Would love a play queue too!
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@macmac, apologies for the delay here, but thank you for your time and effort that you put into your previous post. Definitely a lot to digest, but it is great information to have in the forum that we can always conceptualize both now and down the road.
I agree with your thoughts about being able to onboard and keep more labels and artists engaged on Resonate, and it is definitely something that Resonate has been working on with their Uploader Tool, among other improvements to make Resonate a more scaleable operation.
I am not too familiar with some of the block-chain ideas you mention, but a lot of what you are describing sounds like it could blend well with Resonate’s Commumity Credentials project, so definitely some great ideas there that may be worth touching on in the future for the community credentials project. (I forgot where to find more info on this, but @Hakanto or @Nick_M can touch on this project too if you’re interested in learning more about community credentials and potential use cases.)
I agree with your stance on not getting “distracted” by going out of our way to try to offer other things before a strong initial platform to stream music, but I think allowing artists to generate more income on the platform helps Resonate support artists more, so definitely something to have on the radar down the road, from my perspective.
Overrall, I appreciate your unique background and insight, as well as your practical approach to features of Resonate that would make it excel as a streaming platform over other options like Bandcamp, so keep bringing ideas to the table, thanks!
is it possible to turn this download feature back on?
multiple ppl have asked about this (it’s also something i persynally am advocating for).
it’d be cool to have a sense of thoughts around this as see if it could be included in roadmap/epic.
but yeah. completely appreciate the work that’s gone into this thus far. juss offering a suggestion/recommendation.
definitely feel free to share your thoughts on this. hope y’all are having a good day 
@auggod @jessegraf @peter @boopboop @Hakanto @zetto.plus @LLK
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@auggod and I discussed this yesterday. I’ve updated the “user story” for this feature based on our convo. Those who were involved in turning off the feature @peter @Nick_M @auggod, please edit the post to add more detail about its history.
Those who have more info about what the prerequisites are to future work, please add info.
See here: Downloading tracks 2.0
At one point we had “Version 1.0” and it was turned off. Now we want “Version 2.0”. Many of the ideas in this post, I imagine being part of future versions – 2.1, 2.2, 3.0 for example. I see the initial goal being to get the feature live again, even if it isn’t HQ and we don’t have parity with bandcamp. Start with downloading.
Anyone interested in seeing this feature become real, please read Downloading tracks 2.0 and share your feedback. This may not be something we can do soon, but if we create a clear – and achievable (!) – recipe – we can start planning for Version 2.0 and future improvements.
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100%, it’s about legitimacy.
(I should add it’s slightly better now that S2O doesn’t appear as proheminently on our pricing page, but it’s still there and it still appears a lot on our social media campains an it makes sense as a defining feature and since it’s quite a striking name, so we’re still binded to honoring that promise in my view)
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just seconding thirding fourthing the sentiment here. Downloading seems an essential part of s2o to me. I get that HQ would be expected longterm but I’m more than happy with mp3 for my bandcamp purchases and would just as happy with mp3 here.
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I was thinking we could make FLAC our one file type for downloads, but apparently it doesn’t work on many devices. And if folks were downloading onto their phone, FLAC could take up a lot of space.
I’m definitely interested in hearing from other folks on this – as I’m a novice to audio formats.
It seems that 320kbps mp3 is a pretty universal format and while the quality could be better, it’s pretty nice by my ear.
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Are we restricted to offering only 1 file format for downloads?
When I can, I download music in both FLAC for my not-calling-myself-an-audiofile HQ listening rig, and 320kbps mp3 for my phone. To me, the option to choose download format(s) is one of Bandcamp’s “killer features”.
When I buy digital music from stores that only allow 1 format, I buy either FLAC or WAV, then transcode it myself to 320kbps mp3.
…But my preferences probably don’t reflect those of Resonate’s core clientele. I am also An Old™ who prefers to listen to entire albums rather than a stream of singles.
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There’s also some questions over on the Submitting music - #14 by Hakanto thread regarding restricting uploaded files to WAV or AIFF going forward (dropping FLAC).
And on the user story Downloading tracks 2.0
It’d be good to understand, a little, the technical processes behind the scenes here and why it would be necessary to convert FLAC to AIFF or WAV, why not uploading FLAC would be of benefit, and how it relates to downloads.
I’ve looked through some of the technical documentation in the past (Resonate Tech - Why, What, How and Where v1 - Google Präsentationen) but can’t see how storage and transcoding works.
So we store files on Backblaze for the track streamer. Possibly in AAC? Do we also store the original uploads (FLAC, WAV, AIFF)? Would an MP3 download be transcoded on the fly, from original upload formats? Or would we be proposing also storing MP3s for downloads?
