BandLab BandLab taps the growing demand for creator communities

Founded in 2014, Singapore-headquartered BandLab has built a multi-faceted music business, with divisions focused on manufacture of guitars, retail stores, media, and an online artist platform. With significant financial backing, BandLab has made some high-profile acquisitions, including taking a large shareholding in RollingStone (now divested), as well as UK music publications NME and Uncut. BandLab’s creator tools acquisition was key assets of digital audio workstation (DAW) company, Cakewalk, from Gibson Guitars in 2017. Cakewalk’s SONAR is now integrated into the BandLab artist platform.

The BandLab platform combines music production tools and sounds (samples) with a sizeable consumer audience. As of May 2020, BandLab had 18 million registered users (growing by one million users per month) and its artists were creating close to 10 million tracks per month.

Free to use, BandLab’s platform combines elements of creator platform Splice and user-generated audio content stalwart, SoundCloud. BandLab’s free access model is a disruptive strategy in a creator tools marketplace that is beginning its transition from à la carte sales to software as a service (SAAS) models. This approach is already demonstrating an ability to aggressively grow market share. At some stage, BandLab will need to decide what its monetisation strategy is, but now, its combined proposition of free-to-use tools and immediate access to a large-scale base of listeners is a compelling proposition for a new generation of music producers.