Artists have what it takes to create products and tools that better serve the creator economy.
I’ve had over 2 billion streams from music I’ve created. I’ve won an MTV VMA. I’ve been nominated for BRIT Awards. And only after all of that did it feel acceptable to give back by building SyncIt: a platform designed to help unrepresented artists and independent labels get their music into advertising, film, TV, and games.
The artist journey is brutally familiar: You create work you believe in. You refine it obsessively. You search for an audience. You try to monetise enough to survive and hopefully grow.
It’s an emotional rollercoaster. One day, you’ve cracked it. Next, you’re flattened by criticism, algorithms, or silence. You move from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm because quitting feels worse than continuing.
That is exactly the path of an entrepreneur: We start with an idea. We iterate relentlessly. We look for early product-market fit. We build a revenue model that sustains long-term growth.
"Take streaming. If enough artists united to build a different kind of platform, the economics could change. Instead, we bow to existing platforms. Why?"
So why are so many artists only focused on art and nothing more? One could argue it’s a left brain vs right brain dilemma, while others would argue it’s all about timing and that a lot of artists do tend to build something that serves their industry after they’ve ‘made it’. Both explanations are too generous.
The real reason is vanity.
This industry is engineered to reward external validation: strangers loving you, numbers going up, and relevance being visible. Streams. Followers. Awards. Plaques. It’s intoxicating. It validates not just the work, but our existence.
I know because I chased it!
Looking back, I’m frustrated with myself.
Once I had my foot through the door, I chased the wrong wins. I missed opportunities to change things earlier. And the irony is painful: artists are the ones on the front line every day. We sit between labels and audiences. We absorb the risk. We take the blame when systems fail, yet we rarely band together to redesign those systems.
Take streaming. If enough artists united to build a different kind of platform, the economics could change. Instead, we bow to existing platforms. Why? Because vanity metrics keep us compliant. Streams and followers become status. Status becomes survival. And suddenly it’s a zero-sum game where enough is never enough.
We’ve lost the purity in making music and sharing it with the world. We’ve replaced that purity with insecurity. I still want awards and platinum plaques; I guess I’m hard-wired that way. But what has helped me temper the want for these materialistic desires is to create a platform that truly helps others – irrespective of how people view me. My validation now comes from how many people I’ve helped. I only wish I started sooner…