I totally get that just adding one download format is version 2.0, and offering additional download formats is in a future version. I’m just unclear on the relationship between reducing upload formats and offering a download format.
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We’ll keep accepting FLAC until there is more consensus around this. 
I don’t understand the details myself, so I’m grateful to keep chatting about this and learning.
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That’s cool with me but personally I don’t want work on downloads to stall if it’s a factor.
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Sorry to chip in, and as I say I’m new to all this 
But as a regular Bandcamp user (listener/buyer, not artist) I would add that despite downloading all the music I buy, I still use Bandcamp to listen to it most of the time… probably 80-90% of the time. But downloading does allow me to listen at times when I don’t have internet. So, I do think if people download from Resonate they will still use the site to listen (and continue to explore) if they like the way the site functions…
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My 2 penneth/[euro]cents :
I absolutely care about people downloading tracks. The whole “rent everything” is a social scourge that feeds a system that only benefits the rich. Bandcamp is cashing out, and resonate can be the place to send people to, but not whilst it doesn’t have downloads.
I have a whole-home audio system that isn’t spotify, isn’t sonos, has no need to login to anything, keeps my personal data in my control and doesn’t leak data or even metadata about me. You might think of this as extreme but I am privacy conscious and who knows when people start getting arrested in countries where it’s illegal to be gay for streaming Tom Robinson’s Glad to be Gay on Spotify?
I’m also an artist. I want to provide my songs to people who want to own them and play them offline. Right now, that place would be bandcamp. Going forward it certainly won’t be because I care about how companies treat their staff, and epic is known for treating their developers poorly.
I am opinionated and I would actually suggest that artists can make the choice but it should be clearly shown what their choice is. An overlay on their work that has a [Downloadable] or [Not Downloadable] badge for instance. That way the listener can truly make their choice, and it’s not on resonate.is to choose, it’s a decision by both listener and artist. It might make the messaging about “stream to own” a little more complex, but you can state on the download page “Sorry, this artist has chosen to disallow downloading” then.
IMO “Own” is not “stream for free, when you have internet, when the servers are up, and as long as we don’t go bust”. That is just deception in my book. And deception from a coop that claims fairness is baked in is not a good look. This is why I think that it’s important to say who made the choice to disallow downloading, and this should really be visible before you spend money (credits) on listening.
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On the flac vs anything else thing, I would actually say that providing flac only as a download is perfectly valid, yes, some players don’t have the option to play it, but if people care about downloads they should be able to convert the media, the download could even link to a page where there are tools to convert the file anyway. FLAC being lossless is equivalent to wav/aiff anyway and takes up less storage on backblaze.
I agree that it must be more obvious that downloading doesn’t exist.
I do want to point out a subtle difference here, there’s a difference between not allowing downloading and downloading not being implemented.
Generally across the forum, I haven’t seen one current or ex-board member be anti-downloading. This is a very small company with currently very little revenue, and it seems like other things, like having a more functional player, better payment flow, et cetera have taken priority.
It’s not a venture-backed company that can just tell its team of developers to put it in the next sprint.
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How would you feel about MP3 320kbps? Granted it’s supposedly “lossy” but not to the extent 99,9% of the population could hear any difference and if they do, they never hear a difference to the point it’s actually a problem of any kind. The uptick is it’s a widely accepted very good quality format that everything reads correctly.
I understand the frustration of it not being “lossless” compared to flac, but to me it’s really more symbolic than meaningful in terms of sonic quality and we should go with the broader more easy to use format.
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@LLK seems like a bit of the paralysis on downloading is that there’s a sentiment of “if it’s not in my 5 favorite formats, it’s worthless”. Maybe focusing on “download mp3” as a first step would be more effective way of thinking?
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Yeah I have the same feeling and I must admit being a little frustrated about it, I understand wav/aif is a lot of space and we need to narrow it down, but really MP3 320kbps seems like such a great format to me that I think we could be completely fine going offering that for the time being an when we have a “choose your export format” feature like Bandcamp… that’ll probably means we’ve sorted some of our most complicated financial needs so that’ll be great news.
It’s an issue we have with “Stream 2 Own” being the business model of the platform we aim to create (and it implied download from day one if I remember correctly) and clearly advertising everywhere we’re in beta, we’re not a fully operational company, we want coders, builders, help getting funds without going the VC route, etc.
Basically all the things that make us a coop and “fair” (as a workers owned company that doesn’t have to pay back millions and/or scale to the moon in an exponential curve) are the things that make it harder for us to create the infrastructure for a business model that is also “fair”. Doesn’t mean it’s not the goal of all the people working here, most of them benevolently, but it does mean people have to manage their expectations when coming here, we need their help and implication to create the platform we all want, and right now the platform we have isn’t that yet and we know it.
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