Skip to main content

Deadmau5 releases new subscription-based music app for superfans

Deadmau5 releases new subscription-based music app for superfans

Share this story

While major music services like Beats struggle to win over subscribers, artists like deadmau5 are striking out on their own with services directed at their fans. With the new deadmau5 official app for iOS, the EDM artist will charge fans $5 a month (or $45 a year) for access to exclusive music, videos, and dispatches on how his cat is doing.

"Labels are still completely overlooking the artist-driven subscription model."

Deadmau5 — otherwise known as Joel Thomas Zimmerman — launched the app this week, which will serve to compliment to the deadmau5 Live community website. The move makes some sense; Zimmerman commands a massive fanbase even by outsized EDM standards, and happens to be one of the top highest paid performers in the genre. In a Reddit post published last December, he said openly that he'd had the idea "forever," and that "most publishers and labels are, still, completely overlooking the value of an artist created / driven subscription model." The app is currently available for iOS, and will be available for Android in the near future.

Zimmerman isn't alone in testing the artist-driven subscription model. Tiësto launched his own app with subscription tiers for content in 2012, while Skrillex (who recently experiment with releasing an album via app) released his own subscription-based app for his label OWSLA the same year.