ABOUT FORTÉ
There's currently an esoteric problem facing the music industry - Major labels control between 70 to as high as 88% of Spotify's playlists. This means that you're practically hearing only the music they want you to hear. Not only does this make it increasingly difficult to discover music you actually like, but there's a massive sector of the music industry being ignored - independent, unsigned artists.
We see Forté as a pioneering company in this largely untapped sector of the music industry and more importantly, as a revolution for these undiscovered artists.
The simplest way of explaining Forté is to imagine it as a dating app for discovering music. The matchmaking we do is between you and your next favourite band.
When you open the app you're presented with a 10 -15 second snippet from the middle of a song from a random band or artist. If you like what you hear, swipe right. That artist goes into a “Matches” folder for you to check out later, while you’re presented with another artist. If this one isn’t quite your vibe, you swipe left. Our discovery algorithm slowly learns your musical taste over time, and tries to serve up more music that it thinks you’ll be into. Over time, our hope is that there will be no need to “swipe left.”
Our big picture vision has two parallel roads - We want to make it easier for music fans to discover more artists and bands they love, while at the same time giving independent artists and musicians all over the world an incredibly powerful, globally recognised, music-specific social media platform on which they can connect with their fans and sell their products, whilst retaining complete ownership and control of the rights to their music. Forté will be the driving force behind the careers of an entirely new generation of independent, entrepreneurial musicians.
On Forté, Artists will have access to curate their own unique profile we call a “Poster”.
This Poster will serve as the central hub of their musical universe, a one-stop shop for their fans and the people who have “swiped right” on their profile. It comes with its own abbreviated hyperlink they can easily send around, or put in the bios of any other platforms they’re already on.
Every Poster will feature an artist’s press photo, a short bio, links to the streaming services that host their music, videos and other social media links.
They will have the ability to run their own customisable Shop from their Poster, where they can sell their merch, physical copies of their music, video shout outs and exclusive fan experiences.
They will be able to generate and sell tickets to their shows from their Poster via a QR code that becomes an exclusive, collectable item after the show.
They will be able to launch and run their own Community group, where their premium fans will be able to post, comment and interact on all kinds of content related to (and with) the artist.
Artists will even have the ability to crowdsource, or sell shares of their upcoming projects by incorporating Blockchain/NFT functionality, and all of this is done securely within the app, directly between the artists and their fans.
Once a fan dives into their “Matches” folder, they can click on each artist to explore their Poster. If the fan likes what they see, every Poster will have a follow button they can click. Once they click this button, the Artist moves from their “Matches” folder into their official “Artist Library”, where they can find them easily and stay up to date with their latest news and releases.
The basic version of Forté will be free for everybody to use, but we will be monetising this project in two ways.
Firstly, we will charge a monthly subscription for people who want access to the app’s “premium features”.
For Artists, these include the ability to expand their Poster to include the Shop and Ticketing system, the ability to have more than one song on the Discovery section of the app, the ability to send notifications and updates to 100% of their followers, and access to their personalised statistical discovery data.
For Fans, premium features include being able to access the Artist’s exclusive Community (this can be tiered depending on what level of involvement they want to have), having the ability to “scroll back” on the Discovery screen, and explore other user’s Artist Libraries.
The second way we will monetise is by taking a small percentage of any sale that happens through the artist’s Shop or Ticketing System.
FOR FANS - Forté is a fresh and engaging way for you to explore and discover new music in an exponentially growing ecosystem, while being able to support and interact with your favourite artists in a more direct way.
FOR ARTISTS - Forté is a game changer. A revolutionary empowerment tool that will help you turn your passion into a full time, long lasting career.