- House of Carmen is Universal Music Group’s new in-house app connecting creators directly to paid social campaigns for its artists.
- The platform manages briefing, approvals, and payments without intermediaries, allowing faster turnaround and data integration.
- Micro-influencers with 1,000+ followers can join, compete in challenges, and earn per campaign or performance.
- UMG aims to own its creator network and campaign data globally instead of outsourcing to influencer agencies.
- The move positions UMG as a tech-enabled marketing operator, merging the music and creator economies.
UMG’s new app lets micro-influencers post paid TikTok and Instagram content directly for its artists, bypassing third-party platforms.
Universal Music Group (UMG) has entered the creator economy directly with the launch of House of Carmen, a new app that enables influencers to create and publish branded content for UMG artists on TikTok and Instagram—and get paid for doing it.
Developed by Universal Music UK and first spotted on the App Store, the platform represents a strategic pivot: Rather than outsourcing influencer campaigns to third-party networks, UMG is building a self-contained creator infrastructure.
The app was quietly rolled out in late 2024 and, according to Music Business Worldwide (MBW) reporting, has since expanded under what insiders describe as a “stealth mode” operational build. The company has already onboarded creators, talent agencies, and compliance systems to support multi-market payouts.
Janey Stride, UMG’s Director of Commercial and Creative Innovation, outlined the logic behind the move:
“As creator marketing has continued its growth trajectory, we realised there was a real need to bring it in-house: somewhere we could house a global creator database, appropriately categorise creators, effectively and directly communicate with them, deliver prompt payment for activity and integrate all of our data sources to enable effective and timely analysis of campaigns.”
Labels Move Into the Creator Economy
The timing of UMG’s launch aligns with the explosive growth of influencer marketing, now valued at $32.55 billion in 2025, up from $24 billion just a year earlier. For record labels, creator collaborations have become a critical pillar of music discovery and viral marketing, especially across TikTok and Instagram Reels—platforms where fan-led trends can propel a track to global recognition.
What distinguishes House of Carmen is its direct-to-creator structure. By moving influencer engagement in-house, UMG eliminates intermediaries and brings campaign operations—data, briefs, payments—under a unified system. This vertical integration mirrors broader shifts in entertainment marketing, where brands seek to control first-party creator data and reduce campaign latency.
The initiative marks a philosophical break from the traditional model of influencer marketing as an outsourced service. Instead, UMG is establishing a proprietary creator network, treating influencers not as vendors but as an embedded part of the label’s promotional machinery.
Inside House of Carmen: How It Works
House of Carmen operates as a hybrid of campaign hub, talent portal, and data analytics tool. Creators can join the platform once they reach a minimum of 1,000 followers on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube. Once registered, they gain access to two campaign formats:
- Direct briefs, which offer guaranteed payments for posting specific creative assets related to artist releases or events.
- Performance-based challenges, where payouts are tied to engagement metrics such as reach, views, or conversions.
Behind the interface, the system handles every stage—brief distribution, content approval, and automated payment—removing friction that typically slows cross-platform campaigns. The inclusion of gamified leaderboards further incentivizes creators, ranking participants based on performance outcomes.
While currently focused on the UK market, expansion plans are already in motion: MBW has identified trademarks filed for U.S. operations, and sources indicate Germany will be the next launch territory. UMG’s stated goal is to develop a global creator database accessible to all regional divisions.
Redefining Creator Marketing for the Music Industry
For the music industry, House of Carmen signals a fundamental reconfiguration of marketing architecture. Instead of licensing songs to agencies or influencer networks, Universal can now directly deploy artists’ music into social campaigns through its own curated creator pool.
This not only improves operational efficiency but transforms campaign intelligence. With House of Carmen, UMG can aggregate data across multiple campaigns, measure audience overlap, and optimize future promotions with AI-driven insights.
It also aligns with a larger shift toward micro-influencer ecosystems. While traditional celebrity partnerships deliver reach, creator-led campaigns deliver authenticity and niche resonance—qualities that have proven more effective at driving streams and conversions. Universal’s model formalizes this relationship through a transparent, scalable framework.
Internally, the system enables faster payment cycles, centralized compliance, and cross-market coordination—addressing long-standing friction points that creators face when working with global brands.
Industry Implications: From Label to Platform Operator
House of Carmen’s launch extends UMG’s broader history of technological experimentation. The company previously filed patents for AI-powered audience identification and data-driven artist marketing tools, but this marks its first step into running a creator marketplace under its own brand.
By doing so, UMG becomes not only a music rights holder but also a creator-tech operator, competing in territory historically occupied by influencer platforms and agencies. If successful, House of Carmen could set a precedent for other entertainment companies to develop their own closed-loop creator systems—complete with vetting, analytics, and payment infrastructure.
The result is a potential industry inflection point: record labels transforming from clients of influencer networks into competitors within the creator economy itself.
Why It Matters
The launch of House of Carmen positions Universal Music Group as an early mover in a new hybrid model of music marketing—part label, part creator platform, part data company.
By internalizing creator campaigns, UMG gains unprecedented control over how artists are promoted, how creators are compensated, and how audiences are measured. The platform’s potential to unify marketing, analytics, and payouts under one global system represents a structural innovation not just for UMG but for the entire music industry.
In the creator economy’s next phase, where influence is fragmented across thousands of niche communities, UMG’s strategy reflects a clear reality: the future of music marketing won’t just be powered by creators—it will be owned by them.
