We are Monstercat, an indie Electronic record label that recently broke 1 million subscribers. AMA!

am i tristam?

Tristam is more of a state of being.

Any information on some new Droptek songs?

Such cheeky.

Why are you a cat?

How did you come up with the name 'Monstercat'?

What's your favorite song right now?

Can you give us an official statement to what happened to that Penguin that goes by the name Ephixa?

• Why are you a cat? We wanted our logo to represent our brand/history. It had to be something that related to the internet, was still young at heart and could be something that was taken less seriously.

• How did you come up with the name 'Monstercat'? It was actually the username of one of our graphics designers. We had originally joked about calling it "Velocilobster" or "Monstercat". I think we went with the right decision.

• What's your favorite song right now? My personal favourite is 7 Minutes Dead - Sidewinder due to how unique of a song it is. 7MD really has a style of his own.

• Can you give us an official statement to what happened to that Penguin that goes by the name Ephixa? Ephixa, as an artist, took some time off to focus on other projects and his personal life. However, word on the street is that he is back at producing and we are looking forward to hearing his new work.

Velocilobster

http://imgur.com/Yj6TtL1

This. Is. Beautiful.

I am a huge fan of Monstercat, you guys got me into the electronic music genre! :)

Three questions:

1) Do you plan on doing anything more with the Trap genre in the future?

2) How do you feel about your involvement with the eSports community? Seeing that Monstercat had provided music for Counter-Strike and StarCraft II streams really got me excited!

3) The question everyone wants to know: What exactly happened to Ephixa?

That actually makes me so happy. It's always been one of our main goals to expose people to new music.

1. We actually have a trap track coming up soon from one of our regulars. We only sign tracks on an individual basis so we need to really love the songs. We're not huge fans of the traditional "Trap" sound to be honest.

2. We're all huge gamers, I literally just finished a 6 hour marathon session of Battlefield4. We originally got into E-sports through League of Legends but have expanded out to nearly every major e-sports league.

3. See above

My friend Helynt is super talented and says he sends you his tracks all the time but you decline, I'd love to know why. In my opinion he's much better than half the artists you have signed and I've been listening to your music since your first releases.

http://www.youtube.com/user/helynt1 is his channel, please check him out.

Sorry if this sounds passive aggressive, I just know this kid will go far.

I will personally check him out now.

What is love?

<3

Are you guys planning a "Best of 2013" album this year like you did with 2012? 10/10 would buy

Yes we are! We want to incorporate a better voting system than we have had in the past.

Please no stupid facebook poll :)

The reason people use Facebook is so that people can't cheat the system. It's difficult to make alot of fake Facebook accounts.

When I buy a song, how is the money split? Ex. How much does the artist get and how much do you get?

For a $1 song.

0.30 to iTunes (or 0.4 on Beatport)

0.42 Artist

0.28 Monstercat

What about bandcamp and monstercat gold?

IIRC, Bandcamp takes 30%.

Bandcamp takes 10% but due to paypal fees it is more like 25%.

For people that don't know, (I'm assuming you already do) PayPal fees are tax deductible when the fee is attached to a business expense (even if you are self-employed). I only mention this because I've personally seen too many people complaining about PayPal fees in situations they could be getting that money back. Write them off on your taxes. :)
Edit: My wording is a bit off, but not wrong. The fee itself is considered a business expense.

^ Genius!

Do you have any news on the next Tristam release?

Tristam has been hard at work over the past year working on a new EP/Album. The real time commitment has been in his sound design and vocal lessons/production. 2014 will be his year to shine as he has really developed his own “style” and sound. I had the chance to stay with him for a week while he was living in LA.

Awesome, thanks for the reply! If you don't mind me asking, who is doing the replies? GQ?

Mike Darlington, GQ, Ari and a few other members of our team are on skype.

What made you decide to start your own indipendent record label? Also, do you consider yourselves as a succes now, two years after you first launch, did you meet your original goals?

Cheers!

