On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 12:23:33 +0200 Louigi Verona <louigi.verona(a)gmail.com> wrote: What I did not like is that they repeat again and again the same artists to fill more pages. I mean, if they're new and do not have many artists, that's all right. Why 'fool' people into believing a lot are subscribed by repeating the same names. This 'fooling' I did not like. We're not stupid, we can understand. We're not dumb consumers, aren't we ? We create.

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 16:10:44 +0200 Louigi Verona <louigi.verona(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yes. And the important part of the production should be of a spiritual nature. It's not really the 'consumers' that I would call dumb, but the advertising that makes them look dumb by using all kind of tricks, very often cheap tricks and very often, well-studied levers and triggers. The dumb part would fall in when there's positive reaction to those events. In that sense, temporarily, a consumer could be called dumb. He's been had. Not a permamnent state, though. Hopefully. :) I was tempted to write a short Perl script to harvest every page, extract the artist name and run it through uniq or such. Just as an exercise. Without that, 12 artists per page times 52 pages makes 624. Blurb: "As of this moment 925 musicians and 137 labels have joined. Preview this random playlist, then become a member to hear more." So this is short of 925. Moreover, the repetitions within these pages might be around 30% if not more. At 30% that makes approx. 487 distinct entities. I mean, why. Why play with people's mind ? What else is in store from the same people ? Are we supposed to only have fun and laughs and not bother with such little details because they're a startup and well, you know, startups are not easy, they have to draw people in, in short, they cannot be 100% honest at the start. And they need my money. So when does the honesty is factored in ? Disclaimer: in about 1.5 year I got 6300 listens on Soundcloud. For Resonate that would be about $82. That is, if people would 1) pay to listen 2) do not hang up after 45 seconds. So I'm not on the market actively searching for such an outlet but, nevertheless, I keep an eye open and look at some when it happens. My observation on the artists pages and their numbers here stems simply from that short evaluation. The intent might be good, but the implementation shows, IMHO, apparent dishonesty that is not called for. The owner tugs in the 2008 financial crisis and solidarity between people to support the use of the co-op concept. If this is so, then why not be honest right from the start with the 'people' ? I go by the actions, not by the promises. https://medium.com/resonatecoop/the-story-behind-resonate-4b1658677663 Cheers.

IIUC they are planning to expand the pricing options after they have solidified the core stream2own model. In terms of comparing to Bandcamp I think the services are mutually compatible. Bandcamp offers a viable sales model and is doing a lot for indie artists/producers. They are also actively monitoring hte progress and will most likely adopt the stream to own model if they see it working out with Resonate. The stream2own model hasn't been fully proven yet so it's a bit hard to say how it will stack up against Bandcamp earnings. The main point is that the option is now available for artists and producers to join in the fun and find out for themselves. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 20:57:04 -0700, Glen MacArthur wrote: Glen, I guess every adult on this list is aware that in every domain "new" business models are just old business models with a "new", but very weak painting. "Fair business" is a phrase just like "fair murdering" or "peaceful war". Are there any rich "fair trade" workers in the poor countries? "Rich" are still the "fair trade" bosses. There were self-made concepts that worked, remember e.g. the Crass collective. I suspect nowadays records from Crass are financial investment for Hipsters. I don't want to know for what price a Crass record nowadays gets sold. Regards, Ralf

Just to clarify, it's https://resonate.is Here's a couple of tips for maximising your exposure on Resonate. Make sure to edit the meta data for each track and especially add the genre tags. You can edit the meta data for each track in the song manager tab. You might find that your tracks get plays without any promotion. In the beta app* the default behavior is tracks are randomly selected for the user. * access to the beta app is available to artists that have uploaded tracks. Other members gain access by paying the E5 membership fee. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd

