She also stated that TuneCore has helped music artists earn more than $4 billion globally in 18 years since it launched in 2006. TuneCore is owned by French digital music company Believe Music.
India is TuneCore’s second-biggest office globally in terms of headcount. The company had set up its Mumbai office, which has 83 employees, in 2020. Globally, TuneCore has 300 employees.
“India is a digital market, and we are also digital. We have had a lot of growth, and we are investing very heavily here,” Gleeson said.
She also stated that there are lots of parallels between Latin America, Southeast Asia, and India, as all these markets are at an inflection point as far as the growth of independent music is concerned.
“We are beginning to see that inflection point happening here in some areas like Kannada and Malayalam in South India. Releases coming from those languages have increased over 100% in the last 12 months,” Gleeson added.TuneCore helps artists to monetise their songs globally through platforms like Spotify, YouTube Music, and Prime Music. The company has paid and free plans for artists.Under the subscription plan priced at Rs 1499 per year, artists can release unlimited music across 150 digital stores and retain 100% of the revenue.
The company also has a free plan in which it gets a 20% commission. Under the free plan, the company distributes music only on social media platforms like YouTube.
According to research firm Luminate, 120,000 tracks were uploaded on music streaming platforms daily on music streaming platforms in Q1 2023.
Gleeson said that the sheer volume of content has made it difficult for artists to stand out from the crowd.
“86% of the content that Luminate measures and reports had 1000 streams or less. 25% of all of the content that is out in the market had zero streams. Cutting through is a really big challenge because there is just so much more content to explore,” she noted.
TuneCore South Asia head Akhila Shankar said independent music is thriving in pockets like Punjab, Haryana, South India, and the North East. “We want to help artists at the grassroots level in these markets to grow,” she added.