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So let me ask you this as far as what is the significance of you guys partnership ut Illuminate.
Luminate, which allows artists to partially chart on Billboard?
How does that work?
Yeah, so Luminate is interesting. They for context right. Luminated is the agency that does all of the reporting for the recorded music industry, not just within the United States but from around the world. They put out a report every single year. They used to be called Nielsen Sound Scan, and they've gone through a lot of names over the years,
but they are the agency that reports to Billboard. So when you see number one on Billboard or charted on Billboard, Illuminated is the actual company that's doing the auditing on those sales. We've been talking to Luminate for eighteen months trying to get, you know, their stamp of approval, and just eight weeks ago they basically gave us the thumbs up to be able to report to them. So we've been an official reporter to them for four weeks and yeah,
we just finally made the announcement. It's something that the industry I think is really excited. I got way too many calls today when we made the announcement, just I think a lot of people were skeptical. Right, there's only twenty two total US digital reporters to Illuminate, and we're one of twenty two. And this includes like Apple, Spotify,
all the major DSPs, and then the major labels. So to be the first super fan app quote unquote to be Illuminate eligible towards Billboard, I think it definitely raised a lot of eyebrows, right, because it's really bringing the control and the power to an artist where the only way you can chart to Billboard is by using iTunes. Or using a DSP and now they can do it. You know, l Russell will probably chart on Billboard this year.
So it is it a one is it one album for one?
One for one? Yeah? So the for context, for an album to be considered one album sale on streaming, you need a two hundred and fifty streams to equal one album sell. So you would have to listen to that album four times a day for a full year just to give that artist one album sale. But one fan can buy one album and it equals an album sale on illuminate.
All right, So okay, question that I have is you have this platform where it's a one for one, one for one, you can pay whatever you want, right, correct? You guys are the only platform that is credited on the Billboard from uh this.
Company on the super fan side. Yes, so like you know the term superman. Uh it's a hot word right now.
And how did you how did you become the only platform?
I kept bugging them to let us in.
What's the like they had to vet you guys. You got to go through like a So there's a couples where they know your numbers are correct.
So there's a couple of integrations, right, So the way that there reporting works essentially they measure our sales from an accredited data processor. So in this case Stripe, all of our sales happened through Stripe. We hand over all of our Stripe data from IP address basically where the user lives, how much they paid, transaction time, transaction date, and then from there they vet those transactions directly through our Stripe report.
Is there a metric of how many users or how many downloads a week or a month that are needed to qualify.
No, we just have to report every single week. So you have to report every single week to stay eligible. The moment you don't report one week, you can't report for four weeks, and then you have to try it all over again.
Yeah.
So, like, let's just take French was on the platform. So let's say French, if he sends ten thousand, I think that puts him in the top one hundred album.
Hundred for Bilbo for sure. So French was actually our second artist on the platform.
Yeah, talk about that, I mean, because this is a guy who obviously we know as a mainstream artist, has signed with major labels, but chose your platform to put out the one of the latest projects. What was that process of convincing him or we didn't even tak convincing to get him on the platform.
You know, French is I think normally, I mean when we think of our right, we don't think of them as like thought leaders for some reason, right, But artists are some of the most innovative people and they see the full landscape every single day, and they really influence culture in so many ways. French has been not only I mean talking about the crypto space, like French was in the D two C space for a while, right,
he would dove into the crypto space very early. And when I literally did like a fifteen minute call with him right before I met l Russell, and he was like, yo, I'm down. Once I got an album ready, let's do it. And we did Larussell on October first, and we did French Montane October twelve, and probably the easiest release we've ever done in the sense of like no hassles. He sent me files, he sent me the artwork, all of the metadata. We plugged it in. I usually have to
chase artists to get them paid. Like he set up everything in advance, and he already understood the format. He understood the messaging, what he had to tell the fans, how to tell the fans, you know the message, and yeah, it was it was exciting, It was really interesting. He also helped us really with our conversation around the importance of Illuminate and being able to report to Illuminate. He was like, man, I wish these sales will count towards Billboard,
and that's why we didn't do his last album. He just dropped this here just because at artists at his level, he wants to report and we weren't reporting yet. It was like a two week difference between could have did the most latest project.
But has there been conversations with other artists I guess from mainstream that have gone your way or are are about to go your way now that this has now been a change.
Where you can report one hundred percent. Yeah, I mean we've talked to maybe every every major artist that you can think of, probably reached out in our first six months, and then we've been able to maintain a relationship. And this honestly was a big deal breaker for them. It's not being able to report to Billboard, where now that we report to Billboard, you're probably going to see some of the biggest albums of the year this quarter and
the next quarter. Dropping on the platform because you know an artists sells one hundred thousand copies, you're number one on Billboard and even allows you to do that, all right, instead of requiring millions of people to actually go listen to your music.
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