Personal view here… Re: "Resonate’s differentiating factor be in the market? "
Multi-stakeholder Co-op: with Artists, Listeners, Workers in democratic ownership;
Fair rewards for new artists, listener exploration of new music, spoken word
Focus on Community… an ‘ecosystem’ of mutual support and exchange of social value…without crazy monetization. Working with other co-ops with similar values.
Digital Dignity - surveillance free …robust digital democracy - polling / voting - possibility of privacy-respecting relationships among artists and listeners
We would hope to ‘convert’ some listener signups into becoming active, contributing members of the co-op: those volunteering thought, effort and perhaps donations and supporter shares to keep us growing and increasing the mutual value of the ecosystem. Membership renewals give us some stability and predictability of income.
I like your suggested ‘pay per minute’ tweak to stream to own… these and others are all things that we could decide on as part of our community governance going forward. I like an open discussion about a user-centric fair pricing algorithm, rather than a corporate decision based on behavioural science and corporate contractual obligations.
But we do need more research on this. What do listeners want? Is our offer too complex? What would make people want to joins up as members, or stick around on the player / site / forum for longer? What should we focus on first? Better search and discovery? Or just a lot more new music? …
Yes please! Volunteers welcome! We could reach out to our wider membership and perhaps poll on here, or collect better data from player interactions. It needs to be constructed with some thought, so folks with experience of research into user needs would be very much appreciated. In the meantime, any anecdotal opinions on here are always welcome.
Since this thread was started we did our survey on user needs and had a great response. Lots of support for stream2own and the community model. We wrote some aspects of this up in the response to the parliamentary inquiry on music streaming. Very encouraging… but we always need more feedback as a co-op… Open, democratic, onward!
Love the idea of a pay-per-minute pricing model. I thought about this myself before, too, and appreciate you (@peteroren) mentioning it here!
I do however also like the ownership factor of the stream2own model, and the idea that you pay less while discovering tracks, but more as you continually play a track that you connect with.
It may have already been mentioned to some degree in this thread already, but my personal solution to this setup would be to have a tiered micro payment-per-minute streamed fee, like $0.0008 per minute streamed that would increase after every completed play. (if this is even possible to implement)
For example, if the first time you listen to a track, the per-minute fee is $0.0008, then the second time you listen, the per-minute fee could be like $0.0016, and so on.
It is basically taking the stream2own model, but trying to divide the per-stream cost into a per-minute-streamed cost.
This is probably even more confusion being added to a seemingly already hard to understand streaming model for listeners, but just a thought for the future, to help Resonate better accommodate longer works down the road.
@austin Looking back through this thread, I wanted to respond to this point:
IMO another problem with the stream-to-own model is that if people are listening to Resonate on random, they end up paying significantly less to rights holders than even Spotify.
On average, Artists are earning better than twice the Spotify rate per play on Resonate.
On a case-by-case basis however, some artists can earn below the overall historical average, particularly in the early plays.
To address this, some Members have been analyzing a proposal that would guarantee an Artist earning credit greater than .01 € / per play without raising the per play cost to the Listener. This would work by basically subsidizing low cost Listener ‘discovery plays’ with penny-per-play advances from later, high-earning ‘purchasing plays’. Under this proposal the Co-op would cover any deficits generated by unrecouped subsidies. Early projections suggest the potential cost to the Co-op would be extremely low.
I’m hoping this proposal is written up for Member consideration before the next earnings period.
The overwhelming response from listeners and artists in the music streaming survey was that they loved the stream2own model for affordable early discovery, but were also looking for a guaranteed minimum play payment for artists. It’s possible to meet both these goals with some careful design in the streaming ‘economics’ without bringing in a hefty subscription payment.
Here is the link to our submission based on the survey response… 200 detailed replies
“This a very cool business model that is fair and equitable while providing a competitive discovery and monetization model that serves the music community.”
“… a model that allows streaming and also options to buy… so Resonate is exactly what we need! absolutely makes sense and is much better model than other streaming services.”
That pdf looks great! I can tell a lot of hard work went into that.
I just want to see Resonate make more revenue. Beyond polling the sentiment of current members, one way to evaluate the stream to own model is to look at the data and see how well it’s worked over 5 years. My feeling is that most members would support an option that gave the best chance to allow Resonate to be self-sustaining.
Personally, I think a simplified recurring revenue model would get Resonate closer-- but if membership really likes stream to own, then that’s how democracy should work!
There’s a way to do this with web monetisation (https://webmonetization.org/). Kendraio has been given a substantial grant specifically to work on that, which is why we’ve come to “partner” with Resonate in the first place, but there are a lot of edge cases to be worked out first. I’ve been talking with Nick about it and there’s certainly positive sentiment, especially because settlement are almost nearly in real time and don’t require a “de-minimis” amount like Stripe forces (because of fees). It becomes a hybrid between stream2own and subscription. Or better, it’s a good “in-between”.
Very high level at the moment but we think we can have a working prototype (on our side) in a month or 2. Willing to talk more about this on our call!
@austin actually mentioned web monetization and micro-payments to me a few months ago, when we first met, and it sounded really interesting!
I skimmed a few websites about it, but I am definitely interested to learn more about the setup, and how we can plan to bring this to Resonate sometime in the future!
Amazing! Surely it’s in development and has a lot of upside for musicians and listeners.
@austin great that you’re onto it. Really love what you’ve built with Ampled. Willing to talk on the near future if you’ve been exposed and are interested in it. Always looking for more platforms to support with it.
There are no micro payments in music creation. It costs me more than $0.0008 to create a minute of music. I think we’ve just got to get away from this downward spiral in music valuation. I get that people share or pirate music if they perceive it to be too expensive, but I find it somewhat gobsmacking we are now accustomed to talking in terms of several decimal points below $1.
Can I sip a Starbucks coffee for $0.0008 a sip?
The thing people forget is that musicians train for years, ten or more, to be able to create music. Once those skills are acquired it takes days, weeks and months to create a single piece of music
…that’s great!