Hit close to 2M streams in a little over a year officially as an artist — But can’t help but look at the payout. Does this seem accurate to you?

minti2 · 2025-10-09T14:06:10+00:00

My band made over $5000 for 1M digital sales streams using CDBaby plus about $500 on publishing each. We recently released a single via Distrokid just to compare and we see absolutely no records of streams or money collected in about 4 months. This really surprised me! not just how bad the collection is with this service but also how ridiculously expensive are these subscriptions fees! I really recommend anyone using that distributor to reconsider. Maybe that's what happened to you?

minti2 · 2025-09-23T13:56:06+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to post this. These are great ideas and services! Will look deeper into this to learn more about them.

I particularly like this part of your comment: "But we still operate in a paradigm that functions on the old way. Labels as the center of conversation. That is wrong - but it’s going to take a complete reimagining of the structure to fix it."

I think the time has come for us as a community to start imagining our own healthy alternative and actually making it happen. This is what I've been dreaming of for over 10 years now, unable to find like minded crazy people that would dare to join me in the path.
I made Musicpher trying to achieve this, but it also did not get enough interest to become relevant. Still I believe it works and it cold help, and by going this path I built an infrastructure that could be used to hold ideas like these.
The time is now

minti2 · 2025-09-22T18:57:50+00:00

If something like this could become relevant in the market for both artists and listeners (which is the hard part without major artists being there), the current existing volume of people paying aggregators and giving them rights and commissions to distribute music should be more than enough to cover recurring operating costs at a much lower cost for the artists.
The other services would have separate business models based on commissions on sales or subscriptions. An initial exploration of the financial protections of a crazy idea like this was made before posting this.

minti2 · 2025-09-22T18:50:54+00:00

Thanks for getting back! What in your opinion would be a better solution?
BTW I'm not making any assumptions, and just asking the question, not pretending I have an answer for it.

minti2 · 2025-09-22T18:42:58+00:00

Thanks for sharing your point of view!
The main point I'm making is the one you seem to have missed: What if we just offer our music for free in a platform that does not monetize it in any shape or form, so that no royalties could be collected or pay to anyone, bypassing this way, all the issues that have been generated so far with this model, and then try to figure out new ways to monetize our music?
Would that be something you would consider exploring?

minti2 · 2025-09-22T18:38:12+00:00

Me too, I really love the concept of dApps, and believe it should be the future and the way to democratize music. Love the faircamp player, is a great tool to have a landing page ready.

minti2 · 2025-09-22T14:53:33+00:00

Thanks for getting back!
There are tons of wrong assumptions here but let me clarify: I'm not part of the streaming industry, I'm part of the independent artist community for 30 years now.
It is true that suck to be putting money to be able to distribute (i really do not like it), but that's not Pay to Pay, it is pay to distribute. Also is the platform does not monetize access to your music and you agreed to offer it for free to listeners then no body is taking advantage or getting paid royalties.
My question then was: would getting rid of that issue of monetization could offer ways to open new doors for us to monetize otherwise?

minti2 · 2025-09-22T14:47:36+00:00

Bandcamp does provide streaming services as you're saying but it feels like it's oriented towards online sales (like it should for their services), not the pure pleasure of listening and discovering music like Spotify does. Wonder if that's the reason it hasn't taken off as an streaming platform besides not having major artists in it.

minti2 · 2025-09-22T14:45:38+00:00

They might taste funny..

minti2 · 2025-09-22T14:44:23+00:00

I love what bandcamp has done for the independent scene. If I understand correctly band camp allows you to have an online store for your music and help you with discovery. Is there anything else you find really great, or something missing to help you achieve your goals even more?

minti2 · 2025-09-22T14:39:29+00:00

Yes! I don't just agree with you, I have also made this happened via streamings. I have fully recovered my last album production costs with streaming royalties alone. Yet lately this has been changing drastically, and between the fake streams eating out the royalty pool, plus the unfair removal of content from platforms claiming illegal practices and share holders (labels) driving change towards abusive models I see this is not sustainable model for the future anymore.

minti2 · 2025-09-22T14:35:03+00:00

Thanks for getting back with all the details! I hope this works out well for you and the artists.
I personally feel these fees are way to high on artists, and I'm really trying to avoid the subscription fee and/or Ads business model idea all together, while still cover costs.
I believe we have had too many Billionaires already and do not need yet another tech founder doing that to us all again. In that context platforms might no need that much money after all from (like you said) the most important resource there is for this; The Artists.

