From the days when the future King David played the harp to soothe the tortured soul of King Saul (and likely long before then), live music has played an important role in human society.
In the modern world, the music explosion in the 1960s both stirred emotions and brought solace to Western societies tired of endless wars and looking for some relief.
It also made many musicians very wealthy, and that combination of societal value and economic gain powered countless musicians’ careers – and enabled some unscrupulous “managers” to rob them blind in the process.
The 30-year hayride for top-tier musicians was shaken in the 1990s with the arrival of Napster, the peer-to-peer file-sharing service that allowed users to download and share MP3 files without paying anything for the privilege.
As artists, record labels, and music industry organizations quickly recognized that Napster was enabling widespread sharing of copyrighted material without permission or compensation, many filed lawsuits accusing Napster of massive copyright infringement.
Eventually, Napster was shut down, but its impact on the music industry paved the way for the digital revolution by demonstrating the power of peer-to-peer sharing on a global scale.
On the upside, peer sharing can increase an artist’s name recognition and attract new fans. On the downside, file-sharing services like Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, and others pay very little to artists, especially compared to the revenues they once raked in from physical album sales, whether on vinyl, cassette, eight-track, or compact disc.
While a few artists generate significant revenues from streams that total in the millions, most musicians today rely on live performances (where they sell CDs and vinyl, along with T-shirts and other merchandise) to pay their bills.
Ashanti Abdullah The COVID pandemic, which shut down live performances worldwide, proved to be an even greater crisis for working musicians than the Napster revolution.
Most live music venues were shut down entirely, and artists who had spent huge sums creating new music had no way to share that music with live audiences to recoup their investments.
The aftermath of the pandemic proved almost as challenging. Justin Ho wrote in 2022 that “a lot of musicians have been running into a lot of familiar economic problems: inflation, high shipping and transportation costs, and weaker overseas currencies.”
The two-year hiatus from touring also created major logjams for artists whose careers depended on reaching live audiences worldwide. Not only were calendars booked far in advance, it became difficult to find tour buses and vans. The uncertainty drove many artists into other careers.
California-based Ashanti Abdullah had been a highly successful hip-hop music promoter in the 1990’s – He helped jumpstart the careers of international touring acts like Manifest and Prof, then served as artist manager/publicist and sales and marketing manager for Rhymesayers Entertainment in the music mecca of Minneapolis. He gained insights into the complexities of tour management through his work with that city’s long-running Soundset Festival.
All that time, Abdullah was dealing with the finite details of scheduling hotels, tour vehicles, gear, and especially the musicians themselves, bridging the gap between artist and label over how to split the money to keep the ship afloat.
He learned how to tell an artist who wanted to tour, “Look, you’re literally not going to make any money on this tour,” as well as how to figure out how to make a tour profitable.
Long before the COVID pandemic, Abdullah says he got an idea – one he brought to life a dozen years later. After 20 years managing artists, “I was just pulling out my hair using ‘Master Tour’ and having to create additional systems for every tour – reinventing the wheel, as it were – and one day I realized, ‘Man, there’s no tool for this. This is crazy.’ And the light bulb went off and I decided, ‘I’ve got to create this tool.’”
And he did – but not until 2022.
Ternwheel (named after the world’s longest-flying bird) is, says Abdullah, the world’s first profitability platform for touring groups of musicians; it works for both top tier billionaire artists and those starting out on the road.
“We basically created a platform on the software side that handles both their budgeting and scheduling needs, as well as all their logistics, and it includes everything they need to do to run their business while they’re out on the road,” says Abdullah. “And our platform has an app component that makes for easy access.”
The Ternwheel app helps artists and managers calculate total costs and thus needed revenues for a tour, work formerly done on a spreadsheet. The app enables everyone on the tour to see the financial realities. It even tells artists and roadies what time they are due on stage, eliminating the need for a myriad of text messages.
Of course, it’s up to the artists and management team to input the raw data.
Ternwheel’s public debut was at SXSW 2024, and several musicians have been using the tool for a year now. The company just got a huge shot in the arm, as they were accepted into the Talent x Opportunity initiative at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (aka a16z).
With a16z providing access to its portfolio of experts and offering insights into building his brand, Abdullah is confident that Ternwheel can make touring profitable again.
“With Ternwheel,” Abdullah says, “Instead of touring based on feeling and losing money, they will be able to have some money in their pockets at the end of the tour.”
Best of all, says Abdullah, running successful tours in his hometown of San Francisco, across California and across the country, puts these artists and their crews in a place where they can show up for the people on the other side – the promoters and those who run sound and operate venues.
The transparency that Ternwheel brings with it really teaches everyone in the industry to be good quality people to deal with.
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