An open source, self-hostable music platform will soon allow people on the Fediverse to buy music and support artists. Here’s why it’s a big deal.
the flagship instance of Bandwagon.fm will be taking 0% of any money musicians make.
Good stuff.
To support development, Bandwagon’s flagship instance will be offering a $10 per month Premier plan that allows musicians to sell their music and offer their tracks at a higher bit-rate, among other features.
So they will take 0% of money, except a flat fee of €10 every month in order to be allowed to sell music at all? This seems a bit more problematic, as smaller artists would lose money every month by trying to position themselves in the market.
I like the business model of selling subscriptions to the artists but giving them 100% of proceedings quite a lot, but it would be nice if they for example only had to pay a monthly fee once sales surpassed €10, or if they could sell a limited amount of tracks for free in order to test the waters before putting all their music out for sale.
Writing this comment listening to @torstentorsten@bandwagon.fm by the way. Recommended to anyone interested in German singer/songwriter music. Who isn’t.
You can consider using flagship instance as a way to fund the development. It’s not like they force you to use flagship instance.
There always third-party instance or self-host as an option.
I’ve seen multiple fediverse project dead before arrival, as the dev working on other job(s) for living. Heck, that’s also the same reason why most of fediverse project are from the West, a lot of people who lives in a country with low paygrade (including me) are not able to dedicate their time for FOSS project.
as smaller artists would lose money every month by trying to position themselves in the market.
They are not “losing money”, they are making use of the service anyway. Any type of venture you are building incurs costs and risks, why should it be different for someone that is running an online presence?
If the developers of bandwagon were to carving exceptions for other users, pretty soon they would be taking the risks themselves of dealing with loss-leaders customers and would have to find other ways to make up for it. 10€/month is an absolute bargain for a service that will provide you a storefront and a distribution channel that can reach anyone in the world and demands absolutely nothing in return from you.
I wouldn’t say it’s a bargain for the artist when there’s plenty of services that offer that for free.
From a purely money perspective a small artist would probably lose money here while it may earn money in places like Tidal, which have much more audience.
Let’s not lie people. It’s not a bargain. $10 a month is a lot for that service. Maybe from a “San Francisco” or other rich American city that is Pocket change, but from most of the world $10 a month is a considerable expense.
Other thing is if you want to morally support ot because you really like that model for whatever reason.
To be honest, I don’t much see the point. Of you are going for the complicated route (aka not using established platforms) are you are even considering self hosting, putting out your own website to sell music is easier and cheaper. And it’s actually very common for artists to have their own website. You can find static hosting for a few bucks.
The world’s income per capita is around $10000 a year. In South Europe is 25k€/year. In Northern Europe, 55k€/year. In the United States, $80k/year.
120 dollars per year is 0.5 percent of the income of the average citizen living in the (relatively) poorer part of developed world. That means that are plenty of people who can afford it, and it’s not just the top of the top.
You have to think about disposable income, after taxes, rent/housing, food and all other essential services.
This is a leisure/personal project expense. And the disposable income for that tend to be 30% of net income at most.
It would be more like a 2%. Which may not sound like much. But it’s same as saying you can do 50 things a year and this is one of those 50 things.
Anyway, I still think that price tag is too much, I don’t think there would be a lot of people really willing to spend that for a service others provide for free with a bigger platform, or that you can do it by yourself cheaper if you want to go to an alternative route.
Once again I think it fits a spot only for alternative rich people.
I don’t think there would be a lot of people really willing to spend that for a service others provide for free with a bigger platform
TANSTAAFL. If people refuse to understand this very basic principle and if we don’t collectively start putting our own resources on the line to invest in ethical alternatives, we will never be able to have a sustainable alternative that is not dependent on Venture Capitalists. Everything wrong with Surveillance Capitalism can be traced back to the point where people started expecting to get things for free when they should be asking themselves “What is the catch?”.
But there is free lunch.
That argument I’ve seen it used precisely by adventure capitalist targeting rich alternative people to guilt trip them into their services. When those services could perfectly be free or cheaper without relying in big enterprises.
For this instance, instead of making some people rich by paying music hosting services a p2p network could be offered. If I would me making music I would 100% just offer it by torrent and be done with hosting costs.
Other of my favorite examples is Kagi search engine, which has used this same tactic to convince a lot of people to pay for something that is the same as a self hosted searxng instance.
paying music hosting services a p2p network
Hosting the files is the least of the problems. Accepting payments online is. Dealing with fraud is. Managing exclusive access and features for paying customer is. Getting one place where you can point your fans to go and buy your music or merch is.
self hosted searxng instance.
How is that free? Even if you are self-hosting, you still need to pay for your server, the electricity to run it and your time that you spend troubleshooting, making sure things are up-to-date, etc. Not to mention that you are also not accounting the labor of the developers of libre projects: FOSS does not grow in trees, they require people working for it as well.
Fair enough. But musicians are not really “any type of venture”.
Bandwagon is already taking on a risk by hosting music for free for listening. If they could find ways in which both them and the artists could profit from music published on the platform that lacks the commercial potential to justify a €10 subscription, this would be a win/win. Considering that it seems they are already hosting the music for free.
musicians are not really “any type of venture”.
If they are looking for a way to make money out of their work, it is. And it is totally fine.
If they could find ways in which both them and the artists could profit from music published on the platform that lacks the commercial potential to justify a €10 subscription, this would be a win/win
Flip the equation here. The subscription is something to fund development of the platform. So anyone that wants to have a viable libre alternative to Spotify that can be useful to all indie artists should consider paying for it, even if they are not intending to sell stuff.
Sure, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that under this model, small artists with little money seem to have a strong incentive not to put their music up for sale, which will cost both them and Bandcamp potential profits.
Maybe they could offer fans to sponsor a membership for artists if they want to unlock premium features.
I’d argue that if you can’t afford to pay for a $10/month service and if you are so unproven that no one would be willing to back this up for you, “looking for ways to start a career in music” should be waaaay down on your list of concerns.
Can you download the music locally if you buy an album?
Yea
I’ll hop on this!
Super cool, I’m very interested
