SLICETHEPIE.com
Slice the Pie launched in June 2007 and aims to find the best raw talent and then help them fund an album through the Slicethepie community. The model has carefully studied the inefficiencies of the existing A&R system and looked how it can improve these in order to screen bands and assist them to get a record deal.
Slicethepie announced $2 million in Series C funding on March 2008 and they recently announced a partnership deal with social networking site bebo.com which has yet to fully launch.
Artists sign up for SliceThePie and upload their tracks which are then reviewed anonymously by a selection of the website’s scouts who are paid 3p for each review they submit. Each artist is reviewed around 60 times and the 2 per cent of artists who get the best reviews go into a showcase. Artists then have a limited time to secure pledges for a minimum of £15,000 from their fans.
The fans can either buy “backstage passes” at £5 each that then allow them to purchase up to five contracts in the artist at 10p each. Alternatively, they can buy the contracts on Slicethepie’s trading platform – they start out at £1.50. The contracts entitle the fans to a return based on the number of singles and albums sold by the artist over a two-year period – £1 for every 10,000 albums sold and 10p for every 10,000 singles. Slicethepie takes £2 for every album sold and 20p per single and keeps the money raised through the initial sale of contracts. The artist gets all the money raised through the sales of backstage passes, and retains all copyright rights. Investors do not get a physical CD and it doesn’t seem that there are any other benefits.
LIKELIHOOD OF RETURN – Artists Need to sell 10,000 albums in a year in order for investors to see a return. These artists are likely to be raw talent with little touring or promotional experience means that they will need considerable marketing behind them if they are going to have a chance of achieving this. With no share in other income streams this is a very small window to see any return. It seems that the only band that have made a return so far were Gilkicker and that is because they were down to the last 7 on T4 MobileAct and so bought themselves out of their contract. MobileAct disqualified them anyway and the band has since split up.
STRENGTH – The first round screening is very interesting for sifting through raw talent, in fact Slicethepie have launched this as a analytic service to the music industry called SoundOut. This does not however look at which artists are able to perform live, are able to promote themselves etc. The fact that slicethepie pasys fans to review tracks brings in a large young community, hopefully the sort of young community that mass market artists require.
WEAKNESSES – The second round of pledging, investing, back stage passes, contracts and trading is all very confusing and creating a mini stock market for bands seems at odds with the artistic process. If investors have started in the scouting rooms it seems that it is easier for them to understand and get involved with the trading, this all becomes part of the community experience, however without a clear message it would be hard for artists to bring in their fans at the investment stage. Also due to stricter gaming laws in the UK Americans cannot invest in artists.