4 questions on disrupting music’s finance models for equity with Upfront Capital’s Anthony Caesar

Before Anthony Caesar ever held a leadership role at a tech startup, he played music in a multigenre collective called Coexist Music Group. Being in this ensemble, of which he’s still a member, helped expose the Brooklyn-born, Baltimore-based CEO of Upfront Capital to infamously exploitative and murky music industry practices that disproportionately hurt Black musicians.

“I’ve been a musician, so I’ve had the luxury of experiencing some of the problems my company is trying to solve firsthand,” he told Technical.ly. “Historically, many institutions have built their wealth off of the backs of Black musicians and owning their intellectual property.”

This exposure to such standards, as well as the world of alternative asset classes within that industry’s business model, led to his cocreating Upfront Capital back in 2020. The Catonsville-based 2023 RealLIST Startups honorable mention’s CEO described a process of “people in power” being able to monetize and profit from the creator’s creation in ways that don’t benefit the artists who created the art. He cited the example of advances, in which record labels offer artists a certain sum up front for recording expenses. While this may look and function like a guarantee of a label’s support, depending on the contract’s stipulations, advances often lead to artists losing some control of their music or publishing rights, or recoupling costs through royalties.

Caesar and Alairé Jameson, who met as members of The Caribbean Students Council at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in Catonsville, created Upfront Capital in part to disrupt this model while offering an alternative. Caesar previously held a variety of positions with different tech and tech-adjacent companies, including an early role in establishing prior RealLIST Startups honoree EcoMap Technologies, while getting Upfront Capital off the ground.

Ultimately, Caesar and Jameson seek to shift the balance of power with a platform that allows individual fans to directly invest in their favorite musicians’ royalties.

“Upfront Capital is democratizing access to an alternative asset class previously shrouded in darkness,” Caesar said, referencing a class that is largely only available to a select group of industry professionals, private equity firms and institutions.

Caesar discussed the company’s aims in the context of “how we might” (HMW) statements, which are concise questions that help reframe research findings into opportunities for change that fills consumer and market needs. He addressed this HMW, the company’s ongoing Series A, why it’s first launching its app in the UK and his relationship with UMBC. Check it out after peeping his collective’s latest music video:

(This Q&A has been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity.)

How would you frame your HMW statement?

There are tons of ways we could frame an HMW statement. I’m thinking, how might we make the music industry less opaque? How might we give more power to creators to control their financing and futures? How might we develop a stronger bond between the fans and the musicians that they serve? And how might we have more equity and ownership as Black creators? I focus on Black just because in the music industry, Black creators especially make up a majority of the revenue, but it’s not reflected in the ownership.

How has your alma mater, UMBC, helped in the development of Upfront Capital?

UMBC has supported me in a plethora of ways: getting me a position as a financial analyst with the Baltimore Angels, a 24-hour office space scholarship, networking events with strong connections and reimbursement programs for our UMBC interns.

What series of funding is Upfront Capital in? What challenges are you and your team facing?

Upfront Capital is currently raising our Series A round of funding and we’re bootstrapping the app development currently. Our main focus is our major app launch and a concert series. There are a lot of unknowns when launching a new financial product. We had to navigate the securities landscape, there not being much financial support for early Black founders and the race to launch before burnout.

You’re about to launch your app in the UK this spring. Why is that more of a priority than the US at this point?

To be honest with you, music royalties are a whole market, and usually, only accredited investors have access to it. They’re one of the most reliable revenue streams that outperformed the S&P 500. So tons and tons and tons of accredited investors have diversified their assets into music royalties. I wanted to make sure Upfront Capital had the infrastructure to make sure that everybody can have a seat at the table — and not just repetitive traditional investors, which only make up 2% of the United States population.