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

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

bri

@benpate oh yeah, i didn’t mean to get too pedantic and i hope it didn’t come off that way, i just was a bit confused by responses that seemed to think that would be particularly burdensome.

honestly i think the cc folks could try to communicate things better. i often see takes around cc (and especially cc0) that have me rather concerned folks are making decisions about their hard-earned work that they don’t fully grasp…

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

Not pedantic at all. And you're not the only person to make that distinction

@brhfl

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

I agree completely. No heroes.

This is the point that the whole Fediverse needs to truly embrace. The lack of a proper business model is a major piece that prevents us from being truly competing with the corporate silos.

There MUST be a way for people to have real careers on the Fediverse, and not just hobbies or side-hustles.

And, there's plenty of money in SaaS model. We just need to make it work here, too.

@mirlo @keefmarshall @sknob

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

I promise it'll be easy to set up and participate in federated searches. I've just stumbled into how Framasoft is doing this with PeerTube, and this will be pretty similar.

Still, this stuff is usually cheaper at larger scales, compared to very small ones. So a server with a few thousand artists will likely be cheaper-per-artist than one with a few dozen.

I *do* want to encourage artist communities to set up their own instances. We're just about ready to go..

@icaria36 @keefmarshall @sknob

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

Excellent point about bandwidth vs storage

I’d originally thought about putting “music streaming" in the premium category, so “downloads" might be free, but transcoding and streaming music real-time might cost something. It was nice because streaming requires extra work.

But that pricing punishes the smallest artists the most, b/c they're the ones who really need the streaming exposure. So I've ditched this for now.

Gosh, social justice is hard.

@icaria36 @axwax @keefmarshall @sknob

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

Not glib at all.. that's a realistic take on how the game is set up. And if we were playing by the rules, it would be near impossible to launch something like this.

Fortunately, we're not playing by the rules.

There's a few key differences that make this different, with the existing Fediverse network itself being a key strategic advantage.

I could talk shop all day long, but here's the bottom line:

@sknob @keefmarshall

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

The #Fediverse is dry tinder, primed for a forest fire of change.

#Bandwagon (among others) is the kindling,

and you all are the matches.

Change happens slowly, then all at once. And when the corporate silos no longer have a stranglehold over art and culture, people will flock to new networks (like this one) and the problem of ”covering hosting costs” will be a distant memory.

@sknob @keefmarshall

Andy Piper

@benpate @sknob @keefmarshall this has me tingling!