May 2006, Stockholm is not on the front lines in the battle for the future of the music industry. City police raided the Swedish-owned file-sharing website The Pirate Bay and confiscated its web servers, temporarily shutting down its global business. Across town, a young entrepreneur named Daniel Ek is about to launch Spotify.
It was a turning point, said Mattias Tengblad, a former musician who recently took over as commercial director at Universal Music in Sweden. “Business is going down the drain. We have politicians defending young people using The Pirate Bay, and it feels like the industry is over in its current form,” he said. “But soon Spotify had a million subscribers. In a few years, it had 2 million Swedish users from a population of 9 million.”
But while Spotify was once the solution, today it is the problem. In July 2022, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) reported that artists with 1 million streams on Spotify per month only make £12,000 (about $15,000). ) one year after deducting major brand costs. The modern template gives artists little control over how and when their music is released—but it still requires them to do much of the promotional work needed to stand out among the 70,000 copies. New releases launch Spotify every day. Singer Halsey has publicly complained about her label blocking the release of her new tracks. “I have sold over 165 million records. My record company says I can’t release unless I fake a viral moment on TikTok,” she said.
Tengblad—who has toured with a semi-successful band called Kosmic—hopes Sweden may once again have a solution. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Corite—as in “cowrite”—a platform that allows artists to crowdfund new releases. Fans receive a small portion of each track’s profits; Artists retain creative control and a larger slice of the pie from sales and streams. Corite cut 5 percent.
“To get signed, you have to have about 1 million streams per month and become famous on social media,” says Tengblad. “But until then, why not try and see if you can make your own money? You already have the community, the platform, and the appeal—that’s where Corite fits in.”
Tengblad co-founded the company in 2019 with Emil Angervall, an industry veteran with whom he has worked closely for 20 years. Artists who have turned to Corite from major labels include DJ Alan Walker, one of Spotify’s 100 most streamed artists of all time. Walker raised $25,000 through Corite to crowdfund the recent single “Unity,” which was streamed more than 4.1 million times in its first month. Tengblad said it expects the track to generate around £6.3 million over the next five years, giving early investors a return of between five and 10 times their initial investment.
But making money isn’t necessarily Corite’s main selling point. Fans invest in fractions: no more than $10 at a time, and no single investor has a portfolio of more than $1,000 at the time of writing. It’s more about engagement. “If you have 3,000 fans who have invested $10 actively working in your favor, that’s a huge number,” says Tengblad. “If Alan Walker wanted to, he could let a rich person finance the whole thing, but that wouldn’t do any good. What will that guy do to promote it?
