Roc Nation’s in-house indie distribution arm recently marked a milestone when client Clipse garnered five Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year and Best Rap Album for LET GOD SORT EM OUT and Best Rap Performance for Chains & Whips.
Now, Roc Nation Distribution has unveiled a new, multi-faceted dashboard for its artist clients, designed to expand their global reach and unlock new business opportunities.
The platform integrates streaming analytics and real-time social media insights with music and video distribution to more than 200 platforms, as well as royalty payments, publishing administration and rights distribution, among other features.
There are no upfront costs or subscription fees for the platform, Roc Nation said in an announcement on Monday (November 17), and the revenue split will remain the same, with artists taking 85% of their music earnings.
Other Roc Nation Distribution artists include Rapsody, Flau’jae, The LOX, SAINt JHN, Westside Gunn, Conway The Machine, Jay Electronica, Bootsy Collins, and Yailin La Mas Viral, among many others.
Among the more notable features is the ability to assess brand affinity: Artists will be able to identify which influential accounts and brands have overlap with their own followings, potentially opening up new promotional opportunities.
Artists will also be able to track social media mentions, as well as the hashtags and emojis most commonly associated with their works. They will also be able to evaluate social media sentiment by identifying the top social media influencers and top posts that mention them.
The dashboard will also feature demographic breakdowns of their social media audience, analyzing data from Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook and other platforms.
“The introduction of this new dashboard will be a game-changer for independent artists releasing music with Roc Nation Distribution,” Roc Nation Distribution President Krystian Santini said.
“It’s a one-stop shop that will enable artists to receive a holistic understanding of their followers, so they can build impactful strategies and broaden their music’s reach without financial barriers. This dashboard is democratizing access to tools and information historically reserved for the very few established label superstars. Our technology is uniquely ours and sets a new standard with no equivalent in today’s music industry.”
“This dashboard is democratizing access to tools and information historically reserved for the very few established label superstars.”
Krystian Santini, Roc Nation Distribution
Roc Nation says the platform will also simplify the finances around music distribution, integrating royalty payments and splits with collaborators, and will offer direct deposits to bank and PayPal accounts.
The platform will also make uploading EPs and albums easier with a function to save uploads and metadata entry until a release is ready to go public.
The dashboard was developed in partnership with Brooklyn-based design and tech studio Linked By Air. Company co-founder Dan Michaelson described the platform as a tool that “connects art and commerce.”
“Today’s musicians are technically skilled. We want to grow with you — from making the music only you can make, to seeing the revenue hit your bank account, and on to greater things. That’s why we tried to make a platform that feels more like the pads of a sampler than an accounting system,” he said.
The new dashboard comes amid an industry-wide push to offer enhanced services to indie artists, with competition for indie artists’ business continually growing. One example: earlier this year, indie distributor TuneCore launched a new trends and analytics dashboard for artists.
Music streaming platforms have themselves been expanding their services for artists; Apple Music last year launched a partner program, which followed Spotify’s own partner program. Spotify has also been running a Spotify For Artists program for several years. TikTok recently launched its own TikTok For Artists feature globally. You also runs the YouTube For Artists platform.
Music Business Worldwide
