Resonate Renewal Crowdfunding Campaign

Do we have/want a stretch goal kind of presentation (that would go after the “pitch” section) for varying financing possibilities or do we feel it would be misleading in our current situation because it’s tough to precisely budget a per-feature financial minimum?

Okay, so I’ve added all of Z’s changes, except the idea about the stream2own explanation. I’ve been spending some time trying to build a little listening calculator (not sure we can really use it anywhere right now, but just working on it for what it’s worth), but in general, I was wondering what the numbers in the below diagram represent, and how they relate to EUR & USD?

Are the numbers below the cost of streams in euros, or credits, and if they’re credits, how many credits equal 1 EUR or USD?

Once I figure this out, I can have a more accurate guess at streaming costs based on different listener scenarios that I can explain in the Open Collective About Section.

Thanks!

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I’ve added a chart in the Stream2own and credits guide with a breakdown of cost per play in both credits and euros. If the page doesn’t have all the info you need, let me know.

My understanding is that credits’ value is linked to euros. If purchasing credits with USD, the price would fluctuate relative to EUR vs USD.

My instinct is that while we should have these details available for those who want to deep dive in them (linking to them in the Handbook would work), I suggest not offering too many details up front. We’re aiming for a clear pitch to folks of what the idea of Stream2own is, the elevator pitch of how it works, why we support it, how it supports artists, etc.

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Great, yes, that chart helped out a lot!

With that said, I have updated the stream2own section, but I am wondering the best way to explain stream2own examples, as well as how to phrase the continual credit/euro/us dollar conversions.

@zetto.plus, @LLK, and others, please see an example of what I wrote below, or view the full edits inside the original google doc, and let me know of any ways to improve this.


Example 1

Number of Songs Listened To - 60

Number of Times Played - 1st time for each song

Cost

60 (songs) x .002 (1st play cost) = 0.12 credits used

0.120 credits x €1.23 (cost/1 credit) = €0.15

or

0.120 credits x $1.49 (cost/1 credit) = $0.18

If you listened to 60 songs for the first time every day, your monthly cost would be about €4.43 (€0.15 x 30 days) or $5.36 ($0.18 x 30 days). That means you could stream 1,800 songs (60 songs x 30 days) for the first time for just €4.43 or $5.36. If you already pay Spotify €8.75/month or $9.99/month, streaming music for the first time on Resonate would save you about €4.32 or $4.63 every month.

If the above example is good, I have also added two more examples for other use cases (same cost as Spotify and a more expensive example) inside the google doc, so please review those as well.

I do think however that stream2own is just something that people have to try out themselves for a few months so they can observe their own listening habits and determine whether it’s worth it for them, so I also mentioned the free listening credit we give people upon signing up for the first time.

This is obviously fundamental, just like Netflix stormed the world with their “first 3 months are free” we need to make it clear to people we’re giving them time to embrace the mechanism by themselves.

To come back to your example, I think “songs” isn’t a metric people are that used to (they know what a song is, they just don’t use it as a metric), so I’d rather say that since the “average length of songs on current streaming services is 3min17” that means on the average 3h (and 17 minutes lol) will set you back 5$ a month that means 10$ a month (the equivalent of a Spotify subscription) will give you 6h to 7h of music discovery everyday for a month, and if you just don’t listen to 6h every single day, it’s just that much more time you don’t have to spend for, that you get to use the next month.

But on a month to month basis the math would be this :

“The price of a monthly Spotify subscription gives you 6h a day of music discovery for 30 days and all of it goes to artists. The difference being you don’t pay when you don’t listen.”

Incidentally, this makes me think, (again I’m thinking out loud here, this would need to be precised) that we could split “pricing examples” into listening pattern categories for clarity like, “Discovery (the example I just gave)”, “Fans (there’s an album/artist you loved and listened to all month? > pricing is this and that)”, “Casual listeners (Only listen to music every now and then?)”

Whatever, try to find relatable scenarios and give them fair pricing explaining how and why those are exciting.

