Portugal. The Man manager Rich Holtzman, like many of his colleagues, was faced with creating revenue streams during the pandemic that prevented his band from touring for 2020 and most of 2021.
While bands like Kings of Leon and ZHU turned to NFTs to generate income, Holtzman decided to go another route, launching a PTM token through Rally, which offers anyone with an online community the ability to launch their own cryptocurrency on the Ethereum blockchain without having to code themselves.
“I didn’t want to have this transactional relationship with our fan base,” says Holtzman about eschewing funding sites like Patreon or TopFan, which offer exclusive content to contributors. “We wanted to access our community and allow them to participate in the band’s success. I’ve been around bitcoin and blockchain for a while, but it wasn’t until I met [Rally founder] Kevin Chou that I realized this is the way to fix the broken fan club model. It’s like you put the right ingredients in, and suddenly, you have a cake.”
Holtzman launched the coins – which initially sold for 75 cents to a dollar – by seeding Portugal’s fan base with 500, telling them to spread the wealth. Any fan holding five of those coins in a digital wallet was given access to the band- and fan-generated archive of live shows, along with exclusive offers, ranging from band chats and guitar lessons to special vinyl releases. Less than a year later, the value of a PTM coin has risen to $57 apiece, with Holtzman about to adjust the entrance fee for newcomers who merely seek access to the band’s trove of exclusives.
Holtzman not only manages Portugal. The Man, but has been working at AEG, heading up the company’s in-house marketing and artist development for the touring group. He has already booked PTM for several festival dates in July and August and plans to send them out on a three-week run at the end of October, when it will presumably be cleared for full-capacity shows.
“Advance sales have been tremendous,” acknowledges Holtzman. “People are itching to get out. We were extremely busy during the pandemic, sending out offers and dealing with problems we never had to the time to tackle and try to fix when things were normal.”
As for how livestreams fit in with a regular concert schedule, Holtzman’s idea is to put up tickets for those at the same time as the tour.
“This way, those who aren’t in cities or can’t afford to go have an alternative,” says Holtzman, who wouldn’t add whether those tickets can be bought with PTM coins, but it sure seems like the next logical step.