We had the chance to meet Florian Richling, CEO & Co-Founder of Fortunes, the app that will ease the life of artists and producers. For those who don’t know, all is explained below !
Hey Florian, nice to have you ! For those who haven’t tried ForTunes yet, can you tell us a little bit more about it ?
ForTunes is a creator-centric music data analytic service. We pride ourselves as the mobile champions in collecting insights across various platforms for artists, bands, producers and their teams.
How did that idea come about ?
I started my journey in the music industry in the late 90s. Being a producer and manager I witnessed how for artists producing and releasing music has changed within the past two decades. The most important question “How do I reach my audience?” has remained the same, while the answers are totally different today.
When you left the studio after finishing a recording session, let’s say in 98’, you kinda lost your connection to the recording. Questions like “Which songs do like people most?”, “How often do people listen to my music?” and “Do they share it with others?”, were not easy to answer. Today, with dozens of social media and streaming services that help artists get their music noticed and heard, many answers are just a click away.
Today, a huge part of responsibility in regards to promoting and releasing music lies on the artists’ shoulders. Now let’s go back to 98’ for a sec – back then it would have been the label’s responsibility to get the records pressed and in the stores in order to give fans the chance to buy them. Today, since getting music available is not that big of a deal, the challenge is not to get it out but to cut through the glut of the zillion releases that are released everyday. Social media in all its colors and forms became an important part of almost any release strategy. Which means more work, more things to think of and get involved in for artists. That is the reason why getting the answers and understanding the meaning related to the artists career is important for the whole team. The labels, the artists, their managers, the bookers and band members. Releasing music today is a true team sport.
With ForTunes, we aim to build the most convenient and compelling service for teams to answer all necessary questions. We want to give them the power to be successful and have a fun experience while releasing music today.
There are thousands of Blogs, Playlists, Influences out there. What makes one qualify to be monitored in ForTunes ?
The number of blogs, playlists and curators is mind-blowing. You can see these sources and services as islands that once arrived at, have a lot to offer. But trying to go to many islands is very time-consuming. So, we try, from an artist POV, to bring these islands very close together. The artists can effortlessly wander around from one island to another. We believe the segmentation of data is a big issue. Closing the gaps, as a service, is a big quality we hope our users appreciate.
Half of the ForTunes team are still music professionals themselves. Many of the services whose data we have integrated haven been tried and tested. We are fans of the tools we use. Hype Machine and Submithub are two partners of ours. We’re really proud of working with them.
Nowadays, most artists tend to monitor their popularity score with tools such as Spotify For Artists or Chartmetric, why try ForTunes ?
Spotify was the first streaming service that provided artists with a mobile analytics application. Developing such an app – as we know- demands a lot of resources and Spotify does not even make any revenue of Spotify for artists. Cudos to them. But Youtube and Soundcloud also have good insight solutions.
We don’t want you to choose between Spotify for artists or ForTunes, Soundcloud Pulse or ForTunes, Youtube for artists or ForTunes. We want to combine all these great services for you, and many more. I really believe that we – after only one year – are already the most convenient way of walking the islands, so to speak.
Whether you use our app mobile or via a browser, wherever you are, whenever you want. You will stay updated, that’s a promise, across multiple platforms.
What can we expect in 2019 ?
We released the ForTunes app less than 12 months ago. We actually just got started. There is a lot in the pipe and on our bucket list. A cooperation with the amazing service called WARM is around the corner and there are many other services we would love to get to work together. There are so many people out there doing a great job, it’s inspiring. Bandcamp for example, would be very much up there. As well we want to foster relations to the services we already have implemented.
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