Beta Records

Meet Beta Records, a fairly new digital music service that has come up with an interesting combination of artist empowering services. Since 2004, Beta has allowed artists to record and present their music for sale through as many avenues as a desperate major label could dream up.

Meet Beta Records, a fairly new digital music service that has come up with an interesting combination of artist empowering services. Since 2004, Beta has allowed artists to record and present their music for sale through as many avenues as a desperate major label could dream up.

Artists are able to create profiles and spin their tunes through social networking “scenes” (i.e. ‘Urban’, ‘Country’, ‘Turntablism’, ‘Electronic’ etc.) where fans can respond directly with critiques and hopefully a little cash. Fans can also build reputations in responding to new music, judging whether it’s worth mentioning on the sites’ various genre leader boards while earning a small portion of the sites’ advertising sales.

The company, led by President Christian Honetschlaeger, originally toured the country in a mobile recording studio, encouraging and committing all the talent it could find to digital wax. But now the site has begun signing artists that have proven themselves artistically and financially. The 3-song deals split revenue 50/50, concentrating on single song sales through recording, ringtones, photo and video, synchronization licensing and total digital assets. This does leave out more specific opportunities in physical sales, merchandising and touring but the site should have over 100 artists signed by the end of the year. And there already stands a nice fat 85 percent cut of sales for the other 75,000 unsigned, self-serving artists.

The key for Beta Records developing business model lies in the simpatico it allows between fan and artist, giving both respective credit in discovering new, worthwhile music. Its A&R model literally brings listeners into the studio with new artists. New deals operate on a 3-day, 3-song production schedule, providing 18 streaming cameras and microphones to capture the creation process for fans. Says Christian Honetschlaeger, “I am convinced that we will discover the next generation of superstars faster and more efficiently than Universal, Sony, Warner, and EMI combined.” We’ll see.