About Us

Highlights

  • The music market is projected to double in size by 2030 — reaching $142B annual revenue

  • CEO, Scott Arey, was the former CFO of Gearbox Entertainment which was acquired in early 2021 for $1.3B

  • Veteran management team that has driven multi-billion-dollar valuations, Silicon Valley tech, IPOs and Grammys

  • Community Musician app is available for download (App Store & Google Play)

  • Patent-pending Collectible Music Card in production today

Market

Goldman Sachs predicts a robust post-COVID comeback for the music industry — forecasting it to double in size to $142 billion by 2030 — yet the portion claimed by the musicians themselves is shrinking unsustainably. This phenomenon is driven largely by streaming services, which control 83% of all music distribution yet pay artists and songwriters less than any other form of distribution today or in the last 75+ years.

The market is dysfunctional, and artists are left unable to earn a living wage. Community Musician has set out to rewrite this narrative and our goal is to capture 5% of this $142B market.

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Our Team

Scott

Scott Arey

Chief Executive Officer
  • $1.3B investor exit as CFO of Gearbox Entertainment

  • Former CFO of Bank of America's Commercial Bank

  • Former CFO of Bank of America's International Trade Bank

  • 5 years as CFO of a publicly traded company

  • 25+ years of start-up experience / patent holder

  • 35+ acquisitions made

  • Lifelong musician formerly signed by Warner Music

  • Stanford University

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Alisa

Alisa deRosa

General Counsel
  • Former GC and COO for Beyonce's Parkwood Entertainment

  • 10+ acquisitions made

  • 25+ year legal career

  • 8 years at premier Entertainment Law firm Grubman Shire & Meiselas whose clients include music industry luminaries such as Sting, Madonna, U2, Elton John, Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, Mary J. Blige, Rod Stewart, Sean "Puffy" Combs, Luther Vandross, Bruce Springsteen, Mariah Carey, Andrew Lloyd Webber and The Wkend.

  • Dartmouth College

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Derek

Derek Toone

President
  • $6.8B Series B as Global Channel Chief for Automation Anywhere

  • $1.8B Series A as Head of Americas for Automation Anywhere

  • $74M investor exit as Managing Director of Alsbridge, Inc.

  • 20+ years of start-up experience

  • 10+ acquisitions made

  • SMU Law

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Sajeel

Sajeel Khanna

Chief Technology Officer
  • Founder, BluEnt Technologies

  • Director of the Board, Brack Capital Real Estate

  • 20+ years of start-up experience / patent holder

  • 10+ acquisitions made

  • Stratford University

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Doug

Doug Schiller

Chief Financial Officer
  • IPO / S1 filing

  • Founder of B2B SaaS company CrushErrors.com

  • Co-founder Interactive Light

  • 25+ years of start-up experience / patent holder

  • 35+ acquisitions made

  • Columbia University

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Nic

Nic Yannariello

Senior Vice President of Operations
  • Founder, Puddletown Rehearsal Studios, the leading music rehearsal space in Portland, OR with 8 buildings, ~350 rooms serving a community of ~8,000 musicians.

  • Former Owner, Hawthorne Theatre, a 600-person concert hall in Portland, OR for national tours and regional acts

  • Former touring musician as lead singer of DFiVE9 toured with national acts such as Tool, Filter and Rage Against the Machine.

  • Frostburg State University

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Problem

The music industry is forecast to grow ~2x by 2030 to reach $142B annual revenue and yet creators cannot make a living wage today. That's because streaming is driving revenue growth in the music industry and as of 2021 accounted for 83% of recorded music revenues.

Unfortunately, even with streaming, creators still struggle. A 2020 Business Insider report found that artists on Spotify earn as little as $0.0033 per stream. Making it worse, 70% of recorded music consumed is catalog music (music that was released >2 years ago).