We wanted to have a place where we could showcase the music of our friends. It was about building a group of artists as a whole, each artist supporting the others. From a business perspective, we also wanted to help out with the things that the artists did not want to do or know how to do. (ie setting up YouTube monetization, negotiating merch deals, distributing their music)

In all honesty, we didn’t even know what Monstercat was supposed to be 2 years ago. It has always been an evolving idea with a common vision and goal. We just wanted to have a place where we could showcase the music of our friends while involving our community as much as possible. The internet made us who we are today.

How'd you guys get hooked up with MLG/Dreamhack? It seems as if you guys are the soundtrack to the eSports world these days.

For over a year we have been reaching out to the esports scene and have gotten great feedback from nearly every major league including MLG and Dreamhack. It has been a pleasure working with them. We've always wanted to be able to give them a constant stream of new music from talented artists to use in their productions. Most other music that can be obtained for streaming is standard "licensed audio library" quality music.

I have to ask, is Televisor secretly Daft Punk, or vice versa?

Not that I know of.

Do you guys know what happened to TVDS and Day One? I know TVDS is Atmozfears, but does he have any releases planned as TVDS?

TVDS = Atmozfears who will be making his re-debut on Monstercat this December.

I just have some questions about the Reunion tour. 1 How many artists do you guys have? 2 How long are the shows going to be? 3 Are they 21+ or 18+ only?

1. Currently 3 artists will be on every show. We will have some of our other artists supporting their local shows also.
2. The shows will be regular nightclub hours.
3. Some shows will be 18+, some 19+ and some 21+. We may do a few all-ages events also.

Will Pendulum come back?

They are supposed to be working on some new music now.

As a long-time fan, this AMA sounds awesome! Be sure to visit /r/Monstercat if you haven't already!

• How many workers do you employ? All they all in one office?
• Who does the audio mastering? I heard it was 23 but that was awhile ago.
• Who started Monstercat?
• Do you plan on bringing more genres to the channel?
• How do you balance the number of new arists, and artists currently in the family?
• Story behind Obsidia no longer releasing through you guys? I loved his stuff.
• Obligatory "WHERE'S EPHIXA?"
• Do you expect the number of subscribers to continue to grow, and if they slow, so you plan to pursue other ventures in the EDM scene?
• Who is the bestselling artist on the label?
• Any awesome things to look forward to soon?
• How do you come up with all the album names?

Check out Piterep's deviantART page. Does the current Album artwork and is an awesome community member!

1. How many workers do you employ? All they all in one office? Monstercat is comprised of a team of 10: Mike Darlington (Co-Founder), Ari Paunonen (Co-Founder), Jon Winter (Head of Music), Rob Allen (Merch Manager), Gavin Johnson (Head of Licensing), Ryan Petrie (Recently joined - Design Manager), Dan Scarcelli (Recently joined - Podcast & Music Manager), William Casarin (Lead Developer), Jack Zhang (Developer) and Matt Books (Developer). We are all in the same office.
2. Wired Masters does a lot of our mastering. They’ve worked with everyone from Swedish House mafia to Krewella.
3. Who started Monstercat? Monstercat was launched originally by Mike Darlington, James Leusink and Ari Paunonen. Our core team has changed/grown since then to 10 people.
4. Do you plan on bringing more genres to the channel? Absolutely, I am loving Melbourne Bounce right now!
5. How do you balance the number of new arists, and artists currently in the family? Our goal is to be able to maintain our release schedule of 3 releases a week. If we have too much content, we won't look to find new artists unless we stumble upon something huge!
6. Story behind Obsidia no longer releasing through you guys? I loved his stuff. We only sign tracks on an individual basis. If we don't love the music, we don't sign it. This is just how we have always been.
7. See above.
8. We hope they keep growing! We plan to begin licensing our music to more key partners which should help the growth and at the same time expose our music to more people.
9. Pegboard Nerds is currently the highest selling artist.
10. Monstercat podcast coming early 2014. We are investing huge amounts of time into each episode. We want them to be more of a listening experience than just a bunch of tracks mixed together.
11. The album names represent where we are in our business. It has been a roller-coaster of emotions so far and I am sure you can see that in our album titles.

