Subreddit RulesįIRST AND FOREMOST: DO NOT BE RUDE TO OTHER USERS. “With helping more artists and helping them become sustainable, there’s a lot to still be done.This is a subreddit for questions about and pertaining to the city of Los Angeles and its surrounding communities. “It’s incredibly exciting that we’re still going and making an impact,” Offer adds. The company has tripled its ticket sales in the last 18 months - on a given night, up to 20 gigs are going on around the world. “It’s still that feeling of a great listening audience, a great vibe in the room, the same organic communal feeling that we have now.” “Jim and I are working really closely to make sure that while we put the artists in the center of everything we do, we also make sure that the experience doesn’t change,” Offer explains. The rest of the new funds will go toward supporting the global Sofar community - from hosts to ambassadors, volunteers and fans. It’s not often you find a platform that really cares to hear what you have to share, even if it is totally left field.” “Sofar is safe space where we can even try new songs or fusions and interact with a diverse community,” adds Sofar hip-hop performer Toya DeLazy, who has played gigs in London and South Africa, over email. “It really opens up the industry and shows you the magnitude of talent that is out there. Billie Eilish, Bastille and Leon Bridges all played Sofar shows well before breaking big. He maintains that Sofar’s major value for artists is exposure - “the ability to change that audience and to grow that audience in a really organic, meaningful way.” NYC-based family band BALIEN has played more than 70 Sofar shows, he says, and despite never having released online music until January 2019, are now headed on tour with Hozier (another Sofar alum). “We’re starting around building that digital front door for artists and making the touring side of things more efficient and easier.” “I want being a Sofar artist to unlock other services for you,” he adds. Currently, the company hosts between 50 and 100 such shows every year. Lucchese also hopes to invest more in the professional performance videos Sofar provides each artist, and the infrastructure that allows some performers to go on multiple-city Sofar tours. Part of the plan is to increase the number of sponsored Sofar shows, like one they held with 21st Century Fox in conjunction with the release of Bohemian Rhapsody, where he says average compensation is bumped up to $1500 per artist. The Echo Nest's Jim Lucchese Joins Sofar Sounds as CEO Founder Rafe Offer Shifts to Executive Chair How can we make it easier for you to convert those to fans? How can we help you better monetize them?” “I absolutely am not happy that it’s the only way we make artists money right now,” Lucchese says. “The purpose of this financing is to build out additional services where we can make artists more money. But the vast majority of Sofar cities operate on a pay-what-you-want basis. First, Sofar hopes to boost revenue for its artists - an issue that has struck a nerve recently, with some artists arguing that Sofar performance slots don’t pay enough.Īt ticketed Sofar shows, performers receive $100 each (regardless of the size of the group), while the majority of the dough goes toward paying performing rights organizations, Sofar’s 80 full-time staffers and for venue insurance. With the new funds, Offer tells Billboard that the goal “is making sure that as we grow, we grow with grace, and that the events as they are today feel the same as they did when we started it.”ĬEO Jim Lucchese, who took over the role from Offer (now executive chair) in February, says that approach is two-fold. The idea? To put the focus of live music back on, well, the music - and help local acts reach new ears. If selected, guests pay between $15 and $30 to attend the show with a lineup of three surprise performers, each hand-selected by the Sofar team. The funding round is led by Battery Ventures and Union Square Ventures, along with existing investors Octopus Ventures and Virgin Group, whose founder Richard Branson was an early investor in Sofar back in 2016.įounded by Rafe Offer, who hosted the first Sofar in his London living room in 2009, the company now hosts intimate gigs in 433 cities worldwide, which listeners enter an online lottery to attend. The company, which organizes shows with secret lineups in donated spaces across the globe, has raised $25 million in new funds from investors. On the heels of its tenth anniversary, concert startup Sofar Sounds has something new to celebrate.
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