Please introduce Lissen, what you do and how you work with music managers and music creators?

I’m Ben, founder of Lissen, a London-built streaming platform where a stream rewards both sides: the fan earns perks for listening, and their subscription becomes royalties for the artists they actually play. User-centric royalties, running live, no pro-rata pool. For managers and creators, the practical door is the Live Link: one link in the artist’s bio that captures every fan, routes them to whichever app they already use, and stays in sync with their Lissen profile and their own website. It’s free for artists and non-exclusive, so it sits alongside everything a campaign already does.

Tell us more about your services and the importance you play in the music industry?

Our approach combines 3 angles: 

• Streaming where your artists’ fans’ money reaches your artists. 
• A direct-to-fan layer through the same gateway, selling tickets, merch and music, with every sale and fan data point visible to you and yours to keep. 
• And a rewards programme we fund, from tickets to exclusive drops, giving fans a reason to keep listening and keep showing up. 

The wider point: we believe the future of entertainment is phygital and that music creators will have a massive role in it. We aim to make the fan experience around them frictionless and engaging.

3) What have you been working on recently (if you’re able to say)?

Three launches: the Live Link itself, our ticketing integration through several partnerships (eg. Farrago), so artists sell tickets directly while collecting data, and onboarding our first artist cohort, including Kevin Davy White and Korede Bello. Early cohort artists are earning measurably more from the same audience, which is the number we track.

4) When is the right time for an artist or manager to start working with Lissen?

The moment an artist has fans who show up, in comments, at shows, on mailing lists. We convert engagement into income, so the asset that matters is a real audience, not a big one. Since it’s free and non-exclusive, the honest answer is: before the next release cycle, so the link is capturing fans while the campaign spends.

What are your plans for 2026?

Scaling artist cohorts through the rest of the year, rolling out the rewards programme fully, and deepening the direct-to-fan side with pre-releases and ticketing.

What new music releases are you currently enjoying?

Lady Ice x Scorcher “Falling Over Love”, Phoebe Bridgers “Lost Weekend”

What was the last gig you went to?

Miyagi show on Aug 22nd (Germany)

Is there anything you would like to say to music managers who are interested in finding out more about Lissen?

If your artists have real fans, we make those fans worth more, to the artist, not a pool. It costs nothing, excludes nothing, and takes 5 minutes to see with your own roster. Same fans, just paid direct. I’m at ben@lissen.live, and I like showing live artists profiles instead of a deck. You can check if we have your artist’s discography on Lissen for Artists.