including Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, and more. Passionate about artists’ rights, Ditto Music offers an unlimited distribution service that lets artists release recorded music to the world. Last year alone, Ditto paid out more than $100 million to artists.
Payoneer works with Ditto Music to ease music royalty payouts and tracking, letting artists withdraw earnings seamlessly and from anywhere in the world. We caught up with Jayne Calvert from Ditto to talk about the platform, the digital music industry, and how artists can take their music global.
Tell us a bit about Ditto Music
Ditto Music is a global music distribution and record label services company, supporting more than 200,000 artists worldwide, with 20 offices across the UK, Europe, Australia, Asia, North and Latin America.
Founded by musicians, for musicians, Ditto provides distribution, music video, promotional and label services, offering both 100% royalty and commission-based deals. Having previously worked with major artists such as Stormzy, Ed Sheeran, and Sam Smith, Ditto Music currently works with artists at all stages of their careers, including Chance the Rapper, Ian Brown, Yxng Bane, and many more.
Ditto has a truly global network, working with and releasing music for artists and labels at every stage across every continent worldwide as well as helping to launch music careers from the ground up.
How do you grow and diversify your artist portfolio?
Establishing offices and placing staff in countries across the world has helped to establish a local presence in new territories. Rather than communicating with clients, labels and artists remotely from another country, having staff in place locally can develop great long-term partnerships on a more personal level. This lets Ditto grow a diverse portfolio of new up and coming artists around the world.
What is your favorite “Ditto Cinderella Story”?
One particular proud achievement for us has been the rise of the UK grime scene of recent years. We’ve been supporting and championing artists like Stormzy, AJ Tracey, Dave, Big Zuu, and others for many years, and to see these artists go on to achieve what they have in terms of mainstream success has been incredible.
What markets are you focused on?
Everywhere where there are musicians. Our biggest markets are the UK and USA, but we’ve branched out into Australia, Latin America, mainland Europe, Africa, Asia, and seen great results across the globe.
From your experience – what are the biggest payment pain points for music industry players?
With so many potential sources and music platforms out there, being able to see exactly where your royalty earnings are coming from can be a pain point. That’s why we designed a system to track royalties by platform, to help artists better understand their payouts.
As a distribution company, independent artists and labels pay us a small fee to release their music on hundreds of the biggest stores and platforms. That’s Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Deezer, Amazon, Google Play, and lots more. Artists earn royalties from these platforms for every digital sale or stream they get from listeners. The royalties are calculated by the music platforms and delivered to us. Artists can then withdraw 100% of their royalty earnings through us.
How do you see the music industry transforming in the digital age?
The gap between consumers and artists has never been narrower. Every artist worldwide now has more opportunity than ever to market their music and products directly to their fans. Payment solutions like Payoneer help us facilitate these changes and make it possible to guarantee artists all over the world receive their royalties fast and direct to their account when they request it.
How do you think novel payment solutions could transform the music industry?
Great payment solutions offer every musician worldwide quick and easy access to the money they’ve earned, which means, importantly, that royalties are flowing back efficiently to the people who deserve it most – the artists and creators.
Joining the Ditto network
Driven by artists’ rights, Ditto is on a mission to make the industry fairer for independent musicians. Artists that onboard to Ditto will be able to release their music onto the world’s largest streaming platforms, while maintaining 100% of rights and money earned from sales.
Here’s how it works:
Already a part of the Ditto network? Start receiving your royalty payments through Payoneer today!