I think the “if you listened to this much then it’s this much” with tons of numbers and “0,18 x 30” etc. is still too disconnected we need to find ways so that people read a story and are “hey that sounds like me, looks like if I spend 10 bucks on this it’ll be good enough for a month or two”.

I know for example one scenario where we need to be frank because a lot of people can get obsessive over music they love, is like, “what if this month I loved an album and I listened to it all week?” because then this month you paid 10 or 15€ for that album, and you’re out of credits now, period. So there needs to be a scenario for those people (my guess would be to present them a scenario where either they click a “buy now” button so that this album doesn’t alter their discovery experience, or they just add a few dollars to manage discovery until the end of the month, but we need to imagine stuff like that because we need to ease them into this new and weird way to listen/buy).

I’m saying all this because let’s take an example : We offer people credit to find out what their listening pattern is, do we all agree that IS the idea behind behind the credits we offer? Well, what if their listening pattern is after 20 songs, they find an album that they just adore, and they listen to it ten times and it’s a 15 tracks album. Well then that’s over, they consumed the entirety of their credits (I actually think they used all of it long before they even “owned” the album). But they didn’t really have time to discover “their listening pattern” right? They just liked this one album.

The reality is if the number of credits we give away at the first login is too small, we’re not letting people discover their “listening pattern”, we’re pushing them to only play new tracks and avoid at all cost replaying them if they like them because they might consume the entirety of their free credits in one go.

The result is we’re effectively pushing them away from actually using S2O incremental pricings ! We’re telling them “only use this for discovery or pay already”.

So my workaround for this is :

  • Increase free credits enough on entrance to have a “honeymoon” period where people can actually have fun with little to no pressure on our service.
  • Create relatable “user pattern” stories and attitudes where we showcase what the service would be like in terms of spendings for various “archetypes” of listeners.

I think to find the archetypes I should start digging around for the various listening habits of people already on streaming platforms, how much do they listen to an album they just found out about, how much do they listen to their own playlists, how much time they spend discovering etc.

I’m already keen on having a “constent discovery all day” archetype, “spinning a few albums a lot” archetype, “casual listeners” archetype. And then we just tell the story we find when we crunch the numbers the way I did above.

PS: Right now if I’m correct we’re giving enough credits on sign up to discover 60 songs ? If so that’s no enough.

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@LLK, thank you for all of your thoughts here. I appreciate your critical thinking around this topic, and the many factors that come with it.

I agree about the hours listened being easier for people to think about than songs listened to, so I will work to change some of those initial metrics/comparisons.

I also wrote up a few more examples a few pages into the document that you can see HERE as they somewhat extend into your archetype examples.

I definitely took more of an analytical route by adding numbers to explain things, but I was also debating using more of an anecdotal approach similar to what you’ve mentioned above, so I can showcase the examples that way if we think that would be easier for people to comprehend.

As far as the free listening credit goes, I am not sure what we offer now as I believe the free credits given was recently cut in half? Perhaps @Hakanto or @Nick_M know what the current setup is, but I’m unsure what steps would have to be taken to change that.

This also brings up the point that although I know that the stream2own offer is a big part of Resonate and its attractiveness, I feel like we may be starting to get a little bit off track here when it comes to the details of communicating stream2own vs. creating an about section to encourage people to donate to Resonate, since stream2own is just a part of what Resonate is doing as a whole.

I completely agree that the stream2own communications conversation needs to continue, but perhaps we can do that HERE, and in the meantime, settle on something that is “good enough” for describing it in the about section on the Open Collective page since we don’t have a lot of time to fundraise and we still have a bit more work to do here before we hopefully start bringing some donations in.

With all of that said, I am thinking we could take the following next steps:

  • @Sam_Martyn will…

    • Make updates to the stream2own examples in the Open Collective About Page doc.
    • Propose the Open Collective About Page doc to the @executive team for approval to make live
    • Continue to make edits to improve this about section as new ideas come to fruition
    • Continue to work on additional aspects of the crowdfunding campaign (tiers/rewards, donation goals & timelines, communications and outreach, etc.)
  • @LLK could potentially…

    • Start digging around for the various listening habits of people already on streaming platforms to improve the archetype examples that will help communicate stream2own better
    • Continue to work out additional thoughts for communicating stream2own and how to encourage people to join Resonate with increased free credit amounts, opportunities to “buy now,” etc. in this thread.

