Good morning. The number of board game events organized using Partiful quadrupled in the past year, the invitation service told the NYT. Translation? 2024 was a big win for board game shelves and Rummikub enthusiasts…and a big L for pickleball.

— Hannah Doyle

In a year marked by major record labels dropping loads of artists (even including stars Chappell Roan and Shaboozey), many music creators are evaluating the future of independent music.  

We spoke with indie music artist and TikTok creator Ricky Montgomery, who was dropped by his label earlier this year. His forecast? The creator path can work for musicians.

Context: Montgomery got his start making comedy and music videos on Vine and crowdfunded his first album, 2016’s Montgomery Ricky. 

“Part of the reason I think I was cut is because I was only giving them streaming revenue,” Montgomery told us, explaining that he retained control over merch, touring, and his social platform earnings. 

Without the label…Montgomery did lose a sizable budget for marketing and promotion. But his streaming stats have improved as an indie artist. Montgomery set a new personal best for songs streamed in a day on December 4 (he averages over 9 million monthly listeners). 

Big picture: There’s no cut-and-dry answer for music creators hoping to make it big—with or without a label. “For me, I’m doing better than I was doing before, and I don’t know what to take away from that because many of my recent releases are still from my label career,” Montgomery said. “I may go back to a label and hopefully won’t change my tune too much on all that stuff. Because that’s all you can really do if you want to scale stuff.”

In the meantime, though, Montgomery is exploring diversified revenue streams. “Podcasting is going to become a thing that happens more and more for musicians,” he said, echoing strategies from artists like mxmtoon and Danny Brown who livestream on Twitch. “Every artist has to have multiple verticals to survive now.”

Last week, film creator Alexandra Robinson launched a Kickstarter to finance her upcoming short film, Meatball.

Background: Robinson grew a YouTube channel to over 160K subscribers making vlogs and challenge videos before scrapping it to start fresh in 2019 with a filmmaking channel. She’s since been a production assistant and made comedy sketches. 

This 10-minute short film, which she plans to bring to the festival circuit, will be her first project beyond YouTube.

“I’m at this place where I want to see if the things I’ve learned in this short span of time can yield the results I’m looking for with the film,” Robinson told us.

The $13.5K of targeted funding will cover labor, set design, costumes, and festival application fees. Robinson plans to start production in early February.

“I’ve never put this much money behind anything or had anyone rely on me for payment, so it’s a lot of new experiences,” Robinson said. “But I’m so excited to finally shoot because I know it’s going to be amazing.”

As we wrap up 2024, a handful of platforms report year-end highs, while another fights for its life.

YouTube TV reported the number of creators making a majority of their revenue from TV is up more than 30% annually this year. 

Patreon creators surpassed 60 million free memberships this year and increased monthly revenue of one-time purchases by 4x.

Snap swaps its Spotlight Rewards Program for a new monetization plan that will pay eligible creators for ads run on Spotlight videos longer than a minute.

TikTok has a lot going on at the moment:

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