So, I downloaded a report from Bandcamp. If I am reading it correctly, in 2016 I had *261 purchases* (although each purchase can include several items at the same time), and I made *583 USD*. Revenue was actually higher, but a lot of it went to Bandcamp and PayPal and tax. Gross revenue seems to be around 1352 USD, but I am not sure. The numbers don't add up, so maybe I am reading it wrong. *I am sure about the net amount I received, this part of the report is very clear.* Bandcamp rev is 15%, after you make 5000 USD with them the rev share drops to 10%. Do note, however, that I have a very large catalogue, so I am able to put out a lot of records. If that was not the case, I would've been very unlikely to make so much money while being a very unknown musician. *Promotion stuff.* Success is a very complicated thing. Even if you are very good, this means nothing. There are dozens and dozens of people out there who are better than you and hundreds who are at least as good as you are. Your goal is to get a fanbase. It will probably be small, but committed. Having this small listener community will guarantee that you will be getting some money. At the same time, you can now work with your listener base and grow it. *-Bandcamp stuff-* Unless you are someone famous, price your albums very modestly. $2-$3 will work. Otherwise even if someone likes your work, they are unlikely to buy - and thus unlikely to write a review. Which leads to another important point about Bandcamp - it has a community of listeners. If someone buys your album - it appears in their collection. If they write a review - someone else will read it and go buy your album. This might create a chain reaction and bring you a small fanbase. *-Online radios-* I have tried a lot to get into online radio rotations. I was successful with Soma.fm. Some of you might know this radio, it is very popular and has a huge listener base. I am well represented at Dronezone, an ambient drone station. In fact, this week I am in the charts at number 9, which is not too bad: http://somafm.com/dronezone/songhistory.html However, I never feel much impact from being played there. Sometimes I suspect buyers come from hearing me at Soma, but this is rare. For example, at Soma they have Long Form Sunday and my droning248 <https://louigi.bandcamp.com/album/droning248> is always played there. In the beginning of the week two people have bought 248. Who knows? Maybe it was thx to Soma. I am also being played here every Friday, if you are reading this email right now, on Friday - you can see this being promoted there: http://electro-music.com/ Interestingly enough, this DJ decided to play my music himself, I never asked him for this. Very humbling. Small, but dedicated listener base. I don't think I ever got any customers from there, but it is nice to know someone likes my stuff enough to play it every Froday, now for more than a year. In general, modern online radios have humongous playlists and unless you are really well represented in those playlists, typically you will be lost among the already known names. And even if you are represented enough, it is unlikely to create a breakthrough. Remember - these online radios typically would play the best music of the genre + new names. So you are alway up against very serious competition. *-Youtube channels-* Today a lot of promotion is done through YouTube channels. Try writing to the owners of big YouTube channels that fit your music genre and see if they can upload your tune to their channel. I know that this works and my friend had his tune uploaded and it was very sucessful. In my case, unfortunately, I could find only a handful of channels that play ambient and none of them have responded to me, but I think it is worth trying. And chances are you are not stuck with a weird genre like myself. *-Soundcloud channels-* Same stuff. They can upload you and get you listeners. I personally did not have much luck, again, due to there being very few ambient channels. Definitely can work for more common music genres. *-Submit Hub-* Also people try https://www.submithub.com There you can connect with bloggers who can write about your music. It is a paid service, meaning you pay bloggers to look at your music and they are obliged to give you feedback. So even if you get rejected - they must tell you why. Very illuminating. A couple of my friends tried it with great success. As for me... well, guess. Nobody wanted ambient :D But in general, I recommend this. *-In general-* Writing music is only the beginning. Marketing it is a whole other area that most "bedroom musicians" never care about it, but it really matters. If you cannot do it, try to find someone who can take care of promoting your shit. But by itself nothing will ever happen. Selling your art is a very complicated business and it is never limited to making art itself good. There is a reason why there is a whole music industry. Many of us might dislike it, but it is there because there is a problem to solve. There are many other things that can be done, including playing at events, getting your music into movies and art installations, working together with other musicians, etc. This short email is just to give ideas. I myself am not too good at this, or more accurately - I am not too interested in promotion. I would rather write new music. But at times I do some promotion and talk to people and try to get my shit out there, otherwise it will forever be known only by a small group of people and not get a chance at making an impact. Louigi. On Fri, Mar 31, 2017 at 5:54 PM, jonetsu &lt;jonetsu(a)teksavvy.com&gt; wrote: -- Louigi Verona http://www.louigiverona.com/

Hey everyone! Just a quick update on resonate and actually on Patreon. So, after about a month at resonate.is I have these stats: *14* tracks uploaded (a nice selection of dronings) resonate reports *277* streams, *266* previews, *11* plays, *0.0168* credits and *1* favourites (probably, someone adding a track to favs) I am not sure how streams differ from plays, but this is what we have. At the same time I decided to start a Patreon page for droning. And I already have 1 patron :) https://www.patreon.com/droning Here I set an offer for payments per droning, so people can pledge money per release. Let's see how that goes. Will report results to this post later on. But in general what I like about Patreon is that it is set to create a whole community as opposed to just selling stuff. These are people who will follow your creative journey and try to help you on your way. I really want to try that out. On Fri, Mar 31, 2017 at 9:34 PM, jonetsu &lt;jonetsu(a)teksavvy.com&gt; wrote: -- Louigi Verona https://www.patreon.com/droning https://louigiverona.com/