Interested to hear everyone’s thoughts here, and I look forward to keeping this project, and the conversations around it, moving forward.

Thank you,
– Sam

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I’ve been a member for a couple years now but have never been asked to renew my 5 euro annual cooperative membership. The Resonate coop site does say membership is annual.

Does the OpenCollective donation page translate to being a member? I think it would make sense to play up the co-op aspect of the crowdfunding campaign.

The New Internationalist, a news media co-operative, raised 500,000 pounds for their co-operative by really featuring the independence of the co-op. It might be useful to reach out to them for tips and tricks. I’m sure they wouldn’t object to mimicking their strategy since it’s for an aligned co-op. New Internationalist: Save our stories - a Publishing crowdfunding project in Oxford by New Internationalist

Edit: Also should we promote Supporter Shares? I just bought 10 euros.

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This breakdown of what we need to do and why seems exactly like what I had in mind @Sam_Martyn

My idea was (for once !) absolutely not to derail this into a complex discussion about S2O rather just find the best possible way to showcase the nature of this complex and very new feature (even beyond music in terms of spending habits it’s a very “out there” approach to apprehend), so that people find it more welcoming and simple to grasp.

I also think that once there’s a clear breakdown of S2O into clear use cases, it makes it look a lot less like “that’s all we’re about, we hold the secret formula” and a lot more like “we’ve designed this system to push these types of music consumptions patterns which we think are positive, fair and ethical, but we could do more”

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Apologies for the delay in response here, but thank you for sharing your wonderful thoughts here!

I am not 100% sure what the status of membership renewal is, despite the fact that it is supposed to be annual, but yes, even just having all current members renew their annual membership would be a great starting point!

As a “reward” for donating €10+ (new annual membership dues, I believe) to our Open Collective Page, I would love to see Resonate be able to include these donors as members of the co-op, so although that’s the plan, I need to see how that could work logistically before offering this.

Finally, I agree that promoting co-op membership, supporter shares, and other “higher-margin” items (things that don’t cost the co-op much) would be some great perks/ rewards to include in this campaign. Thank you for sharing the insightful info about The New Internationalist to help me frame this better in our campaign.

With that said, although I still need to confirm with members of the @executive team that offering rewards for our campaign is allowed, please see some of my reward ideas below, and perhaps we can start conversing about this topic while I work to get the about section changes approved.

Reward Item Ideas

  • Special Badge & Feature in Our Community Forum
  • Additional Badges and Features on Our Website & In the Forum
  • 1 Year Co-op Membership
  • Supporter Shares
  • Resonate Sticker
  • Resonate T-Shirt (Music Ecosystem apparel | Everpress)
    • Potential to also have different designs & types of clothing?
  • Listening Credit
  • Resonate Artist Music and/or Merch
    • We could ask artists to allow us to feature their work in our campaigns (maybe for a discount?), and then give them a cut of the support given to get their music/merch?
  • Music (Business) Consulting/Advising Services?

^ Look to Bundle Everything Above Together in Additional Rewards Packs? ^

Again, all of the above are just ideas, but looking to see what we could offer that would encourage people to donate and feel like they’re “getting their values worth,” if needed.

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Great, thanks!

I love what you mention here too about finding the best possible way to showcase the nature of this complex and very new feature to make it look a lot less like “that’s all we’re about, we hold the secret formula” and a lot more like “we’ve designed this system to push these types of music consumptions patterns which we think are positive, fair and ethical, but we could do more”

100% agree there, and I’m glad we’re on the same page!

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Thank you for your contributions, @Sam_Martyn and @LLK. I can’t stress enough how helpful you all have been and are being in this crucial moment; you’re getting at some core things here as it relates to this outward-facing orientation of the co-op and the need for us to articulate things to potential users.

If you need any help around copy, please just shoot me a message.

