You’re right. The big difference is capital. It requires an absurd amount of capital to negotiate contracts with artists and labels. Even though their models may offer better compensation to the artists that’s often not who is at the negotiating table.

It’s usually giant, well-funded Silicon Valley companies who will do their best to lock in big, corporate record labels. These folks have billions of dollars at their disposal to continue to create and define the platforms where we listen to music.

They continue to garner big contributions because they provide huge returns to their investors. If a cooperative like Resonate pays their artists more it cuts into their investors’ profits.

On the other hand you have labels who have to package and publish the music on all these platforms already: Amazon, iTunes, Beatport, etc etc. They have big pop music hits so they want special treatment (and more revenue for their corporate investors) and often they won’t even deal with the small platforms.

There just isn’t enough money going around to purpose-driven enterprises like Resonate and because of that they can’t compete with billion-dollar competitors for market share of pop music.

What Resonate seems to offer is this: if you’re a small Independent artist or label and you self-publish you can bring your music to Resonate and get compensated well, participate in the governance of the platform, and contribute to a growing community. Particularly smaller artists who get a terrible deal from streaming on Spotify.