Artist first — not platform first.

Single launched in 2016 with one goal in mind: to give artists the ability to sell their music directly to their fans through their Shopify stores, where they were already selling their merchandise. Since then, we’ve expanded our offerings to provide more fan engagement and earning opportunities for all creators to take control of their content and monetize their work with support for NFTs, memberships, video on-demand, and more.

Today, thousands of creators are utilizing the power of Single to reach their fans and make a living. Since 2018, we've distributed over 4 million records and reported chart-topping hits from artists such as Juice WRLD, Harry Styles, MGK, Travis Scott, Tom Petty, Young Dolph and more. Our 400+ livestream events have sold 1 million tickets and generated over $24 million in revenue for artists like Jimmy Eat World, Young The Giant, Maren Morris, Underoath, Ben Rector, Needtobreathe, All Time Low, and many more.

From Our Founder

Public perception of success for artists is distorted and over-glamorized.

Which creates an unhealthy industry because of the pressure it puts on anyone trying to make a living pursuing that dream, or a dream working within the support structure surrounding an artist. The Internet opened up more opportunities but not in a universal way. Existing tools were designed to fill a specific need or support a specific function while catering to bigger players, and don’t enable artists to easily build their brands and run their careers as businesses.

We set out to change this and create a healthier, more democratized normal. To provide a single platform where any artist or team can sell their digital content or access to their digital content, be counted and connected in their industry, have more authentic relationships with their fans or customers, and maintain control of their brand. It would support any artist or team in any stage of their careers.

We chose to start our journey in the music industry and build our platform on Shopify’s platform. The choice was 2-fold: Shopify’s mission and vision were in close alignment with ours, and a lot of music artists, labels, and merchandisers already had existing Shopify stores. We launched in 2016 with Single.

Today we support over 3000 artist and label stores, have delivered 3 million digital albums including over 60 #1 records, reported 4 million albums, and sold 900,000 livestream tickets generating $23 million in revenue for artists. And we accomplished this quietly in the background on purpose, as our job is to make artists look good while helping them make money. If they don’t succeed, we don’t succeed.

It is this symbiotic relationship that will continue to drive us forward as we expand into any customer cohort that has digital content. Comedians, podcasters, influencers, fitness instructors, teachers...anyone that wants to become a brand, own their brand, or have a more direct relationship with their fans or customers.

As we continue to build value into the platform, maintaining accessibility is critical. An element of that is extensibility and creating a partner ecosystem to contribute to our value proposition. We want to provide the environment for others to build components that fill a need on our platform or build businesses to service our customers. Another element is providing external access to our APIs for system-to-system utilization of our products and services.

Today, artists and creators sell through many different channels and utilize many different tools to create and maintain an online presence, often behind other brands or at the mercy of layers of complexity out of their control. We’re now showing them that they don’t have to; that their complex setup can be reduced to a single, simple platform. By the time we’re done, we think Single will have established the “new normal”.

I want Single to be a driving force for the next decade and beyond. Single was initially built in a world where artists were simply looking for a better way to sell their music online. By intuitively recognizing where this made sense, and building in opportunity for all, we taught them to expect so much more from their software.

These underlying aspirations and values drive our mission: give creators the opportunity to control their destinies.

I hope you’ll join us.

— Tommy Stalknecht, Founder & CEO