Just got around to adding your notes in now. They were great! Thanks for the help!
Lastly, since you founded Resonate in March of 2015, what would you say happened in 2016?
After reading a few old blog posts, it seems like you were out spreading the word about Resonate and trying to form partnerships to help further develop the idea? It also seemed like people started joining the platform more and getting more involved, so how would you describe that time in a succinct way?
2016 was spreading the word through conferences and prepping for the crowd campaign which launched in October that year.
For 2015 you could say that March is when the idea was born and the first public announcement happened at the first Platform Coop Conference in NYC in November. That’s when things started to take off.
So… 2015 Concept + original branding, first announcement at Platform Coop Conference in NYC
2016 Artists + Labels start joining, industry conferences, MusicTechFest Blockchain Lab, launch crowd campaign in October
Thanks @zetto.plus for sharing your input, I really hope I’ll be able to either talk to you or read notes for more of your thoughts on Resonate during the next roadmap meeting because this does align with some of the preoccupations we talked about at the previous one !
To connect with your comments, I did talk about how we needed the Resonate page to appear more “like a Kickstarter/Crowdfunding” page, rather than like an already established and finished website that leads people to confusion and make them expect things that are not there, which in turn leads to some amount of frustration because the service we provide isn’t fully what’s being advertised and that’s a bad look especially when we claim to be open/transparent about who we are.
So, I very much align with what you say about having clearly laid out “goals” with clearly laid out “financial needs” for them, and a clearly laid out “timeline” that shows what it would mean for us to envision being able to reach those goals (ie. more like the expected “stretch goals” of crowdfunding campains). I also think this needs to be one of the first clearly visible things when people come to the Resonate website so that they feel “part of the project” rather than “passive users expecting an already estbalished alternative to big Streaming Players” which is misleading to say the least for where we are (would it just be in terms of competing music catalogue).
I keep lowering people’s exceptations on twitter whenever I link them to Resonate, and my personal experience is that clearly stating to them that the website is still new and being worked on and that we need their energy to grow into the service we want to become, actually works better to convince them to come and stay than telling them it’s already the contender it claims to be only to see them come back to me saying they didn’t find the music they wanted or understood stream 2 own or found the app on their phone or whatever.
I believe they do have this functionality. We just have to turn it on.
Goals/asks:
I recommend a two phase approach.
Post ASAP: goal 20KEU by Feb 28 (Secures operations/ Renewal roll out to approx. May 1).
Post with Renewal (March 1 or on hitting goal #1)): Several Roadmap based features with goals that include operations budgets and a general-fund goal.
Further to 2: We should share a plan (2022-2023 quarterly?) that anticipates the ‘funding gap’ until we achieve sustainable operations. We can also project the anticipated surpluses (‘profits’) at various volumes of listenership.
Hi all,
A lot more progress has been made here, and I feel like this document is at a point where I would like to propose that these changes be considered for the Resonate Open Collective About Section, as well as the Resonate Renewal Project on Open Collective that will be newly created to encourage fundraising efforts for the next few months.
Upon approval from the community and the Executive Team (@Hakanto, @richjensen, and others), I would like to start transferring this information into the live Open Collective about section, in preparation for the next steps of our crowdfunding efforts.
Once this information is transferred and made live, we can always go back to make improvements as new things come to the forefront and additional changes are suggested, but I would like to at least confirm a solid foundation for these changes which I’ve outlined in the below doc.
Let me know of any additional next steps here, and I am looking forward to getting this information live and hopefully increasing our chances of receiving donations from people who visit our open collective page.
Thank you,
– Sam Martyn
@Sam_Martyn, I think there are some subtle copy changes that should be made to make things clearer. Going to go through things now and leave comments. 
One thing I want to add, and shortly because I know this belongs in another thread but it’s part of why I’d like us to create a sort of “S2O taskforce” where we have a few meeting about how to best market/sell/explain Stream 2 Own to people.
This point by @zetto.plus is CRITICAL, like, I can’t say it loud enough :
"We need to add copy here that includes figures that help assure listeners they aren’t going to spend more money streaming through our service because of our model.
