Tom DeLonge is best recognised as the face of ’90s and ’00s bratty, skater-punk culture, a posterboy for toilet jokes with an unhealthy (and totally relatable) obsession over babes in high school, but would you believe he could also be the face that changes musician revenues?
Nope, DeLonge isn’t a ‘man overboard’, the 38-year old singer-songwriter has for the last seven years been working on a system entitled Modlife which seeks to bundle music packages for direct, streamline sale from bands to fans, cutting our third party/”the middle man” and delivering deserved revenue straight to the pockets of the musicians, as Fast Company (via A Journal Of Music Things) highlights.
The method in which this artist-lucrative service works is best described with an example. Say you wanted to purchase The War On Drugs’ latest record Lost In The Dream from iTunes, Modlife would also suggest the likes of a screened poster or a t-shirt to accompany the digital download.
Modlife also applies to live shows too. If you wanted to see a band live and were in the process of buying a ticket to their gig, Modlife offers the opportunity to pay extra and gain access to usually off-limits areas such as soundchecks. In addition to this, the DeLonge-lead platform attempts to shade scalpers, creating a system for VIP fans who can enter live package “lotteries” which provide them with a chance to win prime seating in their particular region, marginalising the market for scalpers.
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As they say, there’s proof in the pudding, with DeLonge having already used Modlife on a recent tour with his more mature sounding soft rock band Angels & Airwaves. DeLonge has stated that they sold a limited number of VIP ticket package bundles, which impressively doubled the band’s touring income. Not bad, eh?
DeLonge provided commentary on the game-changing service, “we’re making the band revenue by providing tools to monetize all these different elements of their business” noting that Modlife can be used by bands of any stature, “a lot of instances where bands don’t trust labels and the labels still need to do something bold to have a great capital life on all the different things they’re planning.”
Modlife could very well be the way of the future for artists, offering a more affordable method of promoting additional merchandising and package deals that see bands tie together all their revenue streams into one, simple and beneficial channel.
The service jumps into the heated discussion that has surrounded 2014 in terms of musicians and their actual earned wealth. As one band detailed how they lost money touring, causing other bands to hit-back, claiming that touring bands do not need to lose money when on the open road, not to mention the war against streaming services by the likes of Taylor Swift against Spotify, whilst independent artists sing praise of Bandcamp and it’s new, similar to Modlife, direct subscription services.
