Artist Union is one of the fastest rising follow gate services to hit the market, differentiating themselves from other gate services by offering it for free, quick, bug free social download gates of all types, as well as creating a community platform that drives users from being exposed to just gates to areas where fans feel like they make a difference, via the Powerscore, hot tracks section, and more. Ranidu Lankage sat down with RaverRafting to talk about how the service started, growth, future plans, and more in this exclusive interview.
Artist Union Share About Surprising Past Experiences, Hyper-Growth, New Services & More
Artist Union is one of the fastest rising artist services platforms to hit the market, differentiating themselves from other services by offering the best in-class technical solutions to artists for free as well as creating a community platform to drive users from being exposed to the gate to an area where fans feel like they can discover new music and support artists. Some unique features artists love include the Powerscore, Samples section, a hot tracks section, and more. Ranidu Lankage sat down with RaverRafting to talk about how the service started, growth, future plans, and more in this exclusive interview.
What is your educational background? Did you literally create AU as a platform on your own?
I studied Economics as an undergrad at Yale and following that worked as an investment banker on Wall Street and then as Googler. I’ve also had a music career that spanned 15 years starting as a Sri Lankan pop artist signed to Sony in 2002. I’ve also created a genre of Electronic music, Bailatronic (supported by Zane Lowe, Steve Aoki, Carnage and more) and DJ’d at Ultra and Coachella.
I created The Artist Union with my friend Justin Kan who is the founder of Twitch.tv and James Zhang our technical co-founder. This was the core team behind the platform.
There have been other follow to download services before you, what did you do different that made you more successful?
We focused on making the experience the simplest and best for artists. For example, unlike other platforms, all you need to do to create a gate on AU is just 2 clicks.This makes it incredibly accessible to any artist. We also listened to our artist’s needs diligently and built exactly what they wanted and provided the service for free. I think this is what set us apart from the other platforms that were already out there.
When did AU start and what is the followership / traffic now?
We started AU in September 2015 and in 1 year we are now the number one platform in terms of traffic. We have over 50,000 artists actively publishing music and over 1.5 million fans have supported artists on the platform. The Artist Union network also reaches over 1.5 million listeners on SoundCloud, Spotify and Youtube and we have been able to launch the careers of many unsigned talents from around the world through our #AUExclusives series. One of our releases (Classic by Fractall and Adriann) racked up almost 2 million plays on SoundCloud and became the number one deep house track on the platform for over 2 weeks. I am proud of how far we have come with a small team in a short time.
What have been some life-changing moments starting AU has brought you?
Too many to list 🙂 One of my favorite moments was when we released the Artist Union powerscore. Over 25,000 DJs used the feature in one week and it was shared heavily on social media. It showed me how great products do not need marketing to spread. It was useful to a core group of users (artists) and spread like wildfire through word of mouth.
Will you be adding new things to AU in the near future?
Yes! We are always working on new things for AU and hope to add more cool features and continue innovating. We are also expanding our promotional operations with the label and will have more exciting news coming soon!
How did you get introduced to electronic music?
I got introduced to electronic music a long long time ago by listening to Robert Miles’s track, Children on the radio. I followed all of the first breakthrough wave of creators like The Prodigy, ATB, FatBoy Slim and more and listened to electronic music when it wasn’t the “cool” thing to do. I am just glad that Electronic music finally broke through again in America and that it is mainstream now. It’s also cool to see how it evolves from here.
Connect with Artist Union
https://www.facebook.com/theartistunionofficial
https://twitter.com/theartistunion
https://soundcloud.com/theartistunion
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