Incubator’s Revenue Model

Incubator’s revenue will come from publishing music, licensing deals, ticket sales and merch. All the normal channels. 

But we won’t be a normal label. Over the last two years, we’ve been setting the groundwork to become not a profitable business, but a profitable community. 

As a community entering the music industry, we have 2 advantages.

1 – Incubator provides context to the music

Soon, Incubator songs will come out of a web series showing in detail how the songs came together and who made them. 

The web series will follow the members of Accelerator and other Incubator musicians, telling the real story of what we do.

Being able to see the moment songs are birthed and know what led to that moment will allow audiences to care about the music more. Every Incubator song will be part of an overarching narrative. The narrative that follows our collective effort to make it in the music industry. 

Most music exists in a vacuum. It’s a 3 minute poem set to music that people can research to find bits of lore about. Incubator music will be part of a real story unfolding in realtime with real characters. This will make our music more powerful.  

2 – Improved touring model 

When a band goes on tour, they have to lug an insane amount of equipment from city to city. They work with a new team at a new venue every night, pay for a hotel every night and eat at a diner before packing up all their stuff and doing the same thing again the next day.

It’s exhausting and inefficient. 

Here’s what an Incubator tour could look like:

4 Boyfriends are part of the D.C. Incubator and are about to go on tour up the East Coast.

The start by spending a week at the Baltimore Incubator.

The Baltimore Incubator has a venue for them to play in, Airbnb style-rooms for them to sleep in and a kitchen to eat home-cooked meals. The Baltimore Incubator team already knows 4 Boyfriends’ tech setup, so all the band has to do is show up.

Touring as an Incubator artist will be like going to a second home because every venue and service needed will be part of Incubator. 

4 Boyfriends plays a series of intimate shows in Baltimore over the week. They may teach a masterclass, write with local Baltimore musicians or be the featured acts at jam party.

When they’re done, they move up to Philly for another week. 

A 4 week tour in just 4 cities. A relaxed, slow paced vacation for the band. It’s more enjoyable for the band, resulting in better performances, happier audiences, and it’s more economical because everything from the venue to the housing, food and team are all part of Incubator. 

Normal tours are frantic speed runs to play to as many people as possible. Touring bands get burned out and audiences can tell. They’ll usually play their 11 preselected songs before moving on to the next city. Audiences are lucky if the band even acknowledges what city they’re in. 

In an Incubator tour, the touring band will have the time to settle in and get to the know the local community and the local community will have the opportunities to get to know them. 

But this is a post about revenue, so I’ll finish with a summary of why this touring model can be more profitable than the standard model: 

• The amount of equipment and team members that need to be transported will be drastically reduced
• Housing, food and venue costs will be reduced because it’s all owned by Incubator
• Less planning and coordination is needed because everyone involved at every stop is part of Incubator
• Touring will be a slower-paced more relaxing experience, making for better performances and happier audiences. 

Imagine getting to see a behind-the-scenes look at your favorite bands working together online, then getting to hear your favorite songs performed by them in a surprisingly small venue in your city, then getting to take classes and party with them.

While our revenue sources will be standard (streaming, shows), we’ll offer something no one else is. Context to the music and live integration into local communities through touring. That should set us apart and bring in enough money so that we can do this for a living.