I’d like to raise 50K by end of year to be in a secure financial footing…
I believe we need to fund the executive and have a DSP and product Roadmap…
I believe a plausible DSP/Product roadmap is key to the outreach that solves the funding issues…
For a variety of reasons opening this to the whole of the community and centering on the needs of successful professional independent artists was never taken seriously by the people managing the platform until the end of last year…
It’s time we call in our allies, like the artists associated with Black Socialists that have been standing by for years, like our incredible Founders list, like our fellow-travelers in the Platform.Coop and DWeb communities, and articulate our plan for a transnational democratic enterprise outside the corporate monopolists.
Resonate occupies a very special place in these communities. Sometimes I think it is difficult for people to see what the project represents beyond their close persynal relations and specific set of urgent concerns.
A slight tangent, but I’m very curious to hear an Irish perspective on this sentiment, as well as an Irish leftist perspective on Ireland’s international status as a tax haven and the presence of so many tech multinationals in Ireland. I feel like we should do due diligence here too.
That’s fair. I’ll say my position is informed by visiting the island last year and meeting with our founding Secretary Sam Toland and, on a later occasion, professor of global social movements, Laurence Cox. Among other things, Laurence is Kevin Flanagan’s (@flgnk) doctoral advisor. Kevin and Sam, and I think @Thom, among several others, were co-founders of Solid Network (full disclosure I too am a member).
FWIW, Kevin is a doctoral student in anthropology studying coops and social movements in Catalonia, the province where Barçelona is situated, a place with a deep history in autonomous and cooperative social movements and anti-fascist resistance.
Sorry to get 'splainy, but it is probably also worth pointing out that Kevin has served as facilitator for a regional Platform.coop discussion group based in the EU, and (with Thom) has also participated in the CoopCreds project (which grew out of Resonate’s grant funded research with Verifiable Credentials c. 2020-21).
I’m adding all this context for the sake of general situational awareness and to reflect some sense of the time committed to trust-building that has occurred around these topic areas to date.
I am all too aware of how limited and scattered the coop’s social institutional memory is. I embrace the opportunity to offer some reasoning behind some of the conditions of the coop’s legacy and offer response not in the spirit of ‘this is what we must do’ but ’ this is what was done, why I think it was done (when I have a clue) and what it may offer to participants now’.
Everything I offer should be taken with a grain of salt. I recognize that my views diverge from others. I think this is the natural condition of working in collectivity.
Back to my story: It was great for me to get to Ireland and have the opportunity to meet Sam face-to-face, discuss human things like life and family, and speak on our persynal histories with the coop. (I also met our former auditor - but that’s another story). Laurence Cox was the other individual I sought out and was very pleased to begin a human connection with.
Laurence came to my attention by being a facilitator of a network of social movement activists that organized a 30 stop tour of their island by a group of Zapatistas, mostly young women from Chiapas, in October of last year.
I encourage folks to look at Laurence’s work in transnational organizing. His short book, MAKING OTHER WORLDS POSSIBLE was extremely helpful in getting a sense of how local issues and global conditions might be harmonized. He writes from his local perspective but I think the way he addresses the problem is relevant to anyone in any region.
(Sorry to take up so much space. I’ll step back to hope that someone from Ireland or other participants in our meetings with Irish comrades speak up. )
Hi Peter! Why not move bank from Bank of Ireland to a Wise business account? It works pretty well for me. I think the change of jurisdiction, or going to a theoretical ‘no jurisdiction’ / third party fiscal host is much harder, and would require a lot of catching up / closure and additional legal costs. Sorry if you have already considered / tried a Wise account or if I am missing something.
Bank account is really only one small part of this.
And of course I realized almost immediately after posting why there’s no escape from being registered geographically… liability. We’ll never sign distributors (most likely necessary for scaling) without being a real legal entity.
P.S. Wise isn’t an option at larger bank balances as they actually CHARGE for holding more than 10-20K in the account. (Or somewhere around there.)
