Ryan Leslie Develops New Digital Distribution Platform for Artists

Despite any lawsuits or random craziness you may hear about Ryan Leslie, he’s smart and isn’t afraid to think outside the box.

According to AllHipHop.com, Leslie has created a new platform which will give aspiring artists to digitally put their music out and make money directly.

With Disruptive Multimedia, Leslie created a direct artist-to-fan platform where an artist can digitally distribute their music and give fans direct contact to them through phone and/or email. On the platform’s official site, it alleges that “97% of all albums released in a year sell less than 1,000 copies” and  In addition to a platform to contact fans, Leslie also will be offering a record deal to the artist with the most fan engagement:

I’m giving all my top performing artists the opportunity to earn a $100,000 record deal.I use the data from Disruptive Multimedia to drive my decisions, and your great performance will have earned my confidence in your ability to invest that money wisely.

This move is similar to Lyor Cohen’s recently started 300 management company which aims to choose the artists to sign off of their popularity on social media and fan engagement. 50 Cent, Talib Kweli and more have already started using the beta version of the platform.

Joining and using the Disruptive Multimedia platform is not completely open to the public as artists have to be approved by Ryan Leslie before admittance. Artists have to contact Leslie on his personal phone number, which he has made available for over a year, to seek admittance. In a recent interview, Leslie outlined the financial benefits for this platform:

The biggest difference is that you get paid right away. When you sell on iTunes, when do you get paid? If you’re on TuneCore, maybe once every thirty days. If you’re going through a record company, you get a statement every ninety days, and then you get paid ninety days after that. If I sell a thousand CDs on a Monday, I’m up ten thousand in my bank account on a Wednesday. And I know every single one of those thousand people.

Disruptive Multimedia will be available to artist on July 4th, but the beta is available now at http://app.dmm.fm.