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Great work Sam. I have updated your listening calculator to make it easier to enter data:

Only two things to enter:

  • number of active listening plays per day
  • choose one of 3 listening profiles
    – Explorer (tends to listen to many tracks once or twice, maybe uses us with other services like bandcamp for purchase / downloads)
    – Niche (finds a core niche of music they love on here and listens to it a lot)
    – Both (balance of the two above… frequency distribution following the S2O theory)

I have also built in some assumptions about people building up some owned tracks in their library if they stick around for longer - free plays, deducted from the total.

Also assumptions about folks buying listening credit as in our new checkout ‘in bulk’ and getting a discount for doing so. It makes a difference for them and rewards their loyalty.

(I have obviously not included the free plays we give away at the moment, even though these are a significant percentage of our current total listening.)

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@zetto.plus, thank you for the kind words, and as I start to transfer all of this work into the Open Collective page, I will definitely want you and any others to review what’s there and suggest any changes for improvement.

@Nick_M this calculator is awesome!! Love how you simplified and personified some of these sections into more listener-profile based selections. Really cool stuff here, and glad I was able to get things started for ya! I think the assumptions are fine for now, and again, I’m not too sure where we can effectively use this tool, but I do envision in the future having it embedded on the website next to, or in the place of, the artist calculator for listener sections on the site.

Definitely other things to tackle before spending any more time here, but at the very least, it can help us “paint a better picture” of potential Stream2Own costs while we promote Resonate moving forward, so thank you!

A post was split to a new topic: Stream2own pricing calculator

Hi all,

I wanted to provide another update on the campaign.

I have finished transferring the About Section Information from my doc to the Open Collective Page.

Please review this section and let me know of any additional changes I can make as we go.

Next, I would like to confirm the “Financial Contribution Options” section on this page.

We currently have the following options:

This is where I would like to add some more specific asks, along with potential rewards/exchanges for donations.

I am a bit unsure of what all of Resonate’s current offerings are, and the rules around them, but my main goal here is to showcase our current offerings (membership, support shares, t-shirt, etc.), while also adding a few “bundle” and recurring options to encourage higher/repeat donations.

As you will see, I need a bit of help here, but here are my initial suggested tiers.

  • €2 or more
    Donor - Because you care.

  • €5 or more
    Backer - Be recognized in our community forum with a special Resonate renewal supporter badge.

  • €10 or more
    Membership - Become a Resonate member for 1 year and receive co-op voting rights and other member benefits.

  • €35 or more
    Resonate T-Shirt - "Music Ecosystem” by illustrator Bridget M, one of a series made for Resonate. On a classic white tee with a limited edition black & yellow print.

  • €100 or more
    Supporter - Receive Resonate Supporter Shares that will act as an additional “I owe you” (IOU) for your donation.

  • €200 or more
    Sponsor - Receive all of the offerings available (Resonate Renewal Community Forum Badge, 1 Year Resonate Membership, Resonate T-Shirt, Supporter Shares - from remaining donation).

A few more notes: I saw the “or more” vocabulary on other crowdfunding pages during my research, but I’m not too sure how that works. I think what it means is that if, for example, someone just wanted a T-Shirt, but decided to donate €60, then they would receive their T-Shirt, and Resonate would keep what’s left over from the €60. However, I believe that if they wanted a T-Shirt and membership, they would have to donate separately to each tier to receive both. Definitely trying to balance not being confusing/non-transparent here with also being able to increase our donation amount per person, so let me know your thoughts here.

@sganesh are we able to offer membership like this? - Thinking we can somehow reach out to donors here to collect any additional info needed and then just enter it in on the back end?
@Hakanto, do you know how supporter shares work, and what the vocabulary should look like here? - Thinking a similar process flow for donors here compared to new members, but not sure.
@zetto.plus do you have any added expertise here that you can share when it comes to how we should showcase our tiers and the vocabulary that should be used?

Tagging the above folks just to get the conversation going, but I would love to hear from everyone if you have any thoughts here.

Thank you all!