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With so little money being paid to artists for new music on streaming platforms artists have resorted to selling vinyl records at their shows.  10 years ago there were less than 1M vinyl records sold in the U.S., but that figure has grown to ~42m in 2021 and sales topped $1B for the first time since 1986.  Every Wal-Mart and Target in every U.S. suburb now has a record aisle again.  Unfortunately, demand has now outstripped supply and record presses currently require a minimum order of 1,000 discs at an average price of $8 per and a lead time in excess of 1 year with even stars like Jack White pleading for record labels to help produce more records.

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Solution

The Community Musician management team has developed a strategic plan to enable those looking to unlock a career in music, without the blockers creators are currently facing. The CM team plans to implement:

Roll up strategy — acquire & consolidate the fragmented music rehearsal space market in the top 50 cities in the U.S.

We believe there are 250+ music rehearsal businesses operating in the U.S. but no national brand. The CM team has analyzed the top 50 cities in the U.S. by population and the leading rehearsal space businesses in each.

With a term sheet (a nonbinding agreement outlining the basic terms and conditions under which an investment will be made) in hand, CM's goal is to acquire Nic Yannariello's Puddletown Studios in Portland, OR for its first acquisition. Nic has assembled one of the best music rehearsal space businesses in the U.S. today and we believe is a dominant player within the Portland community with 8 buildings and ~350 rehearsal rooms representing a community of >8,000 musicians. Nic is a member of the Community Musician management team, responsible for spearheading the roll up strategy using the operational systems, processes, and methodologies he's developed through his extensive career.

Through a roll up strategy, the opportunity exists to acquire businesses and welcome their customers to the CM family & ecosystem.

Build a digital community — match the physical communities & link them on a local, regional and national level

The vision:

  • On Day 1 after each acquisition, every member of every band in the rehearsal space becomes a user of the CM app in order to pay for their rehearsal space. With each acquisition of a rehearsal space business, CM can potentially add 1000s of commercially enabled users to the CM app.

  • The CM app provides creators with a community and platform to engage with each other and buy/sell goods and services with other creators (e.g., recording and production, lessons, session players, equipment, etc.).

  • The CM app provides creators the ability to engage with their fans to sell recorded music, concert tickets, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and more.

  • The CM app empowers creators by giving them the tools they need to acquire, manage, and energize their paying patrons. With a subscription-style payment model, fans pay their favorite creators a monthly amount of their choice in exchange for exclusive access, extra content, or a closer look into their creative journey.  The “patronage platform” model was pioneered in 2013 by Patreon who in 2021 processed ~$2B in patronage to ~200,000 creators, took ~$160m in fees for doing so and the company is estimated to be valued at $4B as of April 2021.

Alternative distribution model — patented Collectible Music Cards

Historically, streaming has provided inadequate compensation to musicians. The next best alternative, vinyl records, have shown steep barriers to entry and long lead times.

CM management believes the patent-pending Collectible Music Cards can consistently be produced at lower price, a fraction of the size, and more rapidly available. Imagine the best of both physical & digital.

How it works:

  • An artist buys them from CM and sells them to fans at their shows (just like vinyl) and the fan has a collectible with artwork, lyrics, etc.

  • Instead of needing a record player to play the vinyl record, the fan taps the card on their phone which instantly plays the song & adds it to their library. Powered by the same Near Field Communication (NFC) chips, used in credit cards, which are also available in almost every smartphone on the market today.

  • Transaction occurs outside the Apple or Google System which means no ~30% transaction fee charged to the creator, fan, or Community Musician.

This innovative distribution model ensures that creators can attain a fair market value when selling the art they create.

Growth Plans:

As traction is gained with early adopters, Community Musician plans to pursue partnership opportunities with speaker companies, selling the Collectible Music Cards first in record stores and then in big box retailers taking advantage of the existing infrastructure built for gift cards.

Sourcing mechanism — talent identification through CM's ecosystem

Community Musician envisions identifying talent as creators distinguish themselves coming up through the local, regional, and national ecosystem of rehearsal spaces and recording studios.

CM believes this no-cost model for sourcing new talent has the potential to enable Community Musician to offer more favorable terms to the artists — a greater portion of profits when they distribute their music through existing distribution models (e.g., streaming, vinyl, synchronization, etc.).