Hey #Fediverse #Musicians - I'm once again trying to figure out premium pricing for #Bandwagon

Emelia 👸🏻

@benpate for copyright, you'd have to deal with clearing licenses more wouldn't you?

I'd probably suggest things like more features + seller tools

Blake Leonard

@benpate The first two make sense to me because of licensing and payment processor fees you might have to cover. The third one could, because of storage costs, but the first two should be enough to cover that cost?

Also if you were to do the third, how would you count that to prevent abuse? If someone stored a huge 100GB album, that's gonna cost a lot more than someone hosting 12 albums at like 30MB each or whatever it is. And if you were to set a storage limit instead, that might end up cutting off some albums in odd places. It might be better to skip over that one unless you need it, just because of how difficult it would be to measure and get right.

(and just in case the options are in a weird order, I see it as publish copyrighted music, sell music online, host large libraries, and need extra features)

Monarkie

@benpate First I've heard of this...I'll do a deep dive and read up. I might have some thoughts to share.

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

Thank you.. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

I know how to make software, and how to price things, but I'm a little out of my element with music and IP licensing. So I'm leaning on the Fediverse community for everyone's advice. You guys always have the best ideas.

@monarkie

sknob ⏚

@benpate take a (reasonable) cut on sales. Make commercial entities pay. Don’t charge/penalize indie artists. No artists, no bandwagon…

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

Thank you! And yes, I think we could probably cover costs just by charging for any one of these.

I want to make it fair for small guys just starting out. I learned long ago to go out of my way for the "small customers" because when you do, they often grow into big ones. The best outcome for this would be for bands to get started on Bandwagon, then stick with it once they get a break

@blake

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

Yes, I likely have to do more to protect copyrights. Right now, it's just a checkbox when people sign up, declaring that they will only upload music that they have the rights to.

From there, they can choose their licensing terms on an album-by-album basis.

@thisismissem

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

Yeah, that seems to be the consensus so far… so that's probably my answer.

And absolutely - "not penalizing indie artists" is certainly the goal.

And, can I just say how awesome the Fediverse is, as a platform for validating product designs? If I'd had this in 2005, I could’ve done so much more…

@sknob

keef

@benpate @sknob I agree with this absolutely in principle but you have to get a reasonable number of sales on the platform for that to cover costs.

While I hate the idea of charging artists, someone has to pay the hosting fees at the end of the day, just as with a Mastodon server instance.

Have you chatted to the @mirlo folks? They take a cut of sales but are still asking for donations as well, so I suspect that cut doesn't cover their costs (yet).

AxWax

@keefmarshall @benpate @sknob @mirlo

Possibly controversial opinion: Do the cut per sale, but also charge on large libraries, as that presumably directly influences costs. As opposed to elsewhere in the thread I would determine library size by total length (rather than file size of the uploaded file, or the number of releases or tracks).

Edit: the total length should probably be based on the actual track length, rather than what we put into the length field in the form

sknob ⏚

@keefmarshall @benpate the eternal chicken and egg problem (the egg came first, but that’s a question for another time ).

The question is does BW want to make a decent living off of BW or just cover costs? I have doubts the former is possible since 99.9% of musicians can no longer make a decent living off of making music.

I would also ask listeners for donations. And maybe charge for help installing/configuring independant BW instances.

sknob ⏚

@keefmarshall @benpate sorry if that sounded too glib.

There is a scenario where BW becomes a goto site for artists and listeners, but that won’t happen overnight, and charging artists from the get-go would probably delay such a scenario.

icaria36 🎶

@axwax @keefmarshall @benpate @sknob I agree that charging should be related to sharing the benefits (sales) and costs (hosting, development, admin...) About hosting, the collection size isn't as expensive as the traffic generated, right? Something to consider. Maybe you have 12 albums nobody listens (generating little cost). Then again if someone generates a lot of traffic, they are also contributing to the awareness and use of the platform (more listeners) so taxing that is tricky.

mirlo.space

@keefmarshall @benpate @sknob

For what it's worth, we just voted to make our platform fees a an artist's choice based on what they can afford. We'll roll that out in the next month or so with a more formal announcement than this

We originally based our take rate decision on this math: https://mirlo.space/team/posts/16/

We've now had a year worth of data to reflect on. We're able to cover costs of running the server through our own monthly patronage, but the transaction fee comes no where near.

mirlo.space

@keefmarshall @benpate @sknob

One of the things we want to be clear about in our messaging is that it is a collective effort to keep these kinds of platforms running. We can't rely on the "heroic labor" of individuals.

MizKirsten

@benpate Have been thinking about this same thing for TIBR. Just some spitballing here:

One way (which could be combined with others) is the patronage + rewards model. Offer monthly patron tiers. Give certain tiers (higher $) "rewards" that provide access to certain tools. It's sort of a "softer" subscription model.

Someone mentioned sponsorship (by a trusted entity) to me today. This is probably more of a fit with TIBR, but there could be a way to make it work for BW maybe?

Monarkie

@benpate OK! So, I registered on the platform and uploaded some music and I like it! I would have some ideas on minor tweaks, but I love how this is working and it being federated is fantastic!

I voted for paying for "Need Extra Features"

Personally, I would love for people not to feel like they have yet another barrier to putting out what they have and I think with Bandcamp offering a free model (with "pay for extra" functionality), it's something that might convince folks to be here...

icaria36 🎶

@keefmarshall @benpate @sknob The server costs question is also related to how the decentralized Bandwagon will actually work. If everyone piles up in the first instance à la mastodon.social, then yes, that will be expensive. If it's easy to set up specialized instances and federate content / searches, then the costs are more spread and affordable for different types of hosts. I wonder whether it is too early to imagine how that federated future will look like.

bri

@benpate the ‘cc is free’ model seems very fitting for the fediverse, and i’m not sure why people think it would complicate things.

as keef pointed out, cc is a license; it does not ‘undo’ copyright. it’s already an ‘honor system’ of sorts where anyone uploading now needs to be honest about either being the rights-holder or that the piece in question is permissively licensed such that they can upload it. ‘all rights reserved’ doesn’t fundamentally change this.

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

Perhaps that’s it.. since they’re all copyrighted, it’s the LICENSE that matters.

For now, please hand wave over that detail in my character-limited poll questions, and know that we’ll do the right thing when we figure out the actual policy. 🥸

@brhfl