It is hard to believe but another year has flown by. This year was a particularly exciting one because it officially marked our 10 years in business as of December 8, 2016. The event was commemorated with an awesome 10 year online concert via our Facebook, #SymLIVE, and as per my 10 year message was really a tribute to the musician and artist that we are so proud to represent.
This event capped off an incredible year for us and A LOT of great things happened of which we thought we’d summarize for you in one fancy post.
Before we begin though, 2016 was quite a rough one for the music industry in general being that we lost legends such as Prince, David Bowie, Colonel Abrams, Juan Gabriel, Lemmy from Motörhead, Leonard Cohen, and so many more amazing and talented individuals. That part of 2016 sure did suck and we must take time to remember individuals that influenced why we are here in the first place.
With that important piece noted, here is a little bit from the year that was 2016 in the world of Symphonic.
Growth of Streaming
This year saw a tremendous growth for the streaming format. We saw some huge gains from Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Pandora, Napster (formerly known as Rhapsody), and many more. All of these partners growing means that everyone that has music distributed to them also saw huge gains and in some cases we’ve started to see that streaming is by far one of the largest revenue producers for many of the clients we represent. It’s clear that streaming made a huge leap this year and shows a lot of potential for 2017 and beyond.
Partnerships
We signed up some awesome partnerships this year. Orfium, saavn, Yonder Music, MetaPop and more. We also took a good long look and started to make tough decisions and cut some partnerships that we felt were not returning the proper revenue for our rightsholders. So far every decision has been met positively and we will continue to work on new partnerships in 2016 although we believe the new crop of streaming and download partners will be much slimmer than previous years with the industry now growing in a specific way.
New Monetization Methods
This year, we launched new partnerships with Native Instruments that focused on us distributing the “STEMS” format. This new format is what we believe to be the Future of DJing and we’ve already seen some great results across the board! In addition to this, we partnered up with MetaPop, a company headed up by the Former Beatport CEO, Matt Adell. This partnership allows individuals to remix content from Symphonic clients but further, allows our clients to interact with many other artists via remix contests and more. The best part is, your remixes will be able to get you compensated thus, this being a new and exciting monetization method.
Brand Updates
We’ve worked hard to continue to make Topple Track an even better platform than before. We’ve introduced new pricing that gives every Symphonic client as well as regular user of Topple Track an even better deal than ever before and, we’re expediting the searching of illegally shared files for each of our rights holders. Topple Track also had its first ever representation at the EDM Biz event in Las Vegas, NV. A great event that allowed us to get great feedback for upcoming announcements.
In addition to Topple Track, Noiseporn saw some great growth and exclusives with interviews conducted by Steve Aoki, MSTRKRFT, Goldroom, and many more. Noiseporn further saw some cool announcements in it that we launched a new network available via Roku, Apple TV and the iPhone / iPad application. The network shows a weekly “News” show as well as original and sometimes, edgy entertainment shows (Tune in!)
Last but not least, Symphonic made an equity investment in the STEMS marketplace Dubseed. This investment and stake further shows our commitment to new forward thinking technologies and formats as the platform is dedicated towards selling music in the Native Instruments STEMS format. We have a lot of awesome news on this platform in the coming future as well.
Updated Resources
Symphonic also worked hard to update its SymBlog (of which you are reading right now), and updated our Help Center top to bottom provide a better resource of information for each of our clients. We’re making other investments in personnel as well to expedite the support piece of the business and expect to release a new version of our “SymphonicMS” dashboard which we feel will GREATLY improve performance.
Conference Updates
This year we were fortunate enough to meet many clients, partners, and potential brands and partners via various conferences. We made our usual trek to SXSW in Austin and had presence in events such as Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, A3C Festival in Atlanta, GA, the Latin Alternative Music Conference in New York, and last but never least, the Amsterdam Dance Event which saw us holding our first networking mixer that allowed us to hang out with many of our clients. Thank you for coming to see us!
Personnel / Office Updates
This year we added to our team to be able to provide more video content and information to our clients. First, we’ve released a video series called “Music Biz 101” that is available on our YouTube but also, on the Noiseporn Network (Roku, Apple TV, iPhone). This series aims to provide every viewer helpful tips to better grow your music and brand.
In addition, we’ve created a new “Symple Tips” series to highlight helpful tips as they pertain to our system and operations.
Our office headquarters expanded from Florida and saw us opening up a new office in New York which now has two full time dedicated individuals as well. We plan to do a lot more in the New York region with more consistent events, features, and further, the individuals on board are really pumped and excited to provide more offerings to every client.
Symphonic “Events”
This year we launched a new event series called “Music Industry Sessions” aimed at showcasing music industry professionals in the room with those interested to get into the industry and/or looking to network with those in the area. The panels for each event will be recorded and thus can be streamed via our YouTube as well and we plan on doing more events in the Dominican Republic, New York, and more! In addition, we also did our 2nd annual “Vibes Of The Bay” event. A special one for our local market of Tampa, Florida, the event pays every performer without us charging anything at the door to show our commitment to the local music community and of course, signed clients of Symphonic.
In conclusion…
2016 was a great year for us. This is only a bit of what occurred this year since we didn’t want to make this longer than it already is. As always, thank you to you, the musician, to our staff, and all of our friends, followers, and families for supporting what we do day in and day out. We encourage you to stay updated via our Facebook, Instagram, and more and always be updated with everything “Sym” in 2017! Here’s to another year!