Found an email I sent in 2015

I was pitching a company called Funnel Music to a legendary producer whose records I’d been listening to for years and who I was quietly terrified of emailing. I opened with my personal creds, as you do. Signed artist, chaos of the late 90s, ran an indie label, ran an indie publishing company, session guitar in Brazil, made records, lectured, blah blah. The usual. Buried further down was this:

“This is not a freemium service. We believe in paying everyone working across an artist release.”

Eleven years ago. Before Spotify’s payout thresholds. Before AI slop flooded the DSPs. Before “value” in music got redefined as whatever a platform could get away with not paying you.

The model was simple. Producers, label owners, PR, marketing teams take a lower rate up front and a share of every revenue stream the contract touches. No cap. Break even faster than any major deal would let you. We called it a Shared Outcome Agreement, drafted by Russells, who incidentally still underwrite the agreements today.

There was even a carried interest clause, so if you backed an artist early and weren’t around by album three, you still got paid. Because you were there. That felt obvious to me then. It still does.

Here’s the bit I’d forgotten: he said yes. Signed an SOA. A producer with nothing left to prove looked at a model built by two blokes and a lawyer, and took a lower fee for a share of the upside. Not as a favour. Because it was a better deal.

What we didn’t have was a way to run it at scale without a spreadsheet and a lot of goodwill.

That’s revflo. Same argument, eleven years of stubbornness, and finally the tech to run it.

#MusicIndustry #Independence #revflo #RevenueShare #FairPay