Fostering a new type of future for musicians

Eilís Ryan

Life races along at a mile a millisecond for the young Mullingar entrepreneur, Sarah Jane Foster, who is developing a business she believes could reshape the future for musicians in an era when traditional record sales have largely disappeared.

The owner of SJF Productions, a professional film and video company, Sarah Jane is has been working in media since graduating from GMIT (now TUS Galway) with a degree in film and media studies in the mid-2000s, and has stints in TV presenting and radio broadcasting under her belt while all the time growing SJF Productions, which is based here in Mullingar.

In the last year or so, however, there’s been little point in rapping on the door of SJF Productions in the hope of tracking down Sarah. She has been racking up serious air miles while developing The Raw Network, an ambitious platform designed to give musicians greater control over how their work is distributed and monetised.

In simple terms, what Sarah Jane is working on is an online ‘shopfront’ for musical artists – a platform where fans can subscribe directly to their favourite performers and where musicians can finally see who their audiences are and earn revenue directly from them.

The idea took root, Sarah explains, when she got a call from the US tech company that is behind The Portal in Dublin, asking her to do some filming at The Portal itself of the Cork singer Cian Ducrot.

“I said, ‘perfect. I’ll do that. No problem’.

“So it was a three-camera setup but the next thing, the production just started growing legs. Cian is signed to Universal Records and they got on board, and they started saying, ‘We actually want a full band. We want a full choir.’

“And I was like, I can’t do this with three cameras. There’s no way.

“We ended up having to get permits and everything from Dublin City Council. They were unbelievably helpful, so obliging, really wanted to go for it – but they also warned: ‘if this gets out of hand, because, it’s right beside the Luas track – we’re going to have to shut it down’.”

As a result, they were given a 25-minute window to get the filming done and the artist was allowed to announce the show just 30 minutes beforehand.

“It could have got dangerous very fast,” Foster says. “We had one shot.

“The production ended up being absolutely massive, like one of the biggest productions I’ve ever done. Luckily, I have contacts everywhere in the production industry and in the TV and film industry in general. So I had been working on Tommy Tiernan’s show at the time, and I was like, right, I’m rounding up all the troops from this – all the camera operators I know, the director, everything.

“And I ended up producing a massive production. There was like a 12-camera setup.

“We came up with this model where the money coming in would be split between the artist, us, and a charity of the artist’s choice.

“We live-streamed the event, using this US company’s technology. So it wasn’t as if it was on Facebook or Instagram, and they were making money off it. We were going to be making the money directly.

“It was brilliant. And the US company were like, ‘oh my God, this is incredible!’. They made money from it.”

Concept

With that, a concept was born.

Universal Records decided to test the model further, and they asked Sarah Jane to come up with ideas that would amplify Cian’s brand.

“They basically gave me a blank canvas,” she explains.

The cogs began clicking in Sarah’s brain, because as the granddaughter of Mick Foster of Foster and Allen, she had long been aware of the difficulties musicians face in earning a fair income.

Sarah went back to the tech company and told them the vision she had that would fulfil the request from Universal.

“I’d had this idea of setting up an app or a platform for musicians. The system is currently not fair. Musicians get, I think, less than 12% of the revenue generated in the music industry. When you think of the sports industry, athletes can get up to 50% or 60%. A lot of people don’t realise that.

“I kept thinking there has to be a better way; why is it this way? Even in Mullingar, I was thinking, there’s no reason for any of the musicians here to be struggling. They should be able to make at least a living. They’re so talented.”

Many musicians are relying on platforms such as TikTok, Facebook and YouTube to get their music out and to grow their fanbases – but there is little income earned directly from such sites. On streaming platforms such as Spotify, artists receive only a fraction of a cent per stream and, crucially, have no direct access to data about their own listeners.

“I was talking to one artist with 50,000 monthly listeners. I asked him who they were. He didn’t know. Not only are you not making money, you don’t even know who your fans are.”

The practical side of what is clearly Sarah’s creative brain decided that if there’s a problem, there’s obviously somebody who has to be there to solve it – and she decided to be that person.

“My work tends to sit at the intersection of the creative industries and technology, so that background in media and production has really shaped how I approach building platforms for artists.

“I don’t have all these millions to pump into this platform. But then the US company came along. I had the idea, and I knew that they had the tech. And I had the relationships in Ireland. I had the domain expertise, everything. So we really complemented each other.

Out of that relationship grew The Raw Network, in which Sarah holds a 51 per cent share. A subscription-based platform, it is designed to give artists ownership, transparency and direct relationships with fans.

“The RAW Network is a direct to fan digital platform for musicians that allows artists to sell performances, music and exclusive content directly to their audiences rather than relying solely on traditional streaming platforms which pay very little,” says Sarah Jane.

While the company was started up and is currently based in Ireland, The Raw Network has plans to expand the exposure of Irish musicians in the US by exporting Irish music digitally.

The platform operates on blockchain technology, allowing artists to see exactly who subscribes, who pays and when. Fans can subscribe at different price tiers for exclusive content, behind-the-scenes access and direct interaction.

Sarah uses a retail analogy to explain the idea: “Social media is the footfall on Grafton Street,” she says. “The Raw Network is your Brown Thomas.”

In other words, social media platforms help attract attention, but The Raw Network is intended to be the place where dedicated fans go to pay directly for premium access.

Another element of the platform targets venues. Pubs can sign up at no cost and use a digital jukebox feature, enabling customers to play music from registered artists. Revenue is then split between the artist, the venue and the platform, with the majority going to the musician.

“The global jukebox market is worth around $2 billion,” Sarah says. “Why shouldn’t local artists tap in to that instead of just giving it away for free on social media?

She says some artists initially struggle to see the problem.

“They’ll say: ‘We’ve a million followers on Instagram and TikTok.’ But I ask them: can you buy your pint of Guinness or your fancy coffee with those likes? You can’t. So what good are they?”

Her vision is that any artist or band can sign up to The Raw Network instead of simply giving their music away online.

While the tech firm is US-based, the tech team are in India, and to really tie down the detail of how the platform should be shaped, Sarah travelled to meet the engineers and developers in person.

Sarah Jane is grateful for the assistance she has received from the Local Enterprise Office in Westmeath, who funded a feasibility study which examined the technical and commercial viability of the platform, including user experience, performance, security and the subscription model, and confirmed strong potential for the concept ahead of the next phase of development.

Thinking beyond the present

Although the initial launch will focus on Ireland, Sarah’s ambitions are global. She has secured a licensing deal with metaverse company Sansar, paving the way for immersive virtual concerts in the future. She points to US rapper Travis Scott as an early pioneer of large-scale metaverse performances.

A second agreement with global telecommunications firm Centilli will facilitate mobile-based payments in markets where large numbers of people are unbanked.

“So if we’re doing live-streamed performances, we can target people directly on their phones,” she says. “They can pay using their mobile numbers – not through their phone bill, but through the phone itself.

“That future-proofs what we’re building,” she says. “We’re thinking long term.”

Another string to Sarah Jane’s bow is her work as a podcaster, and says she would love to expand it to the US in the. But for now, she’s keeping her cards close to her chest.