In 2011, a young musician in Australia named Harley Streten began posting electronic dance tracks online under the name Flume. Every morning before heading off to work at a magazine shop, he checked the site, SoundCloud, to see how many people were listening.
When the play count reached 10,000, he was stunned. When he got a fan letter from Poland, he was really stunned. Now he is at 150 million plays, and practically speechless.
“There is no comprehending that number anymore,” Mr. Streten, 23, said on a recent visit to New York. “It’s just mind-blowing, totally surreal.”
Mr. Streten’s rise reflects the quickened career pace in electronic dance music, or E.D.M., in which young producers can find global renown through free streaming sites like SoundCloud. As Flume, Mr. Streten has released only one album but will soon embark on his sixth tour of North America, playing at major festivals like Bonnaroo (in Manchester, Tenn.) and Governors Ball in New York.
But a detailed review of Mr. Streten’s climb also shows how he and his managers have carefully balanced free online exposure with paying deals, leading to a multifaceted and lucrative career. According to financial data provided by Mr. Streten’s manager, the Flume business generated revenues in the low seven figures last year.
About 60 percent of that income came from touring, with the rest from record sales, streaming and deals to place his songs in TV ads and video games. Like most E.D.M. acts, Flume is seldom heard on pop radio.
“One of the defining characteristics about these new metrics of success is that it feels more egalitarian than it’s ever been,” said Nathan McLay, Mr. Streten’s manager and the founder of his Australian label, Future Classic. “We’ve been able to grow, adapt and then spin on a dime when needed.”
Mr. Streten got his start making music by computer a decade ago when he found a production program on a CD tucked in a cereal box. By the end of his teens, he was using the name Flume — taken from a Bon Iver song — to release darkly textured electronic songs with a soulful edge. Like other electronic producers, he weaves together beats and samples on computer editing systems that can be recreated and tweaked live.
“The goal was always to do something that felt human but was 100 percent electronic,” Mr. Streten said, relaxing one afternoon at an empty bar near the Manhattan office of his North American label, Mom + Pop Music. “Imperfection is perfection.”
Along the way, he picked up endorsements from musicians like Lorde, whose song “Tennis Court” he remixed last year.
“What struck me about his sound was how lush but controlled it was,” Lorde wrote in an email. “He’s so extravagant with sounds, but they’re used sparingly, and I think that’s what makes his records great. It helps that he has an ear for killer pop melody.”
Flume’s music spread on SoundCloud, which mostly pays no royalties, and YouTube, which pays little. But those outlets alone were insufficient to support his career.
Mr. Streten hit the road early on, playing at the CMJ Music Marathon in New York in 2012. Remixes of other artists’ work, like songs from Arcade Fire and Chet Faker, has been another key strategy. By themselves, these tracks may not generate much money, Mr. McLay said, since a song’s original artist often retains rights. But by piggybacking on other acts, artists like Flume can reach wide new audiences and find other kinds of exposure.
A remix of Disclosure’s song “You & Me,” for example, was used last year in a Lacoste commercial in France. It earned no money for Mr. Streten but became a viral hit and led to his being booked last summer at the Rock en Seine festival in Paris, where he played for 40,000 people.
Casey Rae, the chief executive of the Future of Music Coalition, an advocacy group, said that the smartest artists today have learned to be flexible to build an audience and make money.
“Artists and managers are becoming like scientists, looking at lots of data,” Mr. Rae said.
Like many artists who grew up surrounded by free music online — not all of it legal — Mr. Streten has a dim view of the monetary value of his own recordings. “I never expected to make a lot of money from music,” he said. “They’re really more of an advertisement for you to see the show.”
He is also worried about the wild-and-free appeal of SoundCloud being lost if the company behind it, which is based in Berlin, capitulates to the demands of the music industry as it negotiates new licensing deals.
Mr. Streten’s opinions on those matters differ from those of his manager and label representatives, who said that despite the long decline in sales, recorded music remains a vital and growing part of the business. When the self-titled Flume album was released in the United States two years ago, it sold only 584 copies in its first week. But sales grew with every live appearance, remix, commercial or surge in Facebook fans. By the end of last year, his recordings were generating up to $76,000 a month for Mom + Pop.
Thaddeus Rudd, the label’s general manager, said that with the fragmentation of the digital marketplace, a typical album now has as many as 4,000 lines of sales data attached to it. That information comes from well-known outlets like iTunes, YouTube and Spotify as well as others that may contribute only a few pennies. But month after month, it adds up.
“If you look at the entirety of album sales, downloads, Spotify, and compare that to things like licensing and touring, what you start to see is a picture that makes sense,” Mr. Rudd said.
Mr. Streten said he preferred not to get too bogged down by the economics. Leaning back on a velvet couch, he pulled out his laptop and scanned through dozens of tracks he has been working on, including one drenched in sampled orchestral strings that he is considering for his next album.
“I wanted it to be something that could be in a huge film,” he said of the track, “but then contrast that with a beat that could be from a hip-hop track from Brooklyn that some kid made.”
Mr. Streten seemed to know that it was exactly the kind of song that could blow up on SoundCloud, Spotify or YouTube. Despite complaining that artists like him do not receive enough royalties from these services, he said he was grateful for how they had helped his work spread around the world.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a better time for music,” Mr. Streten said.
