Hi all,
I’m a new member of Resonate, thanks for having me.
The value prop for musicians/artists is pretty straightforward for me but I’m wondering:
how might you best sum up the value prop for users/listeners of Resonate?
Thanks!
Blake
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Hi Blake!
From my point of view these points describe what is the current value proposition for Resonate users/listeners:
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stream2own model in which listeners pay for what they listen and own a track after 9 plays. No subscriptions.
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Free 45 second track prelisten.
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0 ads.
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High Quality streaming in lossless formats. (( SORRY, THIS STATEMENT IS INCORRECT. Please check Hakanto 's answer right below. ))
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A player that encourages music exploration through the following sections: Staff Picks (with a special focus on diversity), Browse (The complete Resonate music catalogue, ordered by recency), Library (Manage and store the music you like and own) and Top Favorites (Recently tweaked to show a wider variety of tracks), and the Random button, which generates a convenient playlist of random tracks.
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Knowing that Resonate is a music service that wants to play fair and is owned by listeners and musicians alike.
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Open source platform in which anyone can propose and contribute new features.
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Privacy respecting service.
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Engage with other listeners and artists in different community spaces.
I am providing this information as another listener of the platform, so it might be wrong or inaccurate. And I’m sure there are more. Would be great to see what others think!
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Nice response, Omar. An inaccuracy I spotted is that Resonate’s streaming quality is currently what I’d describe as normal/low bitrate. I think that offering higher bitrate is a priority for the kind of engaged listener that Resonate is seeking. I look forward to higher bitrate streaming (and lossless downloads) but I’ve heard that we don’t yet have the resources to offer it.
I’d happily pay an small fee to support higher bitrate streaming. Even better, I think it would be fitting to have it included as a membership perk.
For comparison, 96 kbps bitrate is the default setting on Spotify when on mobile app, although you can change your settings to higher bitrates (up to 320 kpbs if you pay for premium).
@auggod: “96k bitrate/48000 freq encoded using libfdk_aac”
@Nick_M: “We play at 96k bitrate but we’re always looking at affordable ways we could improve that. [For now] It means we can have a consistent reliable experience on desktops and mobile without building complex ‘native apps’ on iOS and Android (coming later!)”
Spotify proposes the following as tiers for streaming quality, but its very subjective. Especially since in my understanding all of these are compressed audio.
- Low: 24 kbps
- Normal: 96 kbps (Current Resonate streaming quality)
- High: 160 kbps
- Very high: 320 kbps
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Hey @blakelumpkins,
Thank you for bringing this up, as this is definitely something that I think could use some clarification too.
I think @onapoli has already covered a lot of my points, but if you care for my take too, here are the main propositions for how I see Resonate benefiting listeners as well:
- Resonate’s de-centralized streaming model makes the music streaming process more efficient by having the listener directly pay artists, only when they are streaming their tracks.
This also allows for a stronger connection between artists and listeners, as you can know that as a listener, your engagement is directly impacting the artist(s) who created the work.
The cost of Resonate varies depending on what type of listener you are, but by making the process more efficient, listeners could very well pay a fraction of the cost of major streaming platforms if they streamed solely on Resonate instead.
If you are a “one-track, one-play” type of listener, then the cost of Resonate should be minimal to the average cost of a streaming service like Spotify that charges $10/month for an individual subscription.
Example: If you listened to a completely different song on Resonate for the entire month, you could listen to about 1,800 songs/month (about 5,400 minutes of music per month - with a 3 min average song time) and you only pay about $0.0025 per stream. The math on that means your monthly cost would only be about $4.50! That’s a heck of a lot of new listening (about 3 hours/day’s worth), and still $5.49 cheaper than Spotify’s monthly individual subscription fee!
Now, if you listen to songs more than once, that price will increase, but I believe a bulk of the additional listener price per stream comes in at the 7th, 8th, and 9th streams, so it should still be pretty affordable from plays 1 - 3, or so.
I am new to Resonate as well, so I haven’t listened as much to confirm any of this, but just trying to go through some of the potential theory behind the stream2own model.
