ROKK – The streaming revolution! Interview with Alex Landenburg

Is it going to be the big revolution bands and fans have been waiting for? In an ever-changing music business environment, where the devaluation of music and art is accelerating faster and faster by the minute, German metal musicians Alex Landenburg (Kamelot, Cyhra, Mekong Delta…) and Peter Moog (Mentalist) have been working tirelessly for quite some time to present a revolution on the music streaming service market: ROKK! It is ready for launch now, so we checked in with Alex Landenburg to find out more.

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Hi Alex, thanks for taking the time talking about your new project, the ROKK streaming app. Can you tell us a little bit about how the idea emerged and the people behind it?

Alex Landenburg

Hi there! Thank you for having me!

ROKK has been in the making since early 2021, so almost 3 years now.

It was very much a “child of the pandemic”, in the sense that in that moment I really understood that we, as a music community, made a huge mistake by more or less giving up on the idea of making money from recorded music anymore.

As far as most people were concerned in 2019, in terms of making a living from music, you released albums to have a reason to tour and then hopefully sell some shirts. Suddenly, there’s no more shows.

So Peter Moog, an old friend from my teenage days, and I decided to do something about it and tackle the problem at its source: streaming.

The crowdfunding for the app on Indiegogo is still going until January 18, with over 136% of the flexible goal already reached at this point. A lot of questions fans (and/or artists) might have are covered over there already, of course. One crucial thing to make ROKK work and sustainable in the long run, however, is the question on how you are planning on making the venture profitable/sustainable for the developers, where so many other streaming services never managed to get to that point.

It’s a very valid concern, especially as the margin is very small indeed.

But when I see that Spotify, for example, had over 9000 employees, of which they laid off almost a quarter last year, and at the same time I know that the marketing manager of the biggest indie label in rock and metal told me that he’s never had a personal contact at Spotify, I can at least see how an app designed with a clear audience in mind can do much better.

Instead of wasting money […], which is what you do when you don’t have a clear target audience and you’re desperately trying to reach everyone, we’re trying to make sure that the artists make more money and hopefully become our best ambassadors.

So, no Joe Rogan Experience, no sponsoring FC Barcelona, just a solid product with a small and competent team, that’s how we want to do it.

And instead of wasting money on things like that, which is what you do when you don’t have a clear target audience and you’re desperately trying to reach everyone, we’re trying to make sure that the artists make more money and hopefully become our best ambassadors.

Could you highlight the standout features of the app?

From a marketing point of view, I should probably be making some sensational claims here, but the truth is that at its core it’s going to be a music streaming app, similar to what you know from Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer etc. We are not reinventing the wheel, especially at the beginning. We have some really standout features planned, but they will be introduced over time and not ready at launch.

Where we are really different is in everything that has to do with music.

Detailed artist biographies, genre and sub-genre pages, and really well-curated playlists made by lifelong fans, not algorithms.

We are listening to the wishes of the true music lovers out there and will make sure that ROKK focuses more on the album as an art form, so less on singles.

For the artists, we want to make sure that ROKK pays higher royalties per stream, at least 2-3 times what is currently paid by the other two big ones.

On top of that, 10% of your subscription can go to a band of your choice for one year, after which you can choose to give the direct artist support to another act or charity.

You have to go through a link provided by the band for that to happen though.

We want to make sure that ROKK pays higher royalties per stream, at least 2-3 times what is currently paid by the other two big ones.

For anyone choosing to support our campaign, as these links are not yet available, we will give people the chance to choose an act – from those who have signed up for the programme – after the 3 month period is over and if they decide to stay with us.

Is it going to be for Smartphone use only or is there going to be a Webplayer/Website based player as well and, if so, are you planning regularly curated articles like on Bandcamp, for example?

In addition to the Android and iOS apps, there will also be a desktop version.

What a brilliant idea with the articles. We were going to focus on YouTube for that, but I really like the idea. Thank you very much!

What kind of sound quality are you planning to offer?

The regular subscription called ROKK HiFi will already sound excellent (and really close to CD quality) but will not be lossless audio. For people who are really interested, we will use Opus as the codec at 160kbps.

Then there will be a sound upgrade called ROKK HiFi PRO which will be 100% CD quality: FLAC at 16 bit and 44.1khz.

The focus on ROKK is obviously Rock and Metal music, all the while music from all other genres is said to be available as well. How will the distinction work and what will the highlighting of Rock and Metal bands in particular look like?

One of the reasons we decided to offer a full catalogue, like the other streaming services, was that the distinction between, say, pop and rock, or prog and pop, was simply impossible in many, many cases. Take something like Genesis and their “Invisible Touch” album. Some of the songs are definitely pop, but others are still proggy.

Highlighting rock and metal bands works through genre depth and playlists: rather than having these acts and genres buried somewhere in the app, we’ve put them up front, and it’s the chart music that you actually have to actively search for to find.

If I understand it correctly, as a band or artist there is the possibility to opt in for being eligible to get more out of it via the Direct Artist Support feature. Will this only be available for Rock and Metal bands or also for artists of any genre?

No, we don’t limit it to artists of any genre. However, the way the app is geared towards rock (including prog rock) and metal listeners will probably make it less appealing to more mainstream artists and their audiences.

Highlighting rock and metal bands works through genre depth and playlists: rather than having these acts and genres buried somewhere in the app, we’ve put them up front, and it’s the chart music that you actually have to actively search for to find.

Despite their low payouts (especially for smaller artists), Spotify is known for a well-functioning recommendation algorithm, to discover new favorites, and features like the Release Radar and officially as well as privately curated playlists that you can follow. Will similar functions be available on ROKK as well?

Yes, over time we will definitely have all these features, but the ones that require user data to work really well might not be as great for some audiences as Spotify in the beginning. Their product isn’t entirely bad. It’s more of an ethical problem I have with the company, but they do certain things really well.

But we will get there too and then, with the help of our own expertise, but more importantly the expertise of our audience, we will surpass them in terms of the quality of the recommendations.

Release radar is another thing where we may simply lack the manpower to cover everything in as much detail as we would like to at the beginning.

But we care about these things and we will get better very quickly.

How does the timeline for the rollout look now?

The plan is to launch the app not too long after our campaign ends. Our backers should also get a bit of early access as an extra reward. So we are looking at somewhere between mid-February and mid-March for the public launch. I hate to be vague, but the Christmas break has slowed down the import of songs considerably and we need to make sure we have a lot of content at launch.

It’s a really big undertaking and we’re a relatively small team compared to some of the competition.

Thank you again for your time and best of luck with this excellent endeavor!

Thank you for giving me the space and opportunity to talk about it here!