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To understand how Drip.fm works, and why it will be closing in ten days, we can draw an analogy between music and food.
Streaming as we know it is a giant buffet. Spotify, SoundCloud, Youtube and similar platforms provide access at the click of a button to dozens of millions of songs. Either for free or for a fixed price, we can drink our daily dose of music through bottomless glasses. While this overabundance of content is perhaps a modern-day example of the paradox of choice, it satisfies both consumers and artists by providing unparalleled exposure and access to more music than ever before.
Drip, on the other hand, is a musical omakase—a term in the sushi world for a multi-course meal consisting only of dishes selected by the chef. In this case, the courses are early access to exclusive pre-releases, merchandise, and experiential goods like concerts and meet-and-greets; the chef is the artist or record label. Not only does this model give the chef more curative power and alleviate some of the stress that accompanies the paradox of choice, but it also implies a substantial amount of trust in the chef: omakase translates loosely from Japanese to "I'll leave it up to you." Fans trust the artist or label to select the highest-quality content that best suits their tastes; in turn, artists and labels trust Drip to provide a flexible, user-friendly and lucrative platform on which to develop the modern-day music fan club.
Unfortunately, this selectivity may not be enough to keep a digital music business alive . Drip will be closing on March 18, after a careful consideration of “timing, funding, and everything needed to realize this future,” according to the company’s own announcement. The news comes to the shock of many industry professionals who saw Drip as an innovative take on musical content delivery to superfans.
Indeed, at least to bystanders, Drip seemed to be doing quite well. Firstly, the startup was under knowledgeable, experienced hands—its co-founders, Sam Valenti IV and Miguel Senquiz, also run Ghostly International, one of the most diverse and forward-thinking indie record labels and lifestyle brands alive today ("a Goop for the Pitchfork set,” writes the New York Times). Drip also had a decent financial track record, having received $1.5 million in seed funding in 2015, according to CrunchBase. Aside from Ghostly International, renowned labels from Domino Records (Animal Collective, Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys) to Sub Pop (Flight of the Conchords, Beach House, Fleet Foxes) amassed thousands of Drip subscribers.
Reading through the several interviews conducted with Valenti over the years, one finds a nostalgia for the recording industry’s golden age, a cynical attitude toward larger streaming services, and a tried-but-not-quite-true reconciliation of this past and present in a vision of music’s future. Indeed, Drip’s ultimate goal was ambitious—not simply to create a digital fan club, but rather to leverage the increasing popularity of music subscription services to foster more intimate artist-fan relationships, which seem to be diminishing in this age of constant discovery.
It is difficult to imagine an era when curation was neither computerized nor unlimited. Yet, when CDs, LPs and other physical formats dominated music consumption, human beings were the dominant curators, and the best place to receive a highly personalized curation experience was at record stores. "The record store experience was the ultimate music experience in its heyday—someone knew who you were, they remembered what you bought last week, showed you new stuff,” described Valenti in a 2012 interview with GigaOM.
Technology has transformed the cultural hub of the record store into one of autonomous, algorithmic, sporadic musical exploration. While enhancing the consumer experience, this transformation has also made skeptics out of many hopeful artists. Although streaming services have used data science to master an unprecedentedly microscopic investigation into our evolving tastes, they often prioritize consumer relationships with the platform over those with the content, taking the spotlight away from the very artists that bring this music alive. We are also seeing major labels taking equity stakes in streaming services, a dangerous situation considering that these platforms were founded on a mission to empower artists of all career stages and equalize opportunities for growth in the music industry.
There has been a recent influx of music startups seeking to help artists and labels build a more stable following, in response to larger streaming services allegedly abandoning their core audience. Independent solutions such as Drip allow for the cultivation of a more niche, intimate and easily identifiable community around a particular artist, while helping smaller labels make a more predictable, more direct income.
To return to our analogy for food, however, perhaps omakase is not the best model for the future of musical content delivery. Countless visions for artist-friendly technologies disintegrate precisely because they falsely equate “artist-friendly” with “exclusive” and “restrictive.” After all, our hunger for food is not completely analogous to our desire for music. We can settle with a selective curation of food because we cannot eat unlimited food forever, or else we would become obese or die. There is no such thing, on the other hand, as “musical obesity”—we can consume as much as we want, whenever we want, without health hazards. In the digital art world, we are used to, crave, and in fact benefit from unlimited and ungated access, and platforms that prevent us from getting that access will not grow. Hence, the ultimate challenge for music companies of the future is to build a platform that simultaneously preaches the gospel of open access and encourages deeper loyalty to creators.
Despite being an unfortunate loss, the news about Drip also provides a telling glimpse into the life of a music entrepreneur. A few decades ago, it was impossible to manage a successful record label while also running a technology startup on the side. In contrast, young music leaders today wear many hats, and constantly shift gears in accordance with how the industry evolves. At least in the short term, Valenti presented a compelling model for how artists and labels can grow an organic following in the digital age; perhaps we will see another startup emerge under his wing in the future. It is important to note, however, that this continual cycle of rebirth, experimentation and learning in the music startup world conflicts directly with the industry's increasingly vocal push for sustainability. The concept of sustainability also conflicts with the fact that we will always want running water from our musical faucet, not just a Drip.
