BandLabthe free social music creation platform now reaches 100 million users.
No trumpeting of the mobile app's major milestone. The news is communicated through a report prepared by by Bloomberg Ashley Carmanwho caught up with Singapore-based BandLab CEO Meng Ru Kuok for a discussion about its growth and future.
The US accounts for about 30% of BandLab's users, he said, and is its biggest market.
“It's funny when you get to these big milestones, especially something like 100 million, which is slightly difficult to understand in terms of the scale of the number,” he says in the news headline. “It was also something that really didn't look like anything special. It kind of crossed over, and I think we all realized, like, “Oh, this is great.” But I think that's just the result of how quickly things have developed.”
Just last year, the platform had over 60 million registered users, almost 40% of whom were women, up from 50 million plus in 2022.
BandLab's music creation software includes an arsenal of virtual instruments, as well as the ability to automatically generate multi-part vocal harmonies, record, sample, and manipulate audio in a myriad of ways. The service can also distribute music to streaming services and incorporates elements of a social network: musicians can create individual profiles, chat with each other, comment on their peers' releases, ask for advice or split a song into its parts and to share these to crowdsource remixes.
A major commercial breakthrough came with d4vd's “Romantic Homicide,” which the then-17-year-old Houston native created in July 2022 using BandLab. The guitar-laden track caught fire on TikTok, d4vd (pronounced “David”) signed to Interscope, the song reached No. 45 on the Billboard Hot 100 and landed on the bill for Coachella 2023.
“Seeing artists go to major labels and independents is a great, great joy and success for us,” Meng continues. “Our relationship with an artist doesn't end when they advance in the industry.”
BandLab was founded in 2015 and does not receive royalties from music created on its platform. Instead, the company makes money from artist services (which include distribution, live streaming and BandLab Boost) that allow acts to turn their profiles or posts into ads on the platform to better reach users.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/business/tech/bandlab-100-million-users-report-1235637853/