So this came up at the AGM yesterday and the sentiment felt like it was generally “we should be talking way more deliberately about this”.
To me it feels like there’s two main things that we need to discuss:
If we’re closing shop in Ireland what does that mean for our fiscal liabilities? What does that mean for the 300k owed as debinture shares? Would those become the burden of whomever is the current board member? I think part of the conversation here is a bit more clarity on what the liabilities of that debt actually is. From this post it kind of doesn’t sound like they would be, but that the concern is more the 31k needed to become legally square with the Irish government (of which it sounds like we have roughly 20k in the bank?)
If we’re closing shop in Ireland, what does that mean for the resonate brand, legally? In my mind the brand and community is one of the strongest assets we actually have at this point.
Some additional questions: would filing for bankruptcy help us out of the debt mess? What about selling to a not for profit or a trust?
I wonder if any of @peter@richjensen@sam@Nick_M@Thom (or any others) could shed light on this? Are there other groups that could help us along with advice?
To that end, we must also carefully consider our obligations to the artists who have submitted music to Resonate, the implications for them, and how this will affect our relationship with them:
Are there any outstanding streaming earnings to be paid to the artists? If so, can we pay them?
If we can’t pay the artists, or if their earnings are below the payout threshold, what is our plan to mitigate harm?
What is our disposition plan for the music that has been uploaded to this incarnation of Resonate?
A slight tangent, but I’m very curious to hear an Irish perspective on this sentiment, as well as an Irish leftist perspective on Ireland’s international status as a tax haven and the presence of so many tech multinationals in Ireland. I feel like we should do due diligence here too.
Sorry to appear out of no-where here but i noticed the above point had not been answered from an native point of view and; Full disclosure, i am historically anti-state in all situations. Also CW: Racism mention.
The concept of Ireland as a principal white-ambassador to the network of indigenous solidarity between global oppressed peoples is exhausting from an anti-racism standpoint.
Ireland is a fundamentally racist state; The common examples of Ireland standing in solidarity such as our debt to the Lakota people and our actions toward Palestine are both directly contradicted by our actions towards the Traveller community and our behaviour toward arriving refugees. I do not doubt that our positive activism is in earnest but, when i see statements lauding the state, people, and culture as a whole for it, within a wider context; It is, frankly, a gasp of awe for a cardboard leprechaun
As the psi pointed out above; Ireland should not be considered a voice in the anti-colonial chorus while it perpetrates all modern forms of colonialism (and here speifically; economic colonialism), neither should we be a benchmark for cultural solidarity when every publicised action for liberation can be countered by innumerable, quiet, examples of oppression and racism within.
For me, there is more good to be drawn from our existence as a co-op then our association with tax-break Island.
Sorry for further perpetrating the side-discussion.
The members of the Cooperative may pass a Special Resolution at a General Meeting dissolving the Cooperative. Upon voluntary or involuntary dissolution, a qualified accountant or auditor will calculate the value of “residual assets” ([members’ capital] + [accumulated profit and loss account] + [assets – liabilities]). After satisfaction of all creditors, residual assets will be distributed to Supporter Shareholders in proportion to their shareholding, up to the nominal value of their shareholding, after satisfying the following requirements.
Thereafter, the remainder will be assigned to an organisation with objects including the promotion of the development of platform cooperatives:
i. In finalising the dissolution of the Cooperative, and subject to the requirements of Insolvency Law, debts and payments to creditors and shareholders will be satisfied in the following order:
ii. Outstanding debts to employees, workers and contractors (e.g. wages/fees)
iii. Outstanding debts to other priority creditors (e.g. VAT and taxes)
iv. Outstanding debts to suppliers (e.g. unpaid supplier invoices)
v. Outstanding debts to other creditors (e.g. loan balances)
vi. Division of remaining residual assets to Supporter Shareholders. Any remaining assets will be divided equally between Supporter Shareholders in proportion to number of shares held at the end of the previous year’s trading, up to the nominal value of their shareholding. For the avoidance of doubt, changes in balances since the previous year-end will be ignored for the purposes of calculating the share of residual assets paid out when the Cooperative is dissolved.
vii. All remaining residual assets will be assigned to an organisation with objects including the promotion of the development of platform cooperatives.
