Michelle Phan is back, and her new project reaches an audience of 80 million

Michelle Phan / Photo credit: Thematic

Two years after vanishing from social media, pioneering beauty vlogger Michelle Phan is back at the heart of the content creation community – and with a vengeance.

Those who follow the Vietnamese-American influencer know by now why she took a one-year hiatus in 2016. One reason – which she later explained in a video to more than eight million subscribers on her YouTube channel – was a personal crisis brought on by the increasing commercialization of her content.

Another was the pressure and trauma of being sued for the use of music in her videos. Ultra Records filed the lawsuit in 2014, accusing Phan of copyright infringement. Phan countersued, claiming she had been given permission to use the music.

Both parties eventually settled the dispute out of court.

And now, in a true example of making lemonade out of lemons, Phan has launched Thematic, a peer-to-peer marketplace that allows online content creators to find and use songs from undiscovered, up-and-coming artists.

I’m a believer in scaling thoughtfully.

Thematic’s main draw for content creators is that it has cleared all the songs on the platform for use in influencer videos. In other words, content creators need not fear lawsuits from record labels.

“Unfortunately, there’s a lot of misinformation out there about fair use or securing the proper permissions and licenses from all owners of a song for creators looking to use music in their videos,” says Phan.

Thematic removes the risk for creators by pre-clearing music on its platform, and automating licenses at the time of download. It also saves time by helping match videos and songs.

Meanwhile, music artists can get more exposure and can tap into the creators’ highly engaged audience, which can potentially lead to more downloads.

Testing the waters

To validate the need for the platform, Phan and her team collaborated with IpsyOS – the open studio for beauty creators that she had launched while running Ipsy, a subscription beauty sampling business that she co-founded in 2011.

Specifically, they tested the platform with a specific segment of the studio’s subscribers: its Glow members, who have at least 10,000 followers on YouTube or 25,000 on Instagram. “Initially, we focused within the beauty and lifestyle community since we’ve been working with them from the beginning,” explains Phan.

The test revealed that content creators appreciated the amount of time they could save by sourcing and clearing music through Thematic.

Balancing algorithm and personalization

Equal value offer for artists

Plans for growth