It sounds like one of those spam comments you see littered around Facebook on popular posts attracting a lot of attention – “I make $10,000 a month and never have to leave the house. Let me show you how I do it.”
But that’s actually the reality for Brent Morgan, a musician who makes a handsome sum every month by live streaming with fans from wherever he happens to be at the time, be it at home or in his car in a parking lot.
As Tube Filter reports, YouNow is a video streaming service that’s about four years old and has built a fairly solid community of performers and fans who can subscribe to their favourite musos and leave them tips.
It’s kind of like Twitch for musicians. According to Digital Music News, Morgan broadcasts twice a day at around 9am and 1pm, performing songs, chatting with fans, and taking requests, as fans leave him tips and gifts with virtual currency.
You’ve read about artists like Cody Simpson and Troye Sivan, who managed to parlay YouTube stardom into major label contracts, well YouNow cuts out the middle man standing between an artist and a comfortable living made off their music.
Naturally, Morgan is at the top tier of the YouNow pyramid, but even those with fewer subscribers can make good money from YouNow. Digital Music News spoke to musician Emma McGann, who makes about $4,000 a month from YouNow.
As DMN notes, fans are able to subscribe to their favourite YouNow musicians, known as ‘partners’, for $4.99 a month, which entitles them to certain exclusives and levels of access, such as limitless replays of broadcasts.
However, subscriptions are standard across the board and partners can’t offer tiered levels or custom exclusives as they can with Patreon and Bandcamp. There’s also the downside of the hefty commission that YouNow and other stakeholders take.
Gifts and tips are considered in-app purchases, so Apple and Android take a 30 percent cut of each tip and YouNow takes its own 40 percent cut. In DMN‘s example, a $1,000 tip would amount to $420 going into the musician’s pocket.
Compare this with a platform like Periscope, which is popular with musicians like Clare Means. Whilst Periscope doesn’t offer a tipping function like YouNow, fans can make donations via PayPal and after PayPal take their cut, Means would take home $970 of a $1,000 tip.
But Morgan says YouNow “opened every single door for me” and he’s even caught the attention of the industry thanks to the app and his YouTube channel, signing with veteran producer Charlie Stettler.
