Grammy-nominated rapper and producer Ryan Leslie was in the middle of introducing himself during WordPress founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg’s SXSW Interactive panel when he did something a little peculiar. He gave the entire audience his phone number and asked them to take out their phones and text him.
Leslie, without lifting a finger, demonstrated how he uses open source technologies, such as Ruby on Rails and the Twilio API, to create a tool that helps him stay in one-to-one contact with his fans via text—skills he learned attending CodeAcademy. Every person in the room who texted Leslie received a text back saying, “Yoooo – just got your text – what’s your email?” Communicating in this way enables Leslie to build up a collection of contact information from the people who matter most to him: his fanbase
“It’s like an address book on steroids,” Leslie said.
Leslie’s demonstration illustrates the impact open source technologies have on nearly every industry, whether that’s through WordPress for publishing, OpenStack for cloud computing, or Leslie’s tools for keeping contact with his fans.
“My belief is that we’ll start to see open source dominate every area that it touches,” Mullenweg said during the panel, appropriately titled A New Generation: Creativity and Open Source. “And I think that we’re starting to see this in cultural areas. Mr. Ryan Leslie is at the forefront of this.”
The way Leslie is using open source technologies has also become a lucrative endeavor. He is essentially cutting the middleman out of his album and merch sales. He’s his own marketing and sales team capable of pushing out notifications for new albums and merch directly to the people who have expressed interest in his music.
Leslie revealed that by the time Universal took its cut of sales from his first album, he pocketed about $90,000. “They charge everything back to the artist,” he said. “It’s like the worst payday loan you could get.” By comparison, his first self-distributed album earned him $150,000.
“As creators, we’ve tried to find our way in the dark,” Leslie said. “We don’t have any precision data on who’s buying our records. My record label didn’t even have it.”
Leslie’s new approach to the business of music is echoed in all of his public interactions, from the tweets in his stream where he refers to fans as “renegades,” to his new single, “New New,” and even the name of his upcoming album MZRT—short for “The Magnificently Zealous Renegade Takeover.” In the first few moments of the “New New” music video, a disembodied voice from his smart phone informs Leslie that he now knows 11,619 renegades, six of which are celebrating birthdays. Then the voice asks if he has a special message he’d like to leave them.
Leslie isn’t quite there yet. Leaving personal messages to fans with birthdays while strolling around palatial mansions is great rap video fodder, though. And it may serve as a suggestion of where he would like to push his new, technologically-savvy, open source approach to music and business.
Ryan Leslie is a genius!
The crazy thing is that Ryan received $90,000 from Universal for 180,000 sold units. Since he has cut the middle man the he made $150,000 from just 20,000 sold units. He is the proof that major labels are absolute nonsense for any artist. Of course, marketing yourself isn’t easy but I rather have a marketing which is not as strong as the majors’ than to give all of my money to the label.
A friend told me about the story of 30 Seconds To Mars. They are huge, right? They’ve sold millions of units still they are in debt to their label. I think this is ridiculous.
Ryan’s marketing concept is the future of independent music distribution for artists and producers. I believe in it.