In 1983, Ralph McDaniels and Lionel Martin put a show on New York public television that played hip-hop videos when almost nobody else would. Video Music Box became the place where new artists got seen, and plenty of people still remember the first time they caught a video there. We want to build something in that spirit for Nagast TV: a music video show for the streaming era, where the artists, the audience and the money all grow together.
Here's how it would work. Independent artists send in their videos, and a real person on our team reviews them. The videos we air run on a show with hosts, countdowns, artist interviews and premieres, the way music video shows used to work. Viewers watch free on Roku.
There are two pieces to the money.
The first is a one-time placement fee. Standard placement is $25 and, if your video is accepted, gets you 30 days in our regular rotation. Priority placement is $50 and gets you 30 days in peak-hour slots, when more people are watching. We keep the number of peak slots limited so they stay worth having. You pay once for that run. It doesn't guarantee your video gets accepted, and if we decline it before it airs, you get a full refund.
The second is the revenue share, and this is where the show gets interesting. When artists promote the show to their own fans, those fans show up to watch. More viewers means more ads, and more ads means more revenue. We want to share a portion of that ad revenue with the artists whose videos help earn it. The more of us who bring people in, the bigger the pool gets for everyone.
Artists have complained for years that streaming doesn't pay enough, and those complaints have gone all the way to court. Songwriters have sued over unpaid royalties, and in 2018 Spotify settled a class action over music licensing for $112.5 million. Spotify said it paid about $10 billion to the music industry in 2024, and many independent artists say very little of that reaches them. Our goal is for our revenue share to be more generous than what most independent artists see from streaming. We haven't finished the formula, and we'll publish it before we ask anyone to take part, including how the pool is divided and how often it's paid out.
We also want to be straight about the limits. Ad revenue depends on how many people watch, and Nagast TV is still growing. A revenue share is only worth what the audience makes it worth, so we'd rather say that up front than promise numbers we can't back up. What we can promise is clear terms, and that artists keep ownership of their music and videos. Submitting a video doesn't transfer ownership.
A few things we look for in a submission: you own or control the song and the video, the file is clean and high quality, and the content fits our standards. We covered the details in How Independent Artists Can Get a Music Video on TV, and if you want the history behind this kind of show, read From Video Soul to Video Music Box.
If you're an artist, manager or label with videos ready, our video submission page explains the current placement options. If you have ideas for the show's look, the hosts, or how the revenue share should work, tell us on the contact page. We're building this in the open.