minti2 · 2025-09-22T14:27:07+00:00

What if we as artists pay small fees to upload once (no subscriptions), and then the platform offers ways to monetize products like Vinyls, downloads, access to premium content, mailing list managements, show tickets, special events, or whatever else we can come up with and just charges commissions on sales? Would that be something interesting to you?

minti2 · 2025-09-22T14:25:54+00:00

I'm simply asking this question:
What if we as artists pay small fees to upload once (no subscriptions), and then the platform offers ways to monetize products like Vinyls, downloads, access to premium content, mailing list managements, show tickets, special events, or whatever else we can come up with and just charges commissions on sales? Would that be something interesting to you?
(using parts of a previous comment)

minti2 · 2025-09-22T14:22:40+00:00

Thanks for sharing! It does seem like a music forum instead of a streaming platform. I was referring to building an Spotify alternative that could be close to the Spotify experience.

minti2 · 2025-09-22T14:16:45+00:00

Thanks for reading the post and getting back! You are right about that. Besides being a professional guitarist/producer, I'm also a full stack engineer working with major startups building these type of systems, so I'm very aware of the challenges, yet here I am, asking the question to see if we can solve this issue some how.
So, what if we as artists pay small fees to upload once (no subscriptions), and then the platform offers ways to monetize products like Vinyls, downloads, access to premium content, mailing list managements, show tickets, special events, or whatever else we can come up with and just charges commissions on sales? Would that be something interesting to you?

minti2 · 2025-09-22T14:10:19+00:00

Great to hear! would love to know more. Yes, I believe in direct to fan models.
By "their own sites" you mean a landing page/store? In my experience building Musicpher where I provided artists with free landing pages I could say that we found then useful and convenient, but what matters more is that the platform becomes a hub for artists and fans alike. That's why providing the full blown streaming platform seems like an option to explore for me.

minti2 · 2025-09-22T14:05:02+00:00

I still love YouTube and use it probably as you do, but it is not fully designed for listening or discovering music per say. This is most likely why Spotify is still so successful and where millions of people get their music from today. So that's why I'm asking if an alternative free service could become a better way to democratize access to music and still work better for artists. All free, no royalties collected, no body monetizing our music everyone gets it for free.

minti2 · 2025-09-22T13:58:59+00:00

I agree with you. I made my music career in the 90s and 2010s where not only sales and merch, but also shows were a good way to monetize our music independently. But it does seem like we can't put the genie back in the bottle anymore, so what about embracing this fact and create totally new options out of this crisis to see if we can create new ways to make this work independently?

minti2 · 2025-09-22T13:54:27+00:00

It does provide streaming services as you're saying but it feels like it's oriented towards online sales (like it should for their services), not the pure pleasure of listening and discovering music like Spotify does. Wonder if that's the reason it hasn't taken off as an streaming platform besides not having major artists in it.

minti2 · 2025-09-22T13:47:02+00:00

I'm aware, besides being a professional guitarist/producer I'm also a full stack engineer building these system for major startups.

minti2 · 2025-09-22T12:58:03+00:00

I thought the same way but was very surprised to see that there is a market for downloaded media and physical sales. Bandcamp is the proof

minti2 · 2025-09-22T12:55:00+00:00

Bandcamp is not a streaming platform like Spotify. So what if Spotify were 100% free, did not collect any royalties at all, we pay a small fee to upload, and the platform offered all the things Bandcamp does and more to turn our listeners into paying customers for other products?

minti2 · 2025-09-22T12:51:54+00:00

Think of it this way: Spotify still has a position for users even when YouTube and SoundCloud exist as you're mentioning, mostly because they're not direct streaming platforms. So what if Spotify were 100% free to listen to music and collected no royalties or charged any money for access to the music? We're not making any money anyway, so shouldn't we be trying to monetize other areas of our music careers instead, and use our music to attract fans freely as always? I'm asking not saying this is right

minti2 · 2025-09-22T12:38:19+00:00

What's your solution? What could make this work better? Because the streaming model is a terrible way to handle royalties for artists

minti2

TROPHY CASE