Hi,

This newsletter is inspired by the company Beehiiv and everything they’re building. They are a newsletter platform (I actually use it for this newsletter) that is quickly turning into an all in one media platform helping creators build every aspect of their business.

I can’t help but wonder what something like this could look like for the music industry.

Let’s dive in ⬇️

For context, one of the Co-Founders of Beehiiv, Tyler Denk, used to work at a massive newsletter company called Morning Brew.

Morning Brew scaled incredibly quickly - they eventually sold for $75 million to Business Insider and currently have +4 million subscribers.

They became one of the go to media platforms for daily business updates, news, and investing.

Tyler and his team are taking their learnings and innovations to Beehiiv, where they are building one of the most interesting companies I’ve seen in a long time.

What started out as newsletter software (similiar to Substack) has quickly evolved into a platform that gives creators the ability to build their own media companies.

Beehiiv has been shipping out new big features every few weeks and are essentially becoming the go to platform for creators to build newsletter businesses.

For example, Beehiiv lets you create and customize your own unique website to host your newsletter.

You can create unique, beautiful websites that look like more than just a typical newsletter sign up - they can legitimately look like professional websites.

Beehiiv also created a one stop shop for helping creators communicate with potential sponsors.

On Beehiiv, you can create a landing page that auto populates your newsletter analytics and can be sent to potential brands for sponsorships.

Companies can book sponsorships directly from the landing page, Beehiiv handles the transactions, and the entire process exists within one platform. It’s a seamless workflow as opposed to the creator have to email sponsors, negotiate rates, send analytics, coordinate payment, and more outside of the platform.

Beehiiv has essentially turned the sponsorship process into a one stop shop.

Another new feature Beehiiv recently implemented is podcasts - their platform now has the ability to automatically convert your newsletter into a podcast and distribute it to podcast platforms including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.

Now…this newsletter isn’t intended to just rave about Beehiiv (though they are great). It’s to show how a company is cornering the market by building a one stop shop platform that handles almost every aspect of a specific business.

You can…

• Write your newsletter

• Build a custom website

• Sell sponsorships directly on platform

• Turn your into newsletter into a podcast and distribute it

• and more

All from one platform. It’s not a newsletter business. It’s a media business.

What would something like this look like in the music industry?

One of the biggest issues with the music industry is how fragmented it is.

Almost nothing is centralized and so many of the different elements of an artist’s career are independent of each other.

With how fast AI is developing and how quickly people are building startups, who’s going to build the Beehiiv for the music industry? Can it even be built?

What if there was one central platform where artists and their teams could:

• Store drafts and final versions of their music

• Deliver to DSPs

• Organize metadata automatically

• Save marketing plans

• Store content and assets

• Pitch their music directly to retailers (ie Spotify for Artists)

• Track budgets

• Handle invoicing

And more. The game would be completely changed forever.

Imagine a world where an artist and their team could log into a single dashboard and look at almost every aspect of their career. From their music to marketing to budgeting and more.

Maybe that’s not physically possible based on the logistics of each part of the music industry as well as the integrations / API of platforms but I can’t help but wonder what that looks like.

That has potential to become a billion dollar company and immediately changes the game for everyone involved.

Workflow becomes more streamlined, communication gets organized, it becomes easier for artists to keep track of things, and more efficiencies develop.

An independent artist with no team is facing a nightmare trying to keep track of everything they need to build their career and scale it.

We’re watching Beehiiv do it in real time for the newsletter and creator business.

They’re also doing it an incredibly fast speed. While some companies only introduce a few new features per year, Beehiiv is introducing big features every few weeks.

They’re moving fast and going for it.

Some features will succeed. Some features will fail.

The ones that succeed can be doubled down on and the ones that fail will provide learnings.

We’re watching an all in one platform that allows creators to create, publish, monetize, distribute, and scale.

Who’s going to build it for music?

Thanks for reading, until next time.

_{The Vault}

1) The Artist Marketing Playbook - I teamed up with my good friend and fellow music marketing expert Drew De Leon to present The Artist Marketing Playbook. An in-depth look at what an artist can do to set themselves up for success in 2025. More info HERE.