Wednesday, 17 June 2026 04:10 PM
Product Announcements
The first Black woman to go gold on her own label joins a service built on the principle she lived by: artists should own their work and get paid fairly. Timed to Juneteenth.
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESS Newswire / June 17, 2026 / Zedge, Inc. (NYSE American:ZDGE), $ZDGE, a company that builds and operates creator communities serving 20 million monthly active users, today announced an agreement with the estate of Betty Wright to bring the late soul legend's catalog to the platform, available now and timed to Juneteenth.
Wright, who died in 2020 at 66, was a six-time Grammy nominee best known for her 1971 hit "Clean Up Woman" - a record sampled by Mary J. Blige, SWV, Afrika Bambaataa, and Chance the Rapper, among others. She won a Grammy in 1975 for "Where Is the Love" and produced Joss Stone's Grammy-nominated Mind, Body & Soul. But one credential made her the right fit for Tapedeck: in 1988, on her own imprint Ms. B Records, she became the first Black woman to earn a gold record on a label she owned.
That history maps directly onto Tapedeck's model. Every stream pays a minimum of a penny - the floor, not the ceiling - and fans can choose to pay more. Rights holders receive 80% of whatever a fan spends, on every stream and purchase. For Wright's catalog, 80 cents of every dollar flows to her estate.
"Betty Wright was running the Tapedeck thesis forty years before Tapedeck existed - she just had to do it the hard way," said Tim Quirk, SVP of Product at Zedge, who launched Tapedeck after earlier stints helping build Rhapsody and Google Play Music. "The worst thing a service can do with a legacy artist is treat the catalog like inventory."
Betty's eldest daughter, Namphuyo Aisha McCray, explained how Tapedeck's model feels like an extension of her mother's vision: "My mother believed that artists should own their art, protect their creative vision, and connect directly with their fans without barriers. She spent years sharing that message and helping independent artists reclaim their power. We are honored to carry that mission forward - ensuring that the next generation of artists has the freedom, ownership, and connection to thrive on their own terms."
The agreement extends a run of recent Tapedeck licensing deals including Cinq Music, Tuff Gong Distribution, and BWL Entertainment. Tapedeck launched on iOS in the U.S. in fall 2025, with Android, web, and international expansion underway in 2026.
Tapedeck and the estate will mark the launch with a private, invitation-only gathering for the music and licensing community in Wright's hometown of Miami on June 17, 2026. Wright's children - singers in their own right - will perform and share remembrances alongside remarks from the Tapedeck team and a video tribute. Celebrating Wright on a weekend about freedom and self-determination, in the city where she built her own house in an industry that wasn't designed to accommodate her, is the point.
About Tapedeck Tapedeck is a pay-as-you-go music streaming and download service from Zedge that lets artists and rights holders set their own prices, with a penny-per-play floor and no ceiling. There are no subscription fees; fans pay only for what they play and can always choose to pay artists more. Tapedeck pays licensors 80% of all fan spending. The service launched on iOS in the U.S. in 2025, with broader platform and international availability rolling out in 2026.
About Zedge Zedge builds and operates creator communities that serve 20 million monthly active users across its platforms. Zedge Marketplace, our flagship platform, is a leading marketplace for mobile personalization content that powers a vibrant creator ecosystem including a full generative AI creation suite. DataSeeds.AI is our B2B business, delivering managed, multimodal datasets that are ethically sourced, rights-cleared, built to spec and delivered at scale to frontier AI developers. The content foundation for DataSeeds.AI is supplied by Zedge's proprietary creator communities, including Zedge Marketplace contributors and photo competition community GuruShots, the world's most popular photo competition game, which is supplemented by crowdsourced content. For more information please visit: investor.zedge.net
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SOURCE: Zedge, Inc.