Resonate Renewal Crowdfunding Campaign

Hi @Sam_Martyn. Great news! Do you want to write a rough draft pitch targeting those folks?

BTW, Resonate has an account at Opencollective that provides essentially the same functionality as Kickstarter and especially among folks that support opensource software and transparent democratic organizations.

For what’s worth, @brandon and I met up yesterday to work on a general plan following the commitment we made at the @executive team meting Tuesday. We are planning to meet up again tomorrow (tentatively 2021-12-17T20:00:00Z) and could maybe help move your proposal (and plot other work). Would be great if you were free to join the call or connect later if you later if you like.

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Yes, that sounds great!

That’s awesome that Resonate has that setup on open collective, and I love how it does a much better job of aligning with the co-op’s values. As long as we have a lot of space in the about section (or somewhere else) to add FAQs, potential donor rewards, and other crowdfunding ideas I’ve seen from others, that sounds like a great platform.

Thank you both for taking some time to meet up on this, and Friday (12/17) at 2pm cst is the perfect time for me, so I would love to join in on tomorrow’s meeting.

Looking forward to being in touch then.

Thanks!

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I won’t be at this brainstorming session today. I wish y’all luck, and thanks for your work on this.

I encourage y’all to spend the time today defining the project. Focus on finding agreement about what the goals are and what skills, time, effort, and resources are estimated to make it happen.

I’ve written up a list of questions you can go through to clarify the project, if you wish to use it.

Project Proposal Template

Project Title

What’s the nickname for the project? Keep it short.

Summary

In no more than ~250 characters so that it’s readable, memorable, tweetable

Problem

It is there a problem this project is aiming to solve?

Outcomes

What are measurable goals that we agree will determine whether or not the project succeeded?

Example: Project will fundraise 25,000 euros

Value

Why spend our time and effort on this?

Tasks

What are the major tasks that will need to be completed along the way?

Skills

What skills and qualifications are needed for those who will do the project?

Effort

What’s an estimate of how many hands-on hours the project will take?

Start & end dates

Is there an ideal start date or no? How many weeks will it take to achieve the goal?

Urgency

What’s the rush, specifically?

Workspaces

Where will the project do its coordination and communication?

Synchronization

How will the project inform the co-op of its progress and needs? How will the project stay aware of the co-op’s other projects?

Resources

Does the project request funding and/or other resources?

Security

Do all or some of the crew request access to the co-op’s tools or platforms?

Example: Moderation rights in forum
Example: Access to twitter account

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Here is a rough idea of the project template that I drafted. Still subject to change, but hopefully a good enough idea to continue working. I am posting this in this thread, but feel free to move it to a more appropriate location in the forum. Lastly, the current template is in a Google Doc, but let me know if there’s a more preferred method for me to communicate by (copy and paste as a separate forum topic/reply, etherpad, crytpad, etc.) Thanks!

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Really rough draft of some initial ideas for a Resonate crowdfunding campaign. Everything below is subject to change, but hopefully it can give people a better idea of what it could look like. I used Kickstarter’s framework to build the template, but we can see what other platform’s framework and capacity is like if we wanted to use the Resonate open collective page like what was previously mentioned. Lastly, the below link is a Google Doc link that’s editable by everyone, but let me know if you want me to convert it to an forum topic/reply, etherpad, cryptpad, or anything else. Thanks!

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Hi all,

I wanted to jump back in here and leave some links to some more work I’ve done, more specifically around improvements that we could make to our Resonate Open Collective Page, as that seems to be where we will host a majority of the crowdfunding efforts, at least for now.

As you will see, there are still some pieces missing in the final doc (Open Collective Crowdfunding Project About Section), but please see below the following docs, and let me know your thoughts for improvement. Thank you!

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Update:

Resonate Open Collective About Page Draft

I have filled in most of the missing pieces, but just have a few things left to confirm before I propose that this go live on the Open Collective Page.

  1. I am having a bit of trouble properly showcasing the current features and future feature ideas for this community forum. Would @angus, @Hakanto, @brndnkng, @boopboop, @richjensen, @LLK, @Nick_M, or anyone else who may have some thoughts here be able to mention some current features of the forum along with any general future ideas that I could include as bullet points for this section?

  2. I tried my best to create a little timeline of events for Resonate’s history based off some of the great docs and posts that @Nick_M shared, but would @peter, @richjensen, and anyone else who has some insight here be able to help either confirm my timeline, add to it, and/or just rewrite it? I want to make sure that people have an accurate understanding of how Resonate came to be, how far the co-op has truly come, and why we’re so excited for the future!

  3. The last piece that I was looking to include here was the new Resonate roadmap. I believe @melis_tailored has been spearheading this effort with the help of several others, and I know that this process is still happening, but once complete, I’d love to add this to our open collective page. For now, I’ve just added one of Resonate’s older roadmaps, so let me know if that will suffice. If not, we can discuss ways to get an updated version of the roadmap added, without delaying the rest of the info being added since I think that any additional info and graphics that we have will encourage people to donate which is what Resonate needs right now.

Thank you all in advance for your time, and if the above document is approved, I can begin translating this to the about section of Resