LimeWire offers new subscription-based platform for artists
Written by WOM writer on April 18, 2023
How about that – you wait for one story about a famed older music industry brand relaunching itself as a modern creator-focused subscription platform, and then two come along at once.
Yesterday we wrote about Winamp’s new in-app “Fanzone” subscription platform, and now LimeWire, the one-time filesharing brand, is announcing its continued rebirth with a new subscription-based platform.
“Designed to empower content creators and offer fans exclusive content that is fully ownable,” is how LimeWire puts it, and to demonstrate the desirability of their new offering, platinum recording artist and songwriter Lauren Jauregui has announced her departure from Patreon and a transition to LimeWire.
Like other platforms, it will allow artists to supply fans with exclusive content or experiences in exchange for subscriptions and payments from fans – the twist being that LimeWire has web3-ified its platform and thus fans will “take ownership of each individual content piece, as every subscriber will automatically receive a digital collectible of each post shared by the artist.”
Once fans own these posts, they, LimeWire hopes, will be incentivised to collect them all, and can thus sell or buy content-containing posts from other fans, via “traditional credit card payments and popular cryptocurrencies.”
It’s interesting that LimeWire is pitching itself as a Patreon alternative, rather than just an NFTs marketplace. Limewire says that it learned that “one-off collection drops [are] unsustainable for creators,” and is instead now focusing on combining those NFTs with a community engagement platform.
(And because these kind of things come in threes, don’t forget that another music tech veteran, Napster, has a web3 re-invention strategy too, having just bought music NFT marketplace Mint Songs.)
Source: Joe Sparrow – musically.com
