Please give some feedback on this proposed model to fund musicians in the Fediverse (an alternative to Bandcamp / Spotify) (communick.news)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by rglullis@communick.news to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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For context: I recently set up a Funkwhale instance for Communick subscribers, where people can upload their music collection, stream on mobile/web and share with their friends. That's useful already and can be thought of as a replacement to the original Google Play Music, but I guess that those with large music collections will either just play from their dedicated devices or self-host a service like Navidrome.

So I'd like to make my instance a bit more interesting by building tools for (a) musicians wishing to connect with their audience and use the space to showcase their own work and (b) people who want to support independent musicians but don't want to commit paying a few dollars every month to lots of different people - the main complaint about Patreon after all is that those little contributions end up amounting to a lot of money.

In terms of funding, what I'd like to do is let users set up a fixed monthly budget (say $10-$25 per month) to be split between all the artists that are enrolled in the platform, however they want. One user might decide to get 100% of my budget and give to one artist, another might choose to give 10% to one and 1% to 90 other musicians. In the end of the month, the system would tally up everyone's contributions and make the payout accordingly.

I wouldn't even have to take a cut of these donations, because my business model already has revenue by simply providing the service.

Is this something that you'd see yourself using? I know that Bandcamp is king in this space, but with the recent changes maybe there is an opportunity to get more artists and supporters to the Fediverse.

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[-] stoy@lemmy.zip 11 points 4 months ago

This is a bad idea, I would never work for someone who openly admits that they will only make arbitrary payments to me based on nothing but a whim.

Nah, payment needs to be consistent and based on the number of times an artist gets played.

[-] rglullis@communick.news 4 points 4 months ago

only make arbitrary payments to me based on nothing but a whim.

How is that different from the current situation? For most people, supporting indie artists is already an optional thing, those using Patreon could cancel "on a whim" as well, no?

based on the number of times an artist gets played

Doesn't that create a huge skew towards the pop-stars, who are already making money through other means (touring) anyway?

[-] stoy@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 months ago

Do you really compare someone cancelling their pateron and a company taking all the money that customers have paid from the artists they want to support?

Sure, the payment would be skewed, but that is easily remidied by not having pop music on the plattform.

[-] rglullis@communick.news 8 points 4 months ago

company taking all the money that customers have paid

I think you misunderstood. What I mean is that the customer will choose how much of their allocated budget goes to each artist.

[-] grant@toast.ooo 3 points 4 months ago

I would definitely reword your original post, it’s very misleading with how it’s worded now

(Eg “How I feel” -> “how individual users feel”)

[-] rglullis@communick.news -1 points 4 months ago

The whole paragraph starts with "as a backer". I can rewrite it, but to be honest it's not that difficult to comprehend it as is.

[-] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 8 points 4 months ago

however I want

isn't going to work for anyone.

"Good fences make good neighbors".

Declare a payout method up front, and stick to it.

[-] rglullis@communick.news 5 points 4 months ago

Again, is it that different from Patreon?

With Patreon, the resource allocation signal is determined by the creators, but the people will support as many artists as they can/want. Letting the backer determine the amount given to each just makes this more granular, but besides that the mechanism is the same, no?

[-] enduranceracing@communick.news 5 points 4 months ago

I like the overall idea in theory, but as others have said, it's all in the implementation. I think the UI will be very important on the page that controls the contribution to the artists. I think you should have 2 "shortcut" buttons - "Pay Supported Artists by My Play %" and "Pay all artists equally" and then have some sort of vertical equalizer sliders with each supported band having a slider representing a custom contribution setting. I think that would work ok for people who want to tweak their contributions, at least for people with a small amount of supported bands. You could also specify a time frame for the first button... Year/Quarter/Month etc. The main question... what is the default setting? Is it equal to start, based on play percentage, or does the UI force you to try out custom contributions at first?

I don't think having users putting in percentages is a viable option. Alternatively to the aforementioned ideas, I think a 1-5 star ranking system would be useful, and then the percentages would be derived from that, on the backend. (with a FAQ and such available explaining the % correlation)

[-] rglullis@communick.news 3 points 4 months ago

I think you should have 2 “shortcut” buttons

Yeah, I think having sensible defaults would make a lot of sense and it is not hard to implement.

UI-wise, I'd try to implement a page where you can see all the artists you want to support, and each of one them would get a slider scale. It's (relatively) easy to program it in a way that the payout distribution percentage is preserved even if you add/remove artists.

[-] Steve@communick.news 4 points 4 months ago

I like the general idea!

Specific implementation would make all the difference. The percentage splitting would have to be very graphical to be intuitive and used by most. And artists would need a way to sign up once, and be paid from all instances.

It sounds like a massive project. But one that may be worth while.

[-] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 4 points 4 months ago

Not a service I would use personally, but I imagine a feature to automatically split it based on play time would be useful.

[-] rglullis@communick.news 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Oh, yeah, I think there could be many "default split strategies": play time, play count, direct/inverse correlation to general popularity, cutoffs for artists that already hit a funding threshold, extra weights for new work vs old catalog...

[-] wjmaggos@liberal.city 2 points 4 months ago

@rglullis

I think this model is the future for all media, but without a middleman and automatically distributed based on time spent listening (or reading or watching etc). but the fan decides how much they give per month, while if we get the total given to get high enough, more and more artists adopt the model. also, FW needs to get artist focused. they could replace Bandcamp. lot of pieces still need to get built but maybe we could organize to make this happen. #ccmusic

[-] rglullis@communick.news 3 points 4 months ago

Yeah, lots of pieces to be built, but taking this a bit to a meta-level one of the reasons I am thinking about this is because I believe this could also be the future of R&D for software and the services in the digital economy. To illustrate, I am not working on Communick because it is hugely profitable, but because the more I grow the amount of customers the more I am free to work and contribute to open source projects that can benefit everyone.