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As @onapoli mentioned before, Resonate’s stream2own model also makes it so that you aren’t just supporting the artist(s) as a listener, but you are also investing your time and money into owning that creative work (after 9 total streams of the same work). This gives you the advantage of being able to play that work an unlimited number of times, without paying a thing (once you own it)!
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Another neat part about Resonate is the Community Forum that you are on right now. Not only can you ask questions, but I believe that there are also several artists on here who you can connect with on a more meaningful basis, which again, furthers that connection between listener and artist.
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Lastly, one of the most beneficial things about Resonate is its cooperative, or co-op, business structure. This business structure invites all users to chime in on how the business is run, and if you have any issues, you can not only bring them up, but better yet, offer solutions for improvement! If you don’t think that Resonate provides enough important value to listeners, we would love to hear your ideas on how we could improve this.
Part of “playing fair” is that the Resonate platform works for everyone!
I am interested to hear your thoughts on everything, I apologize for the lengthy reply, and thank you for starting this awesome conversation!
Best,
- Sam Martyn
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Thank you @Hakanto and @Sam_Martyn , I feel that with our combined posts we are providing a strong answer!
I knew that my chances of providing inaccurate information were high 
, so I appreciate your aid Hakanto. I’ve highligthed the incorrect statement to prevent future confusion.
Merry Christmas to everyone!
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As a listener myself, I agree with all your points @onapoli, and particularly the quoted one above. Resonate is the only privacy-respecting streaming platform that i could find. For me personally, that weighs in heavy, as i don’t want to support data-harvesting big tech companies like spotify and facebook. (Yes, spotify not only harvests your data, it also shares it with third parties like facebook.)
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It may be a bit ‘meta’, but I work from the belief that sustainable online social spaces that respect basic principles of Digital Dignity (fair trade, transparent, privacy-respecting, democratic, human-centered, transnational, peer-to-peer, open source) constitute powerful ‘value propositions’ in themselves.
For those who use music, especially new innovations in music, to improve their lives and coordinate their movements in the world, I imagine Resonate could grow into the kind of space that offers matchless value: ie better opportunities in life.
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No ads and privacy dignity really, really matter to me. Can’t understate the value of those freedoms.
I hope we can break the status quo of subscriptions, but people, for budget reasons, are keen on it; even if that’s counter-intuitive. Perhaps a way forward then is:
Proposal: As part of first-time experience, be up-front about the Max amount the listener will pay per month. Default to meet audience expectations. $10/month.
Additional Ideas:
Students + anyone who’s doing “deep work” of any form also appreciate a steady stream of music which is not distracting (no vocals, mainly). As an ADHD person, constant access to such is one way I maintain productivity.
Frugal but curious potential listeners from that large demographic could perhaps be persuaded if we could innovate to fairly compensate all participants in curating a fresh stream of such “deep-work music”
As I type this, out I’m currently listening to lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to - YouTube and would love to get that here.
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Love that people can use music to stay focused, like you mentioned.
Hopefully it wouldn’t cost the listeners too much per month, but maybe there could be a reasonable price option to buy albums/playlists like this too, so people won’t spend too much.
I absolutely LOVE lofi music myself, and it is like 80% of what I listen to just about everyday.
Get chilled cow, or my favorite Chillhop Music on Resonate, and I know me and the millions of other subscribers they have could be sold on Resonate as our primary streaming platform!
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Streaming Resonate on random mode is remarkably affordable. At five cents an hour, roughly the rate of exploring new tracks, five forty hour weeks cost about ten dollars.
As tagging and playlisting features come on board listeners will have more tools to design streams to their desires.
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I’d say some of us (or at least I) focus on the reverse strategy, the “to own” part of “stream to own”. Explore for authors I’d like to support and music I’d like to listen, and then buy it as soon as I’m sure. After this admittedly high-cost phase, I switch to a zero-cost phase of just listening to my list of already-owned tracks. For some of us, this is absolutely OK and not at all boring: it feels really nice to repeatedly enjoy music that still feels new and where at the same time you know that you will like every single track. When I feel like adding something new, I go back to the exploration streaming behavior.
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