Aslice, a platform aimed at ensuring musicians receive fair compensation when their music is played by DJs, has officially announced its closure. Their closure underscores the ongoing struggle in the music industry to provide artists with fair and transparent compensation, especially from DJ performances.

 

 

 

 

 

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Aslice’s Vision: A Slice of Fairness

Aslice was founded with a mission to create a more equitable ecosystem for artists, focusing on fair compensation from DJ performances. The platform allowed DJs to voluntarily share a portion of their earnings directly to the producer's tracks they played. This approach aimed to rectify the historical challenges artists faced in receiving their due royalties, especially in the live music space.

 

Key Insights from the 2024 Audience Strategies Aslice Report

The 2024 Audience Strategies Aslice Report released on Aslice.com provided crucial insights into the state of artist compensation in the music industry, highlighting several important findings:

• • Ineffective Performance Rights Organizations (PROs): PROs have not adapted to electronic music's needs, failing to provide user-friendly digital interfaces, accurate tracking of unreleased music, or fair royalty distribution. Many DJs distrust these organizations and do not participate.

  • Financial Struggles of Producers: A large majority of producers earn very little from music production, with 82% earning less than $500 annually. Many are forced to take on additional jobs or become DJs to make ends meet.

  • Aslice as a Solution: Aslice, a platform designed to address these issues, successfully redistributed income between DJs and producers. It achieved high accuracy in track matching and provided a more transparent and equitable system. However, despite its successes, Aslice faced challenges in widespread adoption, particularly among top-tier DJs.

  • Industry Resistance: Desipite all of it's accuracy and high level of execution, Aslice encountered skepticism and resistance from the industry, with many DJs reluctant to adopt the platform due to entrenched practices and concerns over additional costs.

  • Legacy and Future Implications: Despite its closure, Aslice set a new standard for fair compensation in electronic music and sparked important conversations about transparency and equity. The platform's technology and lessons learned could influence future initiatives aimed at creating a more just payment system for artists.

 

The Bigger Picture: The Struggle for Fair Compensation

Aslice's closure is not just a loss for its users but a significant moment in the broader conversation about fair compensation in the music industry. The platform’s challenges and ultimate shutdown highlight the complexities involved in disrupting traditional models and the resistance to change that often accompanies such efforts.

The need for fair compensation for artists remains a pressing issue. The closure of Aslice should serve as a call to action for the industry to support initiatives that prioritize transparency and fairness. It is crucial for artists, DJs, and industry stakeholders to continue advocating for systems that ensure creators are fairly compensated for their work.

To further emphasize this need and Aslice's service to the community, 6AM's own Chief Growth Officer and founder of Synthetik Minds, Marco Sgalbazzini commented the below on Alice's announcement post:

"Before I share my experience with Aslice, as a promoter and agent, I would like to thank you and the whole Aslice team, as well as all investors, supporters and in particular all the DJs that contributed to the project.

My team and I had the honor of being one of the founding members of the Support the Sound initiative, with the aim to use our event and booking platform to introduce Aslice to agencies and artists to speed up the adoption process of an initiative that is not only dear to us as event curators, but essential for the health of our scene, community and even industry (if we want to talk pure business here)

What I noticed in the 8-9 months of interfacing with artists and agents on this project has been quite revealing and, sad to say, not in a positive way. After reading the Audience Strategies report in detail, I can confirm that its findings align very much with what I observed first hand. Big DJs and big agencies were the most reluctant or skeptic to adopt Aslice. Smaller, local artists were the most eager, and the quickest to buy into the concept, adopt it and begin reporting their sets.

I heard all the "reasons aka excuses" listed in the report. Some artists never responded. Others were openly against it. Some said they would but you could tell it was empty words. Others said they would but got too busy and forgot or had a backlog of reports.

Ultimately, it felt like adoption was coming, but just not at a fast enough rate. It felt like an uphill battle, and sometimes it was disheartening to see that it was the highest paid artists who were not recognizing the importance of Aslice and recognizing the artistry of producers whose tracks they were touring the world playing.

The reality is that the story of Aslice is in many ways a mirroring of society as a whole. Too many of us are happy for things to stay the way they are because it's convenient for us. Too many of us are happy to look the other way when doing the right thing takes a little bit of effort, time and money from our own personal (more selfish?) goals. I am guilty of it too at times.

I want to believe that the story of Aslice is but a chapter in a longer story that will see this industry, scene and community eventually recognize how important it is to value the music producers whose hard work are the foundations of everything that comes after it, including the clubbing institutions, the massive festivals, the Instagram followers and likes, the big artist fees and agency commissions, the sport cars and private jets...

Ego is the enemy. But it can be defeated

I know that I questioned a lot of my beliefs and changed thanks to Aslice. Perhaps not fast enough. Perhaps we could have all done a bit more to make these changes happen quicker - I feel that I certainly could have.

I want to believe that in whatever format and name it comes, Aslice 2.0 will find less ego, skepticism and selfishness, more understanding, empathy and adoption.

Thank you to the whole Aslice team for opening our eyes as to what a more equitable scene should be like and for the opportunity to have been a small part of it, even if it wasn't enough... for now."

 

Conclusion

The closure of Aslice marks the end of a significant effort to ensure fair compensation for music artists. While the platform may soon no longer be operational, its mission and the issues it sought to address remain more relevant than ever. The music industry must continue to evolve, finding new ways to support artists and ensure they receive the compensation they deserve.

Aslice's story is a reminder that the fight for fairness in the music industry is ongoing. The hope is that future platforms will build on the foundation Aslice laid, creating a more transparent and equitable environment for all music creators.