Today, Skrillex and the team of OWSLA, his digital-only indie label, are announcing The Nest: a subscription-based OWSLA imprint, much like a digital fan club. For $12 a month fans will receive all sorts of goodies, both digital and terrestrial, including early access to OWSLA releases, weekly Nest-exclusive downloads from up-and-coming artists, and ticket presales for OWSLA events.
“The Nest is another chance for us to get music out to the fans quicker and easier,” Skrillex said in a statement. “It’s a step into the unknown future of music which is exciting, and it allows us to keep our fans up on fresh content and bring up some new artists we love.”
But the service will officially launch in January, with exclusives including a twitchy, glitchy M Machine remix of “Middle Finger” by Dog Blood (aka Skrillex and Boys Noize), previewed here.
According to Team OWSLA, Nest is a way to break down even more of the ever- decreasing barriers between fan, artist and label, funneling new music directly to an engaged audience, almost in real-time.
“It was really the simplicity of it,” says Blaise DeAngelo, OWSLA label manager. “The people we interact with are exposed to so much great music all the time, but there are so many constraints on what we could put out and when. We didn’t have enough bandwidth for all the great stuff we wanted to share with the world.”
“It lets us move even faster than we do: Find a song and have it posted that day, that hour,” says Skrillex’s manager, Tim Smith of Blood Company.
And when they say exclusive, they mean exclusive.
“Normally we’d give these tracks to key DJs a week before release,” says DeAngelo, “but these are so exclusive, literally the only way you can get them first is through The Nest. It’s different from anything we’ve done before.”
Nest subscribers will also receive exclusive remixes, DJ sets, a capellas and remix stems, access to exclusive artist meet-and-greets, live chats and Ustream sessions, and 20% off OWSLA merchandise.
The back-end of Nest is Drip.fm, launched last year by Ghostly International founder Sam Valenti IV and technologist Miguel Senquiz, formerly of Ghostly and tastemaker platform Flavorpill. The service philosophically sits somewhere between subscription streaming and paid downloads, but with a twist of exclusivity that could only work for brands with already strong and loyal fanbases. Skrillex’s extended family of high-profile indie label captains – like Diplo for his Mad Decent, and A-Trak for Fool’s Gold – also use the service.
Launched by Skrillex, his management, and media agency Biz3 in August 2011, OWSLA has quickly distinguished itself as more than just a label of drop-based dubstep. New school hip-hop from Jack Beats, lush soundscapes from Seven Lions, electro-soul from Monsta, and Skrillex’s own reggae/bass smash-up with Damian Marley all have a home on the label, which co-releases some titles with Big Beat/Atlantic.
“I think kids want to support music and their favorite artists, but technology has not yet given them a vehicle for that that’s acceptable to them,” says DeAngelo. “To get otherwise-unavailable music directly from the source, the proper version and the format they need, before anywhere else, we feel our fans will pay a reasonable monthly fee.”