Toronto-Based Streaming Service Promises A New Approach to Business: Community-Leadership and Equitable Practices.
K Moto, Rootz Mafia, and Loud Army
“A company is just a bunch of people, and in the music industry, it is a bunch of people who are intentionally fucking you.” And it's true, that music artists are robbed yearly by large streaming companies such as Spotify and Apple Music. For a smaller artist to be making a livable wage, it's impossible, and the people behind Spotify’s products (artists and music) are catching on.
Solutions are varied as they are many, and one company offering a community-oriented approach is Loud Army. One that aims to “fundamentally change the music industry to put the power back into the hands of artists and the people who love music.”
In May 2024, we attended the release party for K Moto and RootzMafia, two artists in the Toronto scene. The event was hosted at a Mississauga home. At first, that’s all I thought it was. Backyard patio, barbecue, projector, some good tunes, some good vibes.
Until we entered the basement. A private recording studio, Cloud 9 Recording Studio. A purple-lit private vocal booth, draped with clouds on the ceiling. A top-of-the-line sound system, all framed within a ceiling of handmade wooden sound panelling imported from Germany.
People with connections to the artists, curious audience members wanting something new, artists and producers alike, all came downstairs to share the space.
My first realization hit: this listening party was not a sterile networking event or a typical listening party. RootzMafia’s “AM2PM”, and “Love Lorn” by K Moto were great experiences in the space.
ROOTZ WORLD ROOTZ WORLD — Full Album Preview | Exclusive Listen
LOVE LORN | kmoto [FULL ALBUM]
Post-listening, open-air interviews were held with Loud interviewer Elle de Lyon. The audience was supportive, yelling words of encouragement, asking questions about each project and diving deep into the sounds. There were lots of laughs and jokes during this part of the night. The room got brighter and the atmosphere warmer.
And this is when the second part of my realization occurred: the listening party had the familiar sense of a family gathering.
Hard to achieve at any social gathering with different people meeting for the first time, let alone one full of musicians and producers looking to make connections. Yet somehow, it felt like a gathering of the zia’s and zio’s in my backyard.
The sense of community and care is Loud Army’s crowning jewel, silhouetting them as a David-like figure against the goliaths of the music streaming industry. And Kimani Peter really does care about the artists that sign up with his Loud Army.
Q. Drake or Kendrick?
K-Moto, A. “Damn that is crazy. That is, uh, um, if you follow me, you can infer. If you see my stuff, you can infer. I’m not gonna step out like that (laughs).
Loud Army began in July 2015, inspired by Kimani’s stint breaking away from his Industrial Design Program at OCAD. Kimani found a lack of care and support from the Dean and academic administration; specifically, a lack of tools needed to succeed in the future,
“During my third year, I explored different sources of knowledge — entrepreneurship classes and volunteer positions — and I asked the Dean why we don’t teach some of the things I learned in those spaces. Why were we not valuing our craft, or being taught to sell our value? Everything from the water bottle to the Lysol wipes on my desk is a product of industrial designers. We design for mass production, we are integral to capitalism. But it didn’t matter what our grades were.”
When he was volunteering in the community, he spent a lot of time with DJs. Musicians. Artists. He grew to understand them on a personal level. What they needed, and what they were looking for.
And that was a personalized approach to guiding an independent artist. As well as an equitable business model.
In this writer’s opinion, what academia shares with the music industry is its tendency to reduce everyone to a numerical value, big data is used to generate more big data. The goal is to grind up young talent, forgo any personalized direction, and fit them into a box. And if you don’t fit those boxes, well, you better cough up more money for a new degree.
“We at Loud Army have no intention of selling user and artist data as a source of profit, all data we do collect we hand off to the artists, so that they make better marketing decisions, appeal to their audiences, and so on.”
Kimani plans on running the Loud Army differently. Personalized marketing direction, stage events, 50% of streaming revenue, gatekeeping music as a cultural product; in addition to these benefits is the opportunity to work with top-quality producers all around the world. Including one in Mississauga, running his home studio: producer Di Vizotto.
[“Oh yeah, Kendrick for sure.” — Kimani]
Vizotto runs the Mississauga home studio from the basement of his actual home. I met his dog. Vizotto stated his goal was, ‘to make artists feel at home when they come here, to get the best performance out of them by making them feel comfortable.’
https://www.instagram.com/loud.army/
A bassist, a musician, and a producer who has worked at Metalworks Institute, Vizotto has over 20 years of producing experience to get the best quality out of an artist. Another benefit Vizotto brings is knowledge of the technology behind streaming music, and its intersections with algorithm technology in file compression.
“Imagine the photos you have on your phone. If you upload them to a service to send them to someone, the different size causes you to lose definition of the picture. That is compression. If I’ve done a project here, and we are sending the audio files over the internet, we have to compress it to make it smaller and fit the streaming platforms. The way they [Apple, Spotify] do it, it’s not smart. The way Kemani does it is smart, because of the algorithm used to select which parts of the audio get compressed; the Loud streaming service compresses it in such a way to provide better streaming quality.”
I met a couple of new artists enlisting in the Loud Army. Gigi Noche is a young singer who immigrated from Cuba to Canada at a very young age; she grew up listening to Brittany Spears and Rihanna and was a part of the band Maheja Negra. In her first song with the producer, Gigi hopes to call back to those first influences,
“This first song that I will be working on with him [Vizotto] has that old school sound, kinda like Betty and the Jets but really sad. A piano-pop ballad. An emo Betty and the Jets (laughs).”
[Drake v. Kendrick “Drake, but only because I like his music. I like pop-music.”]
Then, there is Blvckgeta, a rapper new to the game from Brampton. He had insight into what the Toronto music scene needs moving forward, and what the problems are on the ground.
“I want to see more support, and I think that’s the biggest issue in Toronto. There is petty squabbles. I want to see more support where we all make money, like in the states. Not, ‘this music is trash’, ‘I don’t fuck with this man’, da-da-da. Once we get that, we’ll be unstoppable.”
[D v. K: “Kendrick, c’mon I’m a Toronto man, but Kendrick all day.]
In most companies, these artists wouldn’t even be a blip on the radar. Internal hierarchies based on clout, vital artist programs gatekept, and lack of support. But they have invaluable talent, knowledge, and vision.
But, with Loud Army, they are given the tools and spaces to succeed. And the connections to further themselves.
“I hate when Toronto is said to have one sound. Toronto doesn’t have a sound, and I say this to everybody, Toronto has many sounds. There are so many different talented people and artists here, there is no one way to define this city.”
As the company collects more artists and interacts with the larger music world, it will remain to be seen how this business model will fair in the market. But they have heart, have accomplished an impressive artist list and following, and as someone who attended a listening party, I hope they succeed. It would mean better music, better business, and a community-oriented solution.
And they support Toronto, real Toronto musicians, and the people who are making artistry.
For more information on the Loud Army business model, see here.
If you are an artist and are looking for an intake form, it is here.
