The Unbias journey began in late 2019 when we started looking for ways in which artists could understand how their music can generate revenue. Unbias gained traction early on from independent artists and managers as an AI platform that estimates streams on Spotify from the audio signal.
We designed the Unbias AI platform to use audio as an input to understand listener sentiment across Spotify, YouTube, and TikTok, independent of artist popularity. By doing this, we created the ability to convert sentiment into streams, thus allowing us to calculate future streams of tracks with high accuracy. This ability is crucial because it can help dictate how much effort an artist should spend on a project.
Over 800 artists used the Unbias AI platform in the past year, and we received resounding feedback that they were using Unbias products and predictions to pitch labels and investors for capital to fund their projects. We even got asked by some artists if we could invest in them.
We didn’t know how big the artist funding problem was until we looked deeper into the mechanics of the music economy. Artists are consistently challenged to find investment for projects, and if they do find funding, many artists face additional challenges in trying to buy back their music rights. This is a problem that has plagued the industry for decades.
In the late 1990s, David Bowie became the first entertainer to securitize his music rights by selling $55 million of Bowie Bonds. Bowie Bonds returned 8% interest annually from his music catalog. Always an artist ahead of his time, Bowie Bonds were a new kind of wealth creation tool which emerged from Bowie’s intellectual capital and allowed him to benefit directly from his music.
What’s vital about intellectual capital is that it shifts the balance of wealth from institutions to individuals. It is not by accident that David Bowie benefited most from his music, and not a record label. On the other hand, Prudential invested in Bowie Bonds, so a large corporate insurance company benefited from this new securitized asset, not the public.
The biggest takeaway is Bowie showed us democratizing wealth, while retaining control of intellectual property, is possible by making intellectual capital available and investable by everyone. We believe music is the best place to start, and that is why we’re changing directions.
Unbias is a marketplace that enables artists to transform future royalty revenue into upfront capital. Artist raises begin at $50,000 and can be upward of $10M on our new platform. Unbias is a path for artist and investors to benefit from intellectual capital. It’s not a loan or an advance.
For independent artists, record label owners, and copyright holders, that means you can have more cash flow for scaling a business while maintaining ownership. For artists interested in applying to our marketplace, please fill out our form here.
For investors, Unbias gives you access to a previously untapped asset class—future royalty revenue streams with stable yields and built-in diversification. For investors interested in learning more about our marketplace, please fill out our form here.
We’ll share more details in the coming weeks about how Unbias works.
