Jeff Rimmer and Megan Hargarten with their development team in their space at In Your Ear. Photo by Jonathan Spiers.
On the hunt for a home in Richmond, a new-to-town music streaming service with an attention-grabbing name has set up shop in Shockoe Bottom as it reconfigures its format, seeks out local investors and searches for a permanent base of operations.
Beatgasm, a digital music platform that focuses on independent artists, arrived in May and moved into the In Your Ear studio complex, filling a top-floor space recently vacated when ad shop Initiate-it moved down the hall.
Comparable to SoundCloud and Spotify, Beatgasm streams music through its online platform, but it distinguishes itself by how it compensates artists. Where some services charge listeners a monthly membership fee, Beatgasm allows listeners – as well as artists – to use it for free, and uses a tipping system to compensate artists directly.
Listeners who prefer a particular song can stream it from then on by tipping artists set amounts, from 25 cents to $2 per song – much in the tradition of musicians busking on the street.
Users receive points for each tip they pay, as well as for “liking” a song or adding it to their playlist, and can apply those points toward things like merchandise and concert tickets. The artists receive 85 percent of each tip, and 15 percent goes to Beatgasm.
CEO Jeff Rimmer, who started the platform three years ago in Denver with an electronic music format, said he broadened the format to include all genres of independent music, with a goal of promoting indie bands and artists and also supporting them through the platform’s tipping service.
“So far, we’ve had 100 percent feedback from artists and labels that this is a great idea and much-needed,” Rimmer said.
The tipping idea came from Megan Hargarten, Beatgasm’s vice president of strategy, after she saw buskers in Austin, Texas, collect $100 in the span of an hour.
“We compare it to the craft beer industry or fair trade coffee,” Hargarten said of the tipping model. “You’re willing to pay $4 for that cup of coffee, and we’re hoping that here on this platform – when you get to know the artists, you love their music and you know what you’re doing is going directly to them – that you’ll be incentivized to tip on tracks that you like.”
A screen capture of Beatgasm’s website.
Hargarten said other platforms are losing money because they pay a large percentage of their revenues to labels. She said advertising revenue doesn’t cover those costs, because most listeners seek out free services. She said Pandora, for example, has been losing tens of millions of dollars a month this year.
“That plays into what we’re trying to do,” she said. “We’re not trying to be another $10-a-month service, and we’re not asking you to generically pay and you have no idea where your $10 is going. We’re saying that you control what you pay and who you pay, and it goes directly to that artist.”
Rimmer said Beatgasm has raised $5.5 million from investors and is seeking to raise another $1.5 million. Hargarten said most of that money has been put into researching and developing the platform’s business model, transitioning its format and creating the tipping technology.
“These mainstream platforms have a ton of listeners, but they’re all making fractions of a penny on a play,” Hargarten said. “With the tipping model, the tips range from 25 cents to $2, so you’re actually getting a whole dollar amount as an artist. Yes, that’s pocket change, but it’s a heck of a lot more than 0.000175 (of a cent).”
Based in San Francisco, Hargarten is splitting her time between the West Coast and Richmond, but plans to move here once she and Rimmer find Beatgasm’s permanent space in town. While they’ve enjoyed the connections made at In Your Ear, Rimmer, who most recently worked with broadcast group Max Media in Virginia Beach, said they need a larger space that can accommodate more staff, and potentially a studio to record live performances.
Once situated, they plan to bring up their development team from Colombia – one of several offices Beatgasm has around the world – who have likewise been splitting their time in Richmond. Rimmer said they will look locally for marketing services and other resources.
“The idea is to get a permanent spot here and grow our employee base and hire developers,” Rimmer said. “We want to bring everybody that we have into Richmond and make it our headquarters.”
Acknowledging they could have picked Austin or Nashville or some other music-minded city to make their home base, Rimmer said Richmond has a vibrancy that appealed to him.
“It’s a very artsy city. It’s still on the cusp of doing something – I don’t think it knows what it’s doing yet, and I like that,” he said. “I want to be on the ground floor of that. And there’s a music scene here that’s not cliché.”
Artists featured on Beatgasm thus far include local artists The Tide Rose and Lydell Williams, as well as Baltimore-based rock outfit Sunbathers, which played a Richmond launch party for Beatgasm at In Your Ear on Thursday night.
As for the name – Beatgasm – Rimmer said he thought it up when he was starting the platform in Denver.
“We spit it out, and I started Googling it and realized there was nothing like it out there. Google was confused,” he said, laughing. “So we bought everything up for it and trademarked it.
“It’s a name that catches people’s attention no matter what,” he said. “We say the definition of a ‘beatgasm’ is when a listener turns into a fan. When listeners tip, they’re obviously turning into fans at that point, and that’s what we’re trying to drive home more and more.”
Jeff Rimmer and Megan Hargarten with their development team in their space at In Your Ear. Photo by Jonathan Spiers.