23 is gone

23 did a great job mastering our work in his spare time. However, it got to the point where we needed someone who’s profession was mastering of the music.

What's the name of 069 going to be ?

Cornucopia

First, Ephixa? everybody loved him. Second, how do you choose songs on your album (upcoming and the old ones)

The songs on our albums have been singles that we have released over the past few months. They are compilations afterall!

Our song selection process for each single really comes down to if we like the music or not. Personally, I (Mike) look for unique music that has a strong melody and positive energy.

Is there going to be a Christmas album this year?

Yep! Working on finalizing the tracks for this now!

[deleted]

Redditor for 1 year...not bad...

Does GQ plan to release any more songs of his own?

Definitely. I feel like the expectations for my next single are very high and so I'm focussing on finding my sound and creating a track I'm truly happy with. I'm also balancing the workload as label manager for Monstercat and my podcast, so you should see something out early 2014.

There's your answer!

Will there be more Braken in 2014? The two songs you have released by him are amazing and I hope for more of him in the coming year :)

Absolutely, he's insanely talented!

Why did monstercat stop rebelling against police, and is now hiking trough country? Is there a story on your albums?

Our album arts/names are generally a reflection of where we are as a company. We have always left it to the family to create their own stories from them :)

I just found your channel...

Holy shit this is a treasure trove, I've never even liked dubstep as a genre until I played a few songs off of your label.

Keep it up, keep your brand as a go-to name for quality music and the sky's the limit guys.

So happy to see comments like these! <3

In your interview, you stated that Monstercat was started by 2 and a half people. Where does Ephixa come into play?

Ephixa was #2. Ari at the time was only part time. We have now grown to a team of 10.

Do you plan on ever touring Europe? If so, would you visit Scotland or would it only be gigs in London?

We would love to! I do know we are planning some shows in England for 2014.

What is your view on the Minecraft community. As you know there are numerous You-tubers who use music supplied by you. Thanks!

Minecraft is an awesome game! As a whole, we have invested hundreds of hours into building things. Mike is pretty shitty though. (Stephen Walking on the left, Mike on the right) http://i.imgur.com/Acm5tYa.png

How many people work at Monstercat? Are any of the Monstercat artists also staff or founding members of the label? If so, who?

Monstercat is comprised of a team of 10: Mike Darlington (Co-Founder), Ari Paunonen (Co-Founder), Jon Winter (Head of Music), Rob Allen (Merch Manager), Gavin Johnson (Head of Licensing), Ryan Petrie (Recently joined - Design Manager), Dan Scarcelli (Recently joined - Podcast & Music Manager), William Casarin (Lead Developer), Jack Zhang (Developer) and Matt Books (Developer). Of our current team, Jon Winter is the artist Going Quantum.

Podcast Manager? Is that for the Going Quantum Podcast, or something else that you haven't announced yet?

I forgot we haven't announced this yet :)

1) Why did Going Quantum stop producing his own music for Monstercat?

2) What is your favorite genre that you upload?

3) If there was one artist that you could get onto Monstercat, who would it be?

4) Why is Tristam so secretive with his fans?

5) How long did you cry after listening to Trance Chords?

1. He's been focussing on Monstercat and his podcast. Music production takes A LOT of time, especially to stay relevant.
2. Probably Drumstep! It's always so much fun to listen to!
3. I wish we could have worked with Madeon while he was still just posting his music to YouTube. Have loved his music since forever.
4. That's just the way he is.
5. It's a crazy beautiful song. I (Mike) actually had to push James to finish and release that song. One of my favourites.

When is tristam releasing his album?

No date on the album yet. However, we will try to get out a single from it in the next few months.

The million dollar question, what happened to Ephixa?

Ephixa, as an artist, is still producing and is someone we want to hear more music from. If you are asking about why he is no longer a part of our management team then here it is:

Monstercat was originally a project between James and Mike (2+ years ago). Ari was brought in shortly after the launch of the project. Once things started to get serious every partner had to make a decision if Monstercat was going to be their full time commitment. Ari gave up working as an engineer (5+ years of University) and Mike gave up working as a Environmental Ecologist (5+ years of University). James chose to work on other projects and focus on his artist career opposed to working on the business. After over 8 months of trying to make it work it became apparent that we had to split up or drop Monstercat entirely. It is difficult to work with someone who is not willing to invest the same passion and energy into a project that you are.