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Stream2own pricing calculator

Alright everyone, I just wanted to provide another update on this campaign.

I know this thread is fairly long, so if you’re just tuning in, no worries! All you need to do is read this (albeit also long) post to get the latest update on everything.

With that said, I have now updated the donation tiers on the Resonate Open Collective Page based on the decisions that were made at this week’s Fundraising Team Meeting.

A few things worth noting about the above changes:

  • Although I think showcasing different donation amounts as different tiers is an improvement, since we aren’t offering anything in return based on specific donations, the names are a bit superficial. I also wanted to point out that each tier is set to a “flexible frequency” so based on each donation amount, donors can select one of the 3 frequency options (one-time, monthly, yearly). The current default donation for each tier is the amount of that tier, with a monthly frequency.

  • In trying to offer membership, supporter shares, and other potential perks with different donation tiers, we encountered some issues since Open Collective doesn’t collect donors’ information, therefore prohibiting us from following up with donors to give them what we would be offering (membership, supporter shares, t-shirts, etc.). There may be some work-arounds here, but for now, this seems like it only lends us to keeping our current tier setup in the near term, until we can reassess and find potential work arounds/improvements in the future.

  • It is worth noting however that it seems like other successful Open Collective Pages also have similar issues. To separate their tiers and express their appreciation for higher donations though, other pages like Babel offer more general rewards like showcasing donor’s logos on their website/in their spaces, and/or offering more premium support options for larger donors. I am not exactly sure how they confirm this information either, but my assumption is that they just use the information that donors provide via their open collective accounts, so donors would need to be registered through Open Collective first in order for this promise to be fulfilled? I am a bit new to the Open Collective space, so if anyone knows more about Open Collective, or how some of these rewards could be fulfilled, please reply below!

  • The last thing I wanted to mention after doing more research on Open Collective is that it seems like the tiers that have the most donors on some of the more supported pages are the “Donation” tier - pay any amount; any frequency, and the €2($2)/month tier. Right now, our current minimum donation is €5 (flexible frequency), and we also have a “Donation” tier - pay any amount; any frequency, as previously mentioned on other pages. In keeping with my original thought at the start of this thread:

…I would like to propose that we also add a €2 (flexible frequency) tier for people to see when they come to the page. Hopefully this will encourage people to still contribute financially, even if it is just a few euros.

In addition to what I proposed above, feel free to leave your own ideas for improvement to the entire page (about section, layout, tiers, etc.) in the replies below. Although I think what is there now is “good enough”, I am looking forward to improving things as time goes on. (@richjensen, @brndnkng, @SueJ, @Hakanto, @zetto.plus, @peter, @LLK, @SolarDesalination, @thehouseorgan, and anyone else reading this who has potential opinions/improvements here).

Phew! Okay, so to summarize what’s been done here so far:

  • Initial Research on Crowdfunding Campaigns - DONE
  • Initial Draft of Resonate Crowdfunding Campaign - DONE
  • Draft of New About Section - DONE
  • Implementation of New About Section - DONE
  • General Improvements to the Open Collective Page (re-designing page layout, adding progress bar, updating account info, etc.) - DONE
  • Review of Donation Tiers and Implementation of Improvements - DONE

Next Steps:

  • Continually make improvements as new ideas come to the forefront.
  • Create a communications plan to promote the campaign to the public so we can collect donations throughout the month of February.
  • Finalize this plan, start promoting, and start collecting donations!!!

I have already started to draft a communications plan here: Communications Plan: Resonate Renewal Crowdfunding Campaign, but I am thinking we can work to finalize this during our next Fundraising Team Meeting (open to everyone) and then pair up with @melis_tailored and the Comminications Team to start sharing from there, but let me know anything I may be missing in this entire process.

Overall, again, thank you to everyone who has offered time and support here, even if that’s just staying in touch with this thread, and I look forward to helping Resonate raise some much needed funds!

Thank you,
– Sam Martyn

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I agree with the 2€ tier I think it’s a good idea if it’s doable.

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Support a 2 euro tier.

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Great, sounds good to me too :+1:

Amazing :pray:

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