Ashanti Abdullah Knew Artists Were Bleeding Cash. So He Did Something About It

Discover how Ashanti Abdullah’s Ternwheel is changing how independent artists make money in today’s music industry.

Ashanti Abdullah’s path into software design didn’t follow the typical Stanford or Harvard cookie-cutter mold-his path was far less conventional. Abdullah, a former DJ-turned-manager,  spent years watching artists lose money on tour—consistently, quietly, and unnecessarily.

“There’s a study that found touring artists lose over $1.16 billion a year to inefficiencies,” Abdullah said. “And nobody blinks. That number told me everything. I didn’t want to fix it—I wanted to recover it.”

 When he led the largest independent hip hop festivals like Soundset and Ryhmsayers he noticed  after budgeting, the artists would come home with a 32 percent margin but landing at 12. 

“That’s not miscalculation. That’s leakage. Someone’s skimming, or something’s broken. And no one was tracking it in real time, “ says Abdullah.

No centralized system. No live tracking. No transparency. Artists often left with confusion at the end of every tour.

Abdullah moved to Silicon Valley 10 years ago to launch Ternwheel, a touring SaaS platform designed not for investors or product managers, but for performers who live out of suitcases. 

“On your first day working at Ternwheel, you get a pair of Jordans,” Abdullah said. “No matter who you are or where you come from. That’s how we move. It’s about culture. We’re not adapting to tech—we’re making tech adapt to us.”

The software is made for artists, managers, road crews. The ones who wake up in a city without remembering how they got there. Abdullah didn’t build tech to impress Silicon Valley. He built a tool to empower the artist.

“Grieves tours 200 days a year. He texts me ideas constantly,” Abdullah said. “One week it was weather alerts for each tour stop. We added it.”

Before software, Abdullah worked on the road. He DJ’d for Prof and Manifest. He managed artists. He ran routing, handled money, coordinated travel. 

“Eventually I realized I was better at the business than the turntables,” he said. “So I fired myself as a DJ and hired myself as a manager.”

“There were tools like Master Tour,” he said. “But they weren’t built to protect artists’ profit. They were glorified calendars. Useful, but useless when it came to knowing who spent what, when, and why” says Abdullah.

Ternwheel changed that. Artists now see real-time P&Ls while on the road. Tour managers can issue spending cards. Every dollar is tracked. And because Abdullah lived the chaos firsthand, he knows what matters. 

“One of our artists comes home with 21% more now, just by using the system. Nothing fancy. Just less waste.”  Ternwheel is a decision-making system that shows artists exactly where their money is going while they’re still on the road.

His philosophy is a precise calculation, “Managers get paid on gross. Artists get paid on net. So if no one’s watching the backend, artists are the ones getting screwed.”

After self-funding with $250,000  from a longtime friend, Abdullah hit a wall.

 “I pitched over 100 VCs. Nothing landed,” he said. “Then one of them pointed me to TxO. They called on a Saturday. I was in the program by Monday.”

That program—a16z Talent x Opportunity Initiative (TxO) at Andreessen Horowitz—connected Abdullah to people who understood the weight of culture. 

“Kofi, Trey, the whole TxO team—they don’t chase hype” he says.  That hands-on approach helped him survive a brutal funding process, proving TxO as a strategic alignment to boost capital and gain larger access.

Abdullah said, “They weren’t trying to turn me into a tech bro-they respect culture.”

 “That team backs founders who don’t come from the Stanford pipeline. They saw what I was doing, and they understood why it mattered.” 

“Marc Andreessen hasn’t seen it yet, but Ben Horowitz? He gets it. He runs his whole operation like it’s a hip-hop label. That’s why I trust them.”

Ternwheel didn’t launch quietly. It dropped at South by Southwest. “We finished building the product on a Saturday and started selling it that Tuesday,” he said. “No soft beta. Just go.”

Now Abdullah is preparing to roll out banking integration—direct artist accounts, spending cards for crew, and live reconciliation during the tour. 

     “Every transaction connects to your P&L,” he said. “You don’t wait until the settlement to find out you’re broke.”

And the vision doesn’t stop at music. 

      “This works for Broadway tours, sports teams, arena shows,” he said. “Anywhere you move people from city to city. That whole world runs on spreadsheets and duct tape. We’re giving it infrastructure” Abdullah says.

He doesn’t see himself as a founder in the conventional sense. 

      “I don’t code. I don’t wear Allbirds. I’m not 26,” he said. “But I know how artists get robbed. And I know how to stop it.”

At Ternwheel, there are no Zoom check-ins, no slide decks about “mission statements.” There’s only execution.

         “You work when and how you want—as long as the work is done. We’re not a startup. We’re a results-based company. Just deliver.”

Abdullah’s approach is direct, tactical, and uncompromising.   

     “I came close to walking away,” he admitted. “I was tired. I’d been bootstrapping this thing. But I didn’t stop. I knew we had something.”

What Abdullah is building isn’t some ‘disruption story.’ It’s a correction. For artists. For culture. For everyone who’s ever come back from tour with empty pockets and no receipts.

And if your joining the Ternwheel team. Yes, you still get the Jordans.

#MusicIndustry #IndieArtists #Entrepreneurship