This has nothing to do with acting unprofessional, or leaking music, or pirating music or any of the other rumours that get passed around on the regular. We all troll sometimes and we all make mistakes. Do I wish this could have been handled better in the past? Yes.

If you could have any Tasty Artists (Including ones promoted by Tasty) which would you chose? I know you have Au5 and Favright and others already

F.O.O.L!

Are you going to bring back hard dance?!

Oh yes, oh yes!

How do you guys plan on expanding the latest 'Bounce' genre?

There's a few other artists we are in discussions with. Really enjoying that sound now! It makes me happy.

I've never heard of the label but I'm curious as to the business model. Coming from a traditional label background this is very confusing.

1.) You sign songs not artists?

2.) So the artist can release whatever with whoever at anytime?

3.) Who pays for the recordings?

4.) Is this digital only releases? If so, are you basically just leveraging your user base to sell songs since anyone can technically release music on itunes?

1. Yep, we found that this allowed us to be a lot more particular about which songs we work with and the ones we don't.
2. Yes they can! However, most choose to work exclusively with ourselves. We've never wanted to inhibit someone's opportunity to grow.
3. We help fund the records if necessary, however in most cases there are usually only art costs/marketing costs.
4. Digital only and we encourage our artists to self-release things that we can't work with using services like Tunecore. We have built a following of people who trust our music taste and choose to buy the music when they want. However, music sales aren't our primary revenue source.

So er, what ever happened to the animated music videos? The one everyone donated for? :)

Also, if demo submissions are song-based, what do you guys look for in a new artist sending in a song to be considered?

Was posted above but wanted to make sure it was seen: Unfortunately, we bit off a bit more than we could chew with this project. We were originally quoted at ~$3000 per episode but found out while nearing the completion of Episode 1 that we were looking at more like $5000+ and a longer time period per episode than we originally hoped for. To date, we spent around $6000 on setup/episode 1 and another $8000 on the fan perks that were sent out. The remaining funds are still sitting in the bank for when we take another stab at this project. However, we are open to any ideas from the family on how we could better spend the funds. These funds have NOT been spent on any other project nor will be until the community as a whole decides on it.

What happened to the "submit demo" button on your site? Do you guys not except demos anymore?

We had to rebuild our backend. It's taking longer than I had hoped :(

How is muzzy's hair?

So soft.

Any plans to bring #Reunion2014 overseas to the UK, Aus etc?

Definitely will do the UK as we have some close partners out there. Not sure about AUS yet.

Can we be friends?

Yes!

Could you host some remix contests soon? =P

I'd like to do more of these. However, they are extremely time consuming so I may have to think of a better system to handle them.

What do you want your label to become? Now that you've hit 1M subs on youtube, what's your next goal (besides more subs)?

Diversity of music and better support for our artists.

Hey guys, love the channel, been following since it was small. It was great to see it blow up the way it did. I've got 2 questions, one is is there a minimum age your artists need to be? Also, what do you look for in an artist. Thanks for doing the AMA!

1. There is no minimum age, Throttle was 16 when we started signing his music. However, if an artist isn't taking his music seriously and acting like an adult, we are less likely to want to work with them.

I love how you interact with the community, and I absolutely loved those two videos in which people wrote how MonsterCat changed their life, or the memories that go through their heads when they hear a song. Will you be doing anything like that again?

We went through a period of growth and movement which gave us less time to create this projects. They are something we hold very dear as our community is the only reason we are where we are. Absolutely expect more campaigns like those in the future.

can i have a free download of all of your music

Yep, check Piratebay :)

As a follower since 003 and an owner of 001-014 (and on Wednesday, ;) 015), I naturally have many questions:

1) Is there any news on the next Pegboard Nerds release?

