The launch is in response to insight revealing the struggles unsigned artists face while powering the audiences’ discovery of new music, say the publishers.
Hosted on NME.com, NME Emerging showcases user generated content with artists creating an NME Artist Profile for free to share their music, videos, social feeds and promote upcoming gigs all in one place.
Helping artists earn money, using NME’s Merch store, acts can design their own t-shirts to sell at gigs or for fans to buy on demand. As part of a partnership with music distributor and publishing administration service TuneCore, artists are able to distribute their music with an exclusive NME discount. Artists will be able to sell and stream music across more than 150 digital music stores - including Apple Music, Google Play and Spotify - while retaining 100% of their sales revenue and rights. With 10 million music fans visiting NME.com every month, says NME, plugging original tracks and videos into NME Emerging gives artists the chance to boost views and downloads to generate more money from YouTube ads and music streaming.
Charlotte Gunn, NME digital editor, says: “NME has supported grassroots talent for 65-years with acts like Coldplay and The Killers championed by NME at the start of their careers. Our commitment has never been stronger and the NME Emerging platform is a brand new way to connect artists with the NME team. If we like what we hear, we’ll be writing about them, putting them in the magazine or even inviting them to play a gig. We can’t wait to get stuck in and discover some great new acts.”
NME Emerging responds to quantitative and qualitative research carried out by NME to find out what challenges artists face when it comes to getting heard, getting noticed and earning money. The research revealed that:
* Live and social most effective tactics to grow a fan base - when it comes to growing a fan base, playing live is considered to be the most effective (51%), followed by social (26%). However, social media is the most time consuming task with 39% spending between 2-5 hours each week updating their profiles and most find it difficult to convert followers, subscribers and fans into regular plays or views of their material.
* Most don’t make money from their music - only 45% of those surveyed are earning anything from their music, with the vast majority (79%) supplementing their income in other ways, chiefly through salaried work.
* They invest more in their music than it generates - 79% of those that do earn money from their music are generating an income of less than £250 per month and over half of those surveyed (53%) are investing more than this into their music career on a monthly basis.
Richard Giddings, head of New Product Development, Time Inc. UK, adds: “Spending time with artists brought to light what their pressure points are, where the opportunities lay for them and where NME can help. We’ve built NME Emerging out of those conversations to give artists what they need and the response so far has been really positive. This is a great new route for emerging artists to reach the NME team and for our partners to tap into an audience of passionate music fans and work with artists.”
Links / further reading: NME Emerging
