OpenWav Streaming Platform Hopes to Remix the Music Industry

OpenWav, an audio streaming app that launched over the summer, continues to build momentum on its mission to return the power in the music industry to the artists at its centre.

The app -- its name a clever play on the file extension that commonly denotes audio recordings -- is a streaming platform unlike the other major players in the industry. Through OpenWav’s interface, artists can release new music, connect directly with fans, sell branded merchandise and host live concerts, pop-ups and listening parties. Further, the startup plans to soon roll out AI tools on the platform, which will assist artists with those same tasks as digital project managers. As one user-artist remarked in a Billboard story on the platform, “It’s like TikTok meets Spotify.”

OpenWav distinguishes itself from the competition not only through its features, but also, crucially, through its business model. In recent years, the all-in-one subscription pricing of music streamers like Spotify and Apple Music has made it virtually impossible for most artists to support themselves using the revenues generated from plays of their work. With streaming platforms acting as hosts and aggregators of content, musicians receive just fractions of a cent on each play of their songs, while larger payouts are reserved for labels, distributor fees and publishing splits. Meanwhile, OpenWav’s model deemphasizes subscription to the platform as a whole, instead allowing listeners to support artists directly through monthly fees. In return, fans gain exclusive or early access to boons like new music, merchandise and concert tickets. OpenWav profits by taking a cut of the proceeds of those sales.

The upstart platform is built both for and by musicians. Wyclef Jean, the Grammy Award-winning composer, performer and producer, is OpenWav’s chief music officer. At Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference, Jean bemoaned the meagre margins of the streaming industry as it exists for musicians today: “If you’re a new artist, the amount of streams that you have to [accumulate] to get $10,000 is literally a rip-off. So now you have a constant revolt,” he said in a statement quoted by TechCrunch. OpenWav’s aim is to correct against that trend, offering artists a platform outfitted with 2025 technology alongside revenues more common in the CD-selling days of yore.

On OpenWav, artists are incentivized to support themselves by building loyal followings of “superfans,” privileging the passion of each artist’s fanbase over the crude quantity of their total streams. It remains to be seen whether the platform will be gone in a beat, or if the music industry will embrace its offerings, creating new commercial harmonies between musicians and their audiences.