None of this mentions the debenture shares. Since the resolution defines them as similar operating as supporter shares, just issued to an organization, I think they would work in the same way here (ie, not a debt, but instead a way to pay out any residual assets). Additionally, I’m under the impression that these were never filed with the Irish register so ?
Again, I’m not in Ireland, and not a lawyer, but I feel like it might be possible to do the following:
Draft a resolution to dissolve the organization.
Pay an auditor (for which I understand we have enough money) to do the necessary paperwork
Pay off bills (workers, servers, etc).
Distribute anything remaining to supporters and debentures.
But then yeah, before we get to that stage we’d also have to figure out how to be fair to artists like @remst8 says.
It’s my understanding that no pay outs have happened since about august? No artists have reached the threshold of plays since then (no doubt in part because of the log in issues we’re seeing) afaik. If they have we’re talking about 100s of euros, not thousands, which I think we could afford and I would put in the “Pay off the bills” category. The real question here to me is whether the people who usually do this have the capacity to continue doing it, or do it one last time (@richjensen@sganesh ?).
For an example, an artist recently asked me how much they had made, and it amounted to 19c.
I think technically we have a responsibility to keep any music available for people who have “purchased” it to download it for a year. We could find those songs and just send them to people if they e-mail them for a year or so. Other than that I think we can remove it without any issues. (honestly storing the music costs us 10-20 euros a month, as opposed to streaming it).
I’d be in full support of such a course of action. Like @Hakanto said the breakdown looks meaningful and points out all the blindspots and uncertainties that makes any decision tough to make at the moment.
This should really be front and center, in any case.
In regards to the brand topic, defending one is always about your ability to litigate. Meaning it doesn’t matter what company structure is behind the brand, if you don’t have resources to sue, it doesn’t matter who/what owns it.
As long as the co-op exists, then Ireland. If the co-op was dissolved we would likely have to close the account. I think Open Collective would be the only way to get money in, but that could be super problematic for all of the services we use which require credit or debit cards. I know Wise has those, but only for individuals and if there’s no legal organization, there’s no account.
This, and all Supporter Share values, are claims on surpluses after revenues (and after reserves are established) not ‘debts’. In the case of dissolution, Supporter claims would follow other liabilities as you identified.
I think there’s a detailed illustration of this at the end of the Debenture resolution(?).
This is my estimated figure IF the Irish State claims a tax on all payments to Directors since founding. (They haven’t yet.) Eddie (the Auditor) is reviewing coop financials from 2019 - 2021, filing Annual reports will likely cost less than 2K a year (x3). Then the Co-op owes about 2K in tax, should register for VAT, another 2K, and I’d recommend Eddie working on the 2022 report, another 2K plus a few hundred to reconcile July 22 to present.
So, about 13K (?), plus a contingency for issues with potential Director related tax.
The coop should soon have Eddie’s opinion on any outstanding tax liabilities and timeline for any sums owing, at least over the period he is reviewing.
The current entity could transfer rights to another.
Disclaimer: I’m neither an accountant nor an attorney. My observations are offered as a lay person and do not constitute professional advice.
So I asked Wise and they shared these 2 support pages for info on so-called holding limits:
This page specifies that there are limits to receiving and holding for personal customers in Malaysia or Japan and personal customers with account addresses in Australia and Singapore. Also, for personal and business accounts receiving USD.
That’s it. There shouldn’t be any restrictions on receiving or holding Euro for either personal or business accounts.
This page just says that Wise might ask you for extra info when you receive a large transfer for regulatory reasons.
Not sure if this helps, but you can get a debit card for your Wise Business account now.
Ireland is listed here. However, it might have to be delivered to an address within the country.
But I suppose we still need to be tied to Ireland to make this work, when the goal is to “detach” ourselves from Ireland to reduce our cost of administration.
?