2) I have heard both that Tristam's album/LP is coming out in November and December, are any of these true? And could you cheekily tell us many tracks are on it? ;)

3) Will there be a Christmas album for 2013?

4) When are you planning to bring the Reunion Tour to Europe, specifically the UK? Hoping it'll be OK for under 18s :D

5) Last but not least, do you know if Varien is planning on releasing on Monstercat in the (near) future? He hasn't had a song on Monstercat since 013. :(

Thanks, please answer!

Jacking this AMA to answer #5 - I'm currently pursuing a more film/tv/vg composing background as that has always been my dream. Monstercat focuses more on an EDM type feel, and my music has lost a lot of the dance elements it used to have, so probably no on that question.

However! Mike and I are close friends and I do little things for Monstercat behind the scenes when they need cool sound design stuff and whatnot. I love what they've created and they will continue to do amazing with or without me!

<3 you Nick!

Have you looked into accepting Bitcoin there are a lot of us that would love to pay for music using Bitcoin especially since it has really low transaction fees we know that more of our money is getting to the artist instead of going to the middlemen. r/Bitcoin is there to get you up to speed if you haven't heard of it before. Please look into it you could be the first large label to accept it, you'll get lots of free press and new customers.

We have seriously considered it. Still need to dev a way to accept them though.

What new genres would you like to introduce to Monstercat?

Psytrance! I'd also love to one day launch a sister label for Deep House/Tech House!

Thanks for doing the AMA, your label got me into the electronic music genre!

Who created/creates the equalizer(s) for your videos?

Any big secret plans for the future?

:D Our new visualizer was created by Monstercatx - Chung.

What advice would you give an unknown producer trying to make it in the music industry...?

Btw thanks for doing this AMA!

YouTube and YouTube promoters are your friends! They can quickly get your music out to a large amount of people who trust in their taste. However, it will take time and expect to be turned down a lot in the early stages.

How has Monstercat changed your life? Do you think you're earning more or less support now than you did in previous years?

Monstercat has absolutely changed my life and who I am as a person. I am probably earning less than I would have in other professions but the opportunity to grow is higher with a start-up. We will have to see where this takes us!

In an interview, you said that five of the original artists were close friends. Who were those artists?

Going Quantum, Ephixa, Stephen Walking, Varien (Halo Nova), Neilio.

How many artists are currently signed to Monstercat? A list of names would be good as well haha

https://www.monstercat.com/artists/

These are our current artists that have released recently or wil lbe releasing soon.

How find the success you did? What I mean is do you have any tips for smaller organizations?

Look at what everyone else is doing and try to find a way to do it differently. In our case, we saw YouTube as a new outlet for growing our audience.

While on the internet, I often times find some really amazing songs from unknown artists and think, "I could really see this coming from Monstercat." My question off of that statement is do you only find new artists from applications sent to you guys or do you ever find artists while just searching the internet?

This is really a combination of a lot of things. Demo submissions, word of mouth, listening to remixes and remix competitions, podcasts, live show streams, scouring YouTube promo channels etc. There is really no one place we look for new artists and generally stumble upon people unexpectedly.

Would you guys ever consider hiring anyone else on Monstercat just to help sort through entries and what not?

We will eventually have someone full time dedicated to this. We need to grow a bit more before we can get to this point though.

Any funny stories from the 2 years you have being doing this?

This was a pretty funny one: http://imgur.com/kZ8cYgm

Couple questions:

1) are you planning to be releasing any female merch? I'm deprived of my Monstercat love haha. 2) What is your goal for 2014? 3) Phase 2 of the Monstercat tour has been initiated, where do you go from there? What news of the tour has been confirmed as of right now?

1. We will be releasing more Female merch in 2014, especially now that we have someone dedicated full time to our merchandising.

2. Our goal for 2014 is to really provide more support for our artists, we want more of our artists to make it!

3. We can confirm that there will be 3 artists on the whole tour with local support in each city. We do not have all of the dates locked in yet.

Where did you get the funding to start a record label?

We have bootstrapped from day one. No one has ever funded the label :)