Earlier this month, Troy Carter’s distribution and services company, Q&A, sold J.Erving’s Human Re-Sources to Sony Music – leaving the industry to question what the future held for Q&A itself.
Today, Carter and the company have answered that question with the launch of Venice Innovation Labs.
Venice Innovation Labs is Q&A’s newly-launched software division which the company says will “enable record labels to beta test songs, manage their artist rosters, and distribute music easily and efficiently”.
Having waved goodbye to Human Re-Sources – which merged into Q&A last year – Q&A continues to work with big-ticket indie artists like Pink Sweat$ and Baby Rose, as well as a collection of indie labels from the US and beyond.
The first products to be offered to those labels from Venice Innovation Labs are twofold: StreamRate and Venice For Labels.
According to Q&A, StreamRate is a mobile app that “gives sentiment analysis before songs are released, saving labels millions of dollars in marketing expenses and marrying data with A&R”.
Venice For Labels, meanwhile, is designed to enable labels to “distribute music, manage their artist roster, and track splits & payments” all in one place.
“We’ve been at work for over a year building and learning and are excited to start rolling out innovative tools for research, distribution, and roster management.”
Troy Carter, Q&A
In addition, says Q&A, Venice offers “a Premium Services team for playlisting and strategic marketing, available upon request”.
Ray Kurzeka will oversee such Premium Services in North America and Matt Ott in the UK.
Said Carter: “The launch of Venice Innovation Labs marks an important milestone for Q&A. We’ve recruited mission-driven teammates from the most well-respected music and technology companies, including Amazon, Spotify, and YouTube.
“We’ve been at work for over a year building and learning and are excited to start rolling out innovative tools for research, distribution, and roster management. We spent our careers in the music industry and understood the importance of also having a human element, so we added a Premium Services team to help deliver hits and drive results.”
“Our vision is to create an authentic community to empower brilliant artists and the labels that support them daily.”
Suzy Ryoo, Q&A
Suzy Ryoo, President and co-founder of Q&A, added: “Technology is rapidly changing the way music is consumed, yet our industry’s infrastructure remains underserved.
“We’ve been quietly building beautiful and intuitive tools that labels will love, as well as services that move the needle.
“Our vision is to create an authentic community to empower brilliant artists and the labels that support them daily.”Music Business Worldwide