On the hunt for a home in Richmond, a new-to-town music streaming service with an attention-grabbing name has set up shop in Shockoe Bottom as it reconfigures its format, seeks out local investors and searches for a permanent base of operations.
Beatgasm, a digital music platform that focuses on independent artists, arrived in May and moved into the In Your Ear studio complex, filling a top-floor space recently vacated when ad shop Initiate-it moved down the hall.
Comparable to SoundCloud and Spotify, Beatgasm streams music through its online platform, but it distinguishes itself by how it compensates artists. Where some services charge listeners a monthly membership fee, Beatgasm allows listeners – as well as artists – to use it for free, and uses a tipping system to compensate artists directly.
Listeners who prefer a particular song can stream it from then on by tipping artists set amounts, from 25 cents to $2 per song – much in the tradition of musicians busking on the street.
Users receive points for each tip they pay, as well as for “liking” a song or adding it to their playlist, and can apply those points toward things like merchandise and concert tickets. The artists receive 85 percent of each tip, and 15 percent goes to Beatgasm.
CEO Jeff Rimmer, who started the platform three years ago in Denver with an electronic music format, said he broadened the format to include all genres of independent music, with a goal of promoting indie bands and artists and also supporting them through the platform’s tipping service.
“So far, we’ve had 100 percent feedback from artists and labels that this is a great idea and much-needed,” Rimmer said.
The tipping idea came from Megan Hargarten, Beatgasm’s vice president of strategy, after she saw buskers in Austin, Texas, collect $100 in the span of an hour.
“We compare it to the craft beer industry or fair trade coffee,” Hargarten said of the tipping model. “You’re willing to pay $4 for that cup of coffee, and we’re hoping that here on this platform – when you get to know the artists, you love their music and you know what you’re doing is going directly to them – that you’ll be incentivized to tip on tracks that you like.”
A screen capture of Beatgasm’s website.
Hargarten said other platforms are losing money because they pay a large percentage of their revenues to labels. She said advertising revenue doesn’t cover those costs, because most listeners seek out free services. She said Pandora, for example, has been losing tens of millions of dollars a month this year.
“That plays into what we’re trying to do,” she said. “We’re not trying to be another $10-a-month service, and we’re not asking you to generically pay and you have no idea where your $10 is going. We’re saying that you control what you pay and who you pay, and it goes directly to that artist.”
Rimmer said Beatgasm has raised $5.5 million from investors and is seeking to raise another $1.5 million. Hargarten said most of that money has been put into researching and developing the platform’s business model, transitioning its format and creating the tipping technology.
“These mainstream platforms have a ton of listeners, but they’re all making fractions of a penny on a play,” Hargarten said. “With the tipping model, the tips range from 25 cents to $2, so you’re actually getting a whole dollar amount as an artist. Yes, that’s pocket change, but it’s a heck of a lot more than 0.000175 (of a cent).”
Based in San Francisco, Hargarten is splitting her time between the West Coast and Richmond, but plans to move here once she and Rimmer find Beatgasm’s permanent space in town. While they’ve enjoyed the connections made at In Your Ear, Rimmer, who most recently worked with broadcast group Max Media in Virginia Beach, said they need a larger space that can accommodate more staff, and potentially a studio to record live performances.
Once situated, they plan to bring up their development team from Colombia – one of several offices Beatgasm has around the world – who have likewise been splitting their time in Richmond. Rimmer said they will look locally for marketing services and other resources.
“The idea is to get a permanent spot here and grow our employee base and hire developers,” Rimmer said. “We want to bring everybody that we have into Richmond and make it our headquarters.”
Acknowledging they could have picked Austin or Nashville or some other music-minded city to make their home base, Rimmer said Richmond has a vibrancy that appealed to him.
“It’s a very artsy city. It’s still on the cusp of doing something – I don’t think it knows what it’s doing yet, and I like that,” he said. “I want to be on the ground floor of that. And there’s a music scene here that’s not cliché.”
Artists featured on Beatgasm thus far include local artists The Tide Rose and Lydell Williams, as well as Baltimore-based rock outfit Sunbathers, which played a Richmond launch party for Beatgasm at In Your Ear on Thursday night.
As for the name – Beatgasm – Rimmer said he thought it up when he was starting the platform in Denver.
“We spit it out, and I started Googling it and realized there was nothing like it out there. Google was confused,” he said, laughing. “So we bought everything up for it and trademarked it.
“It’s a name that catches people’s attention no matter what,” he said. “We say the definition of a ‘beatgasm’ is when a listener turns into a fan. When listeners tip, they’re obviously turning into fans at that point, and that’s what we’re trying to drive home more and more.”
This is amazing! I have been waiting for more things like this to hit Richmond. This concept is great, I just checked out the website and discovered 6 new songs that I have on repeat now. We need to make sure businesses like this continue to come and more importantly stay in Richmond. BEATGASM is the new Richmond.