SOS’s Audio Production / Disttibution Subscription Venture, SOS for Artists

[LinkedMusicians]

I didn’t notice this until today, but Sound on Sound, AKA SOS, has launched a platform called SOS for Artists. Clearly, the financial struggle in the journalism world has resulted in publishers diversifying into creating businesses that sell the products they review, another ethically problematic area for journalism. Ziff Davis did when they launched Humble Bundle, a once controversial practice of for profit businesses exploiting charities to boost sales. Many years ago, I was involved in the early Red campaign — one of the early big marketing programs that leveraged / exploited a charity in order to make profits. I was working until 3 AM one day and completely forgot that Bono was coming in that morning for a meeting. so I missed my chance to meet him. However, Bono was largely responsible for my perspective on for-profit businesses exploiting charities. His argument was basically, though the practice isn’t beautiful and, is certainly exploitive, it may very well be the difference between some charities receiving vital funding or not.

So here’s the SOS deal (which doesn’t involve a charity, as does Ziff Davis’ product marketing venture, Humble Bundle). Pricing starts at $12.99 per month, but there is a 30% off going on right now (see my second post for details):

Your end-to-end music production suite
$2,000 worth of music creation, production and distribution tools.

Unlimited distribution to 150+ streaming platforms including Spotify and Apple Music

A library of 3M+ royalty-free samples from top producers

25+ must-have instrument and effects plugins from big brands like Arturia and Spitfire.

Unlimited AI mastering and stem separation

https://www.sosforartists.com

• This topic was modified 1 week, 3 days ago by LinkedMusicians. Reason: updated with 30% off sale info referring to my second post

The official LinkedMusicians account

[LinkedMusicians]

From my email from SOS today — a 30% off sale + a free plugin when you sign up for a trial or subscription plan:

CREATE / PRODUCE / DISTRIBUTE
BLACK FRIDAY SALE
30% OFF PRO PLAN
Get a free Safari Pedals Hawk Phaser plug‑in worth $59 when you sign up to the Free 7‑day trial or purchase a subscription plan.

Designed to support independent artists, producers and collaborators at every stage of the music-making journey, SOS FOR ARTISTS is a new subscription service from Sound On Sound that brings together all the tools needed to take your music from idea to release.

SOS FOR ARTISTS combines over 40 premium plug-ins and instruments, over 3 million royalty-free samples and professional-grade AI mastering services from LANDR, trusted by major labels. You also get unlimited digital distribution to 150+ streaming platforms with full royalty ownership, collaboration tools and built-in user support. Get access to the ultimate toolkit for producing, mixing, mastering and distributing your music.
What’s included?

Plug-ins
Elevate your DAW with essential instrument and effects plug-ins from top brands such as Eventide, Arturia, Synchro Arts, Spitfire Audio and IK Multimedia. Includes premium mixing tools, samples, synths and more to bring out the best in your vocals, instruments and mixes.

Samples
Access a massive collection of over 3 million royalty-free samples from acclaimed producers and labels. Preview as many as you want to find specific sounds or search using genre, key and tempo tags. Up to 2,400 sample credits per year are included in a subscription, with new samples added every week.

Mastering
Trusted by top labels like Def Jam, Atlantic, and Warner Records, LANDR Mastering delivers a release-ready sound in minutes. Its advanced AI analyses your mix-frequency balance, dynamics, stereo width, and applies a custom chain to enhance your music instantly.

Distribution
Release your music to over 150 streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, TIDAL, and more. Enjoy unlimited releases, keep 100% of your earnings, and get best-in-class support from real humans. Easily migrate your catalogue from another distributor and keep your music online for as long as you want.

https://www.sosforartists.com/

The official LinkedMusicians account

[joegyork]

I’m an occasional customer of Humble Bundle (for cheap games rather than music resources) I have noticed that their cut to the charities seems to have gone down recently. Do you think that they are sufficiently bad not to deal with them?

[LinkedMusicians]

On joegyork said

I’m an occasional customer of Humble Bundle (for cheap games rather than music resources) I have noticed that their cut to the charities seems to have gone down recently. Do you think that they are sufficiently bad not to deal with them?

The reality is that the model that Humble Bundle uses is to exploit charities to make it look like they’re doing good, when in reality, it’s just a standard for-profit business. So, I don’t think Ziff Davis’ Humble Bundle is any worse than most businesses. I just think it’s important to know that they’re a for-profit business and not a charity, because there’s a lot of public confusion around that, somewhat by design.

Back when I had a publication on marketing and branding, I wrote on the topic (not Humble Bundle, but the practice of for profit companies exploiting charities to create the appearance that they’re a kind, charitable operation, often confusing consumers into beleiving that they are a charity). Now, I didn’t share that I was personally working on a marketing campaign with what was, pretty much, the biggest (at the time) and maybe the first big business to do this kind of exploitation of a charity by a for profit business, RED. And we were working with Bono and some other celebrities. Candidly, I felt morally conflicted about the practice (yeah, this was before influencer marketing exploded and ethics in marketing hit an all time low — and keeps going lower). Just to give you an idea. I was a director at one Fortune 200 where they — not me — had been the sole sponsor of a huge city marathon. The company spent something like $1 million on promoting the event and gave a few thousand dollars to the charity they partnered with. Personally, if I ran that program, there’s NO WAY I would have done that. It’s exploitive and if people only understood how these things work, they might see them for what they are.

So, I don’t think it’s that brands that engage in this kind of marketing strategy are necessarily WORSE than any other business.I just want our community to know that it’s not actually a charitable organization; that if they really want to help a charity, don’t consider this doing so. Give directly to a charity. A Humble Bundle purchase is something we do for ourselves — for fun. But from a business ethics perspective, here’s the issue. It’s simply exploitative and confuses the public into thinking they’re supporting a charity, which is why these ventures exist. Charities are often cash-strapped and they’ll accept deals like this because they desperately need funding. It was Bono’s argument that as much as this arrangement isn’t pretty, it still delivers some cash to charities that they otherwise wouldn’t see.

As far as SOS, we have a serious journalistic ethics dilemma when a publisher that does reviews is now marketing and making profits from those products.  As a potential scenario, let’s say that SOS brings in $1 million a year from the sale of Product X. Do you really trust them to give a completely unbiased review of Product X, when they’re also promoting it and bringing in $1 million a year in revenue? One would have to be fantastically naive to believe that would not result in bias. But the publishing industry is in a horrible situation. I made a bunch of friends in the industry from my days at large brands — journalists and editors. When I met them, they were all gainfully employed. In recent years, they’ve all had to do different kinds of work to get by.

The official LinkedMusicians account

1

[joegyork]

Thanks Peter that is a useful insight re HB! As for SOS it does seem that they must be conflicted!

[bselack]

When I buy on humble Bundle I always adjust the sliders for custom amounts to give more to the charity.

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