As Music Business World points out, a few years back it was all the rage to ‘window’ a release. This meant that only certain listeners can stream an artist’s new work for a set period before it goes live everywhere.
As the site adds, five years ago, one big argument against exclusively ‘windowing’ an artist’s release was that it could potentially harm the fragile growth of streaming subscriptions globally – or even drive fans to free and/or illegal music platforms.
Since now there are over half a billion users of subscription streaming accounts globally, it seems the idea of ‘windowing’ is coming back.
Audiomack, the streaming and discovery service that now reaches more than 20 million monthly users, rolled out this week its ‘Premiere Access’ feature, which enables artists to reward their biggest fans with early access to not-yet-officially-released music.
Those artists can trigger ‘Premiere Access’ on their unreleased track/album by selecting the feature when they upload their work to Audiomack, while also choosing the duration of the pre-release access window they’d like to grant their biggest fans.
To be eligible for ‘Premiere Access’, artists have to be enrolled in the Audiomack Monetization Program (AMP).
Once this has been completed, an act’s super-fans are able to see that ‘Premiere Access’ is available for an upcoming track or album.
To unlock that access, these fans have to become ‘Supporters’ of the artist in question. It is a feature that allows fans on the platform to directly monetarily contribute to songs and albums from the artists they love.