If a listener spins [x] amount of new songs in a day, how much are they paying? If a listener spins [x] amount of songs they’ve already played at least once, how much are they spending? And how much does that add up to a month?
These are the kind of numbers we need to succinctly and gracefully feature in this area."
People NEED this breakdown, they need us not to hide these numbers, they need us to explain to them why its good and what kind of behaviors S2O nurtures and encourage, the good and the bad, but most importantly clarity.
Since S2O is a “user based pricing” model (ie. no fixed pricing it’s based on consumption habits, someone who just wants to discover and never listen to the same thing twice benefits from S2O a thousand times more than someone who wants to listen just to the 30 same albums all year, at which points S2O equates to buying 30 albums a year, in one case the value compared to Spotify is miles ahead and artists still get more support, in the other, it means spending possibly twice more BUT in turn all the money goes to supported artists directly) we need to make it clear what are the perks compared to the same behaviors in other streaming related model. I feel like if we hide this under an undecypherable explanation where each people are left to do their own math, it might appear to be fishy and predatory.
So we need to do our homework and explain our vision better, which is by being super pragmatic and putting ourselves at the position of a listener who counts his/her money every month and respect that reality, instead of having it all laid out from a bird’s view that doesn’t really correspond to anyone’s lived experience.
Anyhow that’s all but that’s a lot.
Addendum : I’ve read through all of @zetto.plus 's correction and I agree with all of them especially the exclamation points, it’s really not something I appreciate in general in those documents as I think it’s just better to let people be excited by themselves rather than try to provoke that excitement when we’re just proposing ideas to them.
Yeah, agree on all this. As a footnote, I notice during writing projects like this that folks can get mixed up about current features, what they are called, and what their current capabilities are.
For example, I’ve seen the word “Collections” being used to refer to playlists on Resonate, but it actually refers to the area where one views their owned tracks.
This is why I encourage us to learn from open-source projects and game designers in how they name, iterate, and update their features. They are very skilled in giving those zoomed-out and zoomed-in perspectives on the state of projects, and what different pieces of it are called. Naming things well can be a superpower. Doing it poorly – or taking creative liberties in the wrong context – can be a plague.
Efforts are coordinating to build such roadmapping tools at Resonate and get us on the same page – literally. Until then, everyone be sure to double-check your work when describing our features to the world. Take some extra time on the Player learning how it works and what different features are called. Common terminology will save us a lot of time on the backend clarifying stuff for people.
My goal is that every key feature or set of features at Resonate has a corresponding page in the Handbook with a tweet-length summary at the top. We should be able to pitch these features to folks as clear as day. And each of us shouldn’t have to rewrite those pitches afresh each time.
Working on concise feature descriptions and then making them available to copy/paste will help us explain ourselves efficiently.
@zetto.plus, thank you for your comments and suggested changes. I also agree with all of them, and I really appreciate your attention to detail here. I was able to make most of the copy changes via my phone right now, and I will finish some of the bigger phrases/pieces later on my computer.
@LLK, Thank you for adding additional emphasis to Z’s remarks and adding more details to what the Stream2Own explanation could look like. I agree we can do a better job of explaining S2O from multiple stakeholder points of view, and also being realistic with how much it will cost based on listening examples. From there, people can decide if it’s right for them, but yes, transparency here is key.
@Hakanto, that sounds great. Hopefully there wasn’t too much misrepresentation that you found in the document, but if anything is still there, feel free to point it out/change it on the spot. I agree that naming is an important part of sending a clear message, so having a place where we can reference this vocabulary will be helpful in the future.
Overall, thanks so much to everyone for contributing toward this project so far. Not only do I think this material is beneficial to help explain Resonate to others, but I believe it also helps get everyone here on the same page as well, which is great too.
I will make the last of the changes later on in the day, and then what would be next steps from there?
My goal is that once the final changes are made and confirmed, I can begin to transfer this information to the Open Collective page, we can confirm everything on there, and then start to talk about communications for the campaign and/or potentially what rewards/tiers could be available for donors.
Just let me know best next steps, and I will continue to keep everyone updated as things progress.
Thank you,
– Sam
Do we have/want a stretch goal kind of presentation (that would go after the “pitch” section) for varying financing possibilities or do we feel it would be misleading in our current situation because it’s tough to precisely budget a per-feature financial minimum?
Okay, so I’ve added all of Z’s changes, except the idea about the stream2own explanation. I’ve been spending some time trying to build a little listening calculator (not sure we can really use it anywhere right now, but just working on it for what it’s worth), but in general, I was wondering what the numbers in the below diagram represent, and how they relate to EUR & USD?
Are the numbers below the cost of streams in euros, or credits, and if they’re credits, how many credits equal 1 EUR or USD?
Once I figure this out, I can have a more accurate guess at streaming costs based on different listener scenarios that I can explain in the Open Collective About Section.
Thanks!
I’ve added a chart in the Stream2own and credits guide with a breakdown of cost per play in both credits and euros. If the page doesn’t have all the info you need, let me know.
My understanding is that credits’ value is linked to euros. If purchasing credits with USD, the price would fluctuate relative to EUR vs USD.
My instinct is that while we should have these details available for those who want to deep dive in them (linking to them in the Handbook would work), I suggest not offering too many details up front. We’re aiming for a clear pitch to folks of what the idea of Stream2own is, the elevator pitch of how it works, why we support it, how it supports artists, etc.
Great, yes, that chart helped out a lot!
With that said, I have updated the stream2own section, but I am wondering the best way to explain stream2own examples, as well as how to phrase the continual credit/euro/us dollar conversions.
@zetto.plus, @LLK, and others, please see an example of what I wrote below, or view the full edits inside the original google doc, and let me know of any ways to improve this.
–
Example 1
Number of Songs Listened To - 60
Number of Times Played - 1st time for each song
Cost
60 (songs) x .002 (1st play cost) = 0.12 credits used
0.120 credits x €1.23 (cost/1 credit) = €0.15
or
0.120 credits x $1.49 (cost/1 credit) = $0.18
If the above example is good, I have also added two more examples for other use cases (same cost as Spotify and a more expensive example) inside the google doc, so please review those as well.
I do think however that stream2own is just something that people have to try out themselves for a few months so they can observe their own listening habits and determine whether it’s worth it for them, so I also mentioned the free listening credit we give people upon signing up for the first time.
This is obviously fundamental, just like Netflix stormed the world with their “first 3 months are free” we need to make it clear to people we’re giving them time to embrace the mechanism by themselves.
To come back to your example, I think “songs” isn’t a metric people are that used to (they know what a song is, they just don’t use it as a metric), so I’d rather say that since the “average length of songs on current streaming services is 3min17” that means on the average 3h (and 17 minutes lol) will set you back 5$ a month that means 10$ a month (the equivalent of a Spotify subscription) will give you 6h to 7h of music discovery everyday for a month, and if you just don’t listen to 6h every single day, it’s just that much more time you don’t have to spend for, that you get to use the next month.
But on a month to month basis the math would be this :
“The price of a monthly Spotify subscription gives you 6h a day of music discovery for 30 days and all of it goes to artists. The difference being you don’t pay when you don’t listen.”
Incidentally, this makes me think, (again I’m thinking out loud here, this would need to be precised) that we could split “pricing examples” into listening pattern categories for clarity like, “Discovery (the example I just gave)”, “Fans (there’s an album/artist you loved and listened to all month? > pricing is this and that)”, “Casual listeners (Only listen to music every now and then?)”
Whatever, try to find relatable scenarios and give them fair pricing explaining how and why those are exciting.
I think the “if you listened to this much then it’s this much” with tons of numbers and “0,18 x 30” etc. is still too disconnected we need to find ways so that people read a story and are “hey that sounds like me, looks like if I spend 10 bucks on this it’ll be good enough for a month or two”.
I know for example one scenario where we need to be frank because a lot of people can get obsessive over music they love, is like, “what if this month I loved an album and I listened to it all week?” because then this month you paid 10 or 15€ for that album, and you’re out of credits now, period. So there needs to be a scenario for those people (my guess would be to present them a scenario where either they click a “buy now” button so that this album doesn’t alter their discovery experience, or they just add a few dollars to manage discovery until the end of the month, but we need to imagine stuff like that because we need to ease them into this new and weird way to listen/buy).
I’m saying all this because let’s take an example : We offer people credit to find out what their listening pattern is, do we all agree that IS the idea behind behind the credits we offer? Well, what if their listening pattern is after 20 songs, they find an album that they just adore, and they listen to it ten times and it’s a 15 tracks album. Well then that’s over, they consumed the entirety of their credits (I actually think they used all of it long before they even “owned” the album). But they didn’t really have time to discover “their listening pattern” right? They just liked this one album.
The reality is if the number of credits we give away at the first login is too small, we’re not letting people discover their “listening pattern”, we’re pushing them to only play new tracks and avoid at all cost replaying them if they like them because they might consume the entirety of their free credits in one go.
The result is we’re effectively pushing them away from actually using S2O incremental pricings ! We’re telling them “only use this for discovery or pay already”.
So my workaround for this is :
I think to find the archetypes I should start digging around for the various listening habits of people already on streaming platforms, how much do they listen to an album they just found out about, how much do they listen to their own playlists, how much time they spend discovering etc.
I’m already keen on having a “constent discovery all day” archetype, “spinning a few albums a lot” archetype, “casual listeners” archetype. And then we just tell the story we find when we crunch the numbers the way I did above.
PS: Right now if I’m correct we’re giving enough credits on sign up to discover 60 songs ? If so that’s no enough.
@LLK, thank you for all of your thoughts here. I appreciate your critical thinking around this topic, and the many factors that come with it.
I agree about the hours listened being easier for people to think about than songs listened to, so I will work to change some of those initial metrics/comparisons.
I also wrote up a few more examples a few pages into the document that you can see HERE as they somewhat extend into your archetype examples.
I definitely took more of an analytical route by adding numbers to explain things, but I was also debating using more of an anecdotal approach similar to what you’ve mentioned above, so I can showcase the examples that way if we think that would be easier for people to comprehend.
As far as the free listening credit goes, I am not sure what we offer now as I believe the free credits given was recently cut in half? Perhaps @Hakanto or @Nick_M know what the current setup is, but I’m unsure what steps would have to be taken to change that.
This also brings up the point that although I know that the stream2own offer is a big part of Resonate and its attractiveness, I feel like we may be starting to get a little bit off track here when it comes to the details of communicating stream2own vs. creating an about section to encourage people to donate to Resonate, since stream2own is just a part of what Resonate is doing as a whole.
I completely agree that the stream2own communications conversation needs to continue, but perhaps we can do that HERE, and in the meantime, settle on something that is “good enough” for describing it in the about section on the Open Collective page since we don’t have a lot of time to fundraise and we still have a bit more work to do here before we hopefully start bringing some donations in.
With all of that said, I am thinking we could take the following next steps:
@Sam_Martyn will…
@LLK could potentially…
Interested to hear everyone’s thoughts here, and I look forward to keeping this project, and the conversations around it, moving forward.
Thank you,
– Sam
I’ve been a member for a couple years now but have never been asked to renew my 5 euro annual cooperative membership. The Resonate coop site does say membership is annual.
Does the OpenCollective donation page translate to being a member? I think it would make sense to play up the co-op aspect of the crowdfunding campaign.
The New Internationalist, a news media co-operative, raised 500,000 pounds for their co-operative by really featuring the independence of the co-op. It might be useful to reach out to them for tips and tricks. I’m sure they wouldn’t object to mimicking their strategy since it’s for an aligned co-op. New Internationalist: Save our stories - a Publishing crowdfunding project in Oxford by New Internationalist
Edit: Also should we promote Supporter Shares? I just bought 10 euros.
