16/10/2026
This is an interesting concept for streaming music - not perfect, and challenging to get off the ground when the big boys already own the playing field, but really worth thinking about.
As the growing concerns about streaming services started to sound like a broken record, Tim Quirk wanted to do something to fix it. Last September, the veteran music tech executive launched a pilot of a new app called Tapedeck, a music store and streaming service that was built for music artists and the fans that want to support them.
Unlike other major providers, there are no forced subscriptions and no tiny margins to contend with. Fans simply pay as they go, and every time they press play, an artist sees dollar signs. Because unlike the fractions of a penny most artists currently receive per stream, Tapedeck guarantees one whole penny per play, plus a dollar for every track download, and $10 for any album download—and those are just the minimums. Artists can also set their own rates and rack up more earning potential with additional payouts for every app installed by one of their fans.
“My ultimate goal is to make a penny per play the floor rather than the ceiling for online streaming royalties,” says Quirk, “and I know it can work.” The Tapedeck founder has proof of concept from a long history in music tech, previously leading operations at Rhapsody and Google Play Music before founding his own company Freeform Development in 2014. That company built artist-specific apps for the likes of Lil Wayne and Rob Thomas that took the freemium monetization model that gaming companies like Candy Crush used and applied it to music. It was incredibly successful, earning artists 5 cents to 13 cents per play. By 2018, Freeform was acquired by Zedge, which used the concept to help sustain their community of visual artists. But last year, Quirk approached the team with a new music concept that went wider than Freeform did, and thus Tapedeck was born.
In addition to his tech acumen, though, Quirk also comes at his latest launch from a very helpful perspective—that of an artist, because he is one of those, too.
Read our full interview with Quirk at the link in the comments.
