Question - If "artist" is selected why does option for buying credits appear?

This confused me when I saw it, first because I didn’t know what credits were and, second, because it says that membership is free for artists and labels. If this is an optional offering maybe it should be described that way?

I also think there’s a mental defense that goes up if you’re a first-time artist seeing this—“Whoah, I have to pay to post my music?”

Actually, I’m finding many of these fields a bit confusing. If I’ve just clicked the email confirmation link, then the intent is obviously to get membership, correct? So it seems that checkbox is redundant.

I also don’t know what “supporter shares” are—I’d suggest either a quick blurb or another popup dialog. Should probably aim to keep this initial page as streamlined as possible for total newbies who might be easily scared away.

Just my 2 cents.

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I’m gonna add one more thing—and sorry if this has already been covered.

When I get past the initial account creation page/form, I get a page with:

“Join Resonate as an Artist - free if you upload a qualifying track (see terms and conditions). Have your say in Resonate as a ‘Music Maker’!”

As someone who has never been here before my perception is that you’re going to “vet” my track to see if it “qualifies”. I’m sure this wasn’t the intention but it makes me feel like, in order to post my music on Resonate, I have to meet some standard set by someone. I’ve done a fair bit of web content UX/UI and I remember that “Terms and conditions” is Scary Language.

Lastly, despite having chosen “artist” on the first page, and elected not to buy any credits (it’s free, right?), I’m then taken to a checkout page. I guess I’m just not following this. IMO this needs to be streamlined—presumably because we WANT lots of new artists to join.

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Just a quick response to speak to what I know about here.

Membership is free as an artist. Listening isn’t.

As a member you get voting rights in the coop, you are part of the coop. As a listener you are not. As a listener, you can join the coop by paying a small annual fee. You can also become a member through other contributions, such as being a worker, offering time to work on projects/infrastructure/etc.

None of this membership actually pays for streaming, for listening.

To listen/stream, you pay and we have a credits system. Rather than a monthly membership you pay per play. How much you pay is our stream 2 own system, so a very small amount for the first play, more on the 2nd play, increasing to the 9th play. After 9 plays you will have paid roughly the price of a track download but further streams of that track are free.

More details on pricing are here - Pricing and credits - Docs - Resonate Community Forum

and on membership - Becoming a member - Docs - Resonate Community Forum

After all of that, you should have some credits for free to try out listening. If not, please raise it as a help request and it will get looked in to. If you’ve used them all up and want to keep listening you will need to top up.

You absolutely do not need credits to upload music as an artist or label.

Also, the phrasing around a ‘qualifying track’ is based around the need for ‘qualifying contributions’ to confer membership. No-one is checking if they like your music, or if it’s good enough, etc. but it does need to be ‘1 track of original music uploaded to the Resonate Platform as an artist’ every two years. Details can be found in the membership link I posted above.

I hope that helps and welcome aboard.

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Yes thanks, I understand all this. I should clarify that my overarching point here was: why do the signup pages continue to offer credits/shares/checkout functionality after the user has selected “artist”? If joining/contributing is free, then all of this should get zapped to better streamline the signup process.

My fear is that we’re front-loading a lot of “stuff” that is unnecessary for new artists—maybe even a turn-off.

Bandcamp’s signup page is beautifully simple and direct: Signup | Bandcamp

Anyway, that’s my take.

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Honestly, I 100% agree with your take.

I think the way I’d translate it personally is :

  • Should we treat artists looking to join by adding their work/art necessarily as potential users. Right now our signup workflow is such that when an artist join we immediately expect them to want to use the platform as a player and I don’t think that’s a given. Artists are used to share their work on a number of platforms they never use, we should just let them become listeners if they want and not force that logic upon them.
  • I agree the phrasing around “Qualifying track” isn’t good and as a non native english speaker, and knowing a lot of non native english speakers, they could all misapprehend this formulation as being judgmental. The phrasing imo should read "Join Resonate as an Artists - To qualify for a free artist membership you just need to upload one track of original music every two years. Have your say in Resonate as a ‘Music Maker’!”

And lastly I agree the checkout page at the end is distateful if artist membership is free and this needs to be streamlined.

All this being said @orangefizz the dev team is well aware that the current artist onboarding workflow isn’t streamlined and efficient enough, and there’s a lot of efforts being done right now so that this can be improve. So you’re absolutely correct and helpful in pointing out what felt wrong to you from the perspective of a newcomer to the platform.

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No that’s fine. I’d seen someone/somewhere else thinking you had to buy credits to upload music and I think the whole resonate offering can take a little to get your head around so though I’d try and be helpful haha.

I also agree there’s streamlining and confusion to be dealt with.

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I’m sorely late in responding to this, sorry.

My first impression is that we shouldn’t presume that artists will be users. I go back to Bandcamp again: their artist and fan accounts are verrry separate and I think that’s smart. Also, removing all that context makes the job of streamlining simpler IMO.

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