James Blake launches direct-to-fan music platform, Vault

“About a week ago I went viral with a post about the effects of streaming and TikTok on artists’ ability to support themselves,” Blake said, announcing his partnership with Vault. "I wanted to find a way for musicians to make money directly from the music they make – not least to be able to reinvest in the very expensive process of renting studios, hiring musicians, etc. Music is not cheap to make and I wanted to help incentivise musicians to actually spend more time making music.”

The idea of Vault is to provide a service where artists can directly upload their music – demos, forthcoming releases, or songs that will be exclusively for the platform – and have the ability to see some revenue due to the subscription that fans will have to pay in order to access the content. Artists can set the subscription fee, and Blake currently has three demo recordings that are available for $5 a month.

Vault is a place to share music more intimately before songs are out anywhere else (if at all, your choice), instantaneously and with the ability to communicate with your audience. We can’t reach our own fans on DSPs. Why can’t we? Cause they own the data. With Vault, the artist…

— James Blake (@jamesblake) March 20, 2024

Blake also advocates for Vault as an authentic marketing tool allowing artists to connect with their fans and focus on creation of music, instead of content creation and having to constantly promote themselves on TikTok.

In response to somebody who suggested that this model would be more suited to an established artist with a fanbase instead of a lesser-known artist trying to create a community, Blake said: "Thing is any marketing an artist does in the current market goes to promoting songs they get paid fuck all for, or to grow followers on a platform that doesn’t pay… imagine if marketing/promoting and growing your following actually got you paid. Enter Vault!"