“Stoking the star maker machinery behind the popular song.”
Legendary Canadian singer and songwriter, Joni Mitchell, wrote that shrewd line in 1973 about the business of music. The entertainment business has always been a tough gig. But times have changed and it’s probably even tougher now.
According to Harrison Lee, HBA ’19, Co-Founder of RIFF, the chances of a band or an artist being signed after being heard by the “right” person at a bar today are practically zilch!
Industry professionals now make decisions based on cold hard numbers.
“Do you have enough audience already to drive revenue for us?”
Lee adds that unless an artist has a massive audience or is lucky enough to have family ties in the industry, the door is pretty firmly shut. Industry professionals utilize machine learning and predictive algorithms to identify top revenue-producing talent rather than hanging around the Cavern Club waiting for an appearance from the fab four.
For Lee the problem was clear.
What’s a scalable way that I can coach creatives to make better ongoing business decisions using their data?
Enter RIFF, the brainchild of Lee and Toluwa Fayemi, BSc’19.
RIFF is a virtual business provider for creative talent. The online platform provides self-serve tools and tailored (automated) guidance to help artists understand and use their own data early in their journey to make smart decisions.
Lee and Fayemi, are committed to building a world where every creative person can succeed - especially those who might be considered underrepresented and income-challenged. It has always been tough for people to exercise their creativity, pursue a dream and somehow have the required business savvy not to fall victim to exploitation along the way.
Historically, major labels claimed 80 – 88% of an artist’s future revenue to finance and grow a musical career. Musicians often had no other options to connect with listeners. Streaming services - in theory -might have levelled the playing field but the reality is that decisions are driven by data and algorithms. The major labels have always been predatory and have the resources to monopolize and saturate the market space.
Lee thought, “Well, why don’t we just take those variables that are already identified by the labels and coach people on how to get to them?”
RIFF’s process is to use machine learning and analytics to help artists understand their own metrics so they can make informed decisions to get them to those milestones.
The driving force behind all the “tech” that drives RIFF is Fayemi. A physics major with a passion for science and mathematics. Fayemi was drawn to RIFF by the challenge of mapping out complex systems to understand audience engagement and popularity.
He notes AI and machine learning offer a lot of potential in areas where individuals want to grow and achieve a certain level of success by a measure that matters to them – and it’s not always monetary. And musicians are a great place to start. With RIFF, Fayemi notes that artists will have more time to focus on their creative endeavours, and less time doing their own research and public relations.
As humans, we strive to create something new and we are all drawn to art and creativity given the time to do so.
But it is more than just throwing graphs and charts at people. RIFF coaches artists on how to understand key measurements such as reach, engagement, conversion and loyalty. This helps artists develop an understanding of what areas are going well, and what areas need more work.
It is crucial to interpret the data properly. A band or artist booking a tour needs to know what size audience to expect in order to book the right venue. Lee notes looking only at streaming data isn’t the right approach. You need a deeper understanding to translate who is actually going to come to your event.
Although RIFF is a fairly young company, they have over 200 creative people enrolled at various levels of its subscription service, including some management companies. A big advantage of RIFF’s system is that personalized data is scalable and allows for greater capacity. Formerly a talent company could only support as many artists as they had available managers. The pandemic made a lot of people re-evaluate their work-life balance and many people decided to start a side hustle in the music business as part of regaining their joy of life while possibly breaking even or making a little money.
In August 2022, Lee and Fayemi were accepted into the Western Accelerator program managed by the Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship Powered by Ivey. They are looking forward to a season of building their company in a more focused environment. Both agree the sheer energy boost from being in person with other entrepreneurs is valuable.
Having started his entrepreneurial journey with RIFF in 2018, Lee’s advice for other budding entrepreneurs would be to build checks and balances into their lives. Lee deflates the myth of going flat out – 24/7 working on your business.
You need to pace yourself and monitor your energy – and if you need a break – take it. Your productivity will only improve if your mind has a chance for a break. And if you need a full-time job to cushion your transition into your own venture – that’s fine too. Working full time and not paying yourself anything is not productive either.
Fayemi added that in the early stages of a start-up things move very fast. Good connections were made early on and solutions were built quickly. But in hindsight, Fayemi says it is better to sit down, and have a few meetings and conversations to figure out what the vision is and how to build towards it - and not just build in a reactionary way to the immediate problem.
Fayemi’s advice for other entrepreneurs is something he admits to be working on himself.
Take things slow and consistently and deeply think about very simple things.
A very human and succinct piece of philosophy that could well apply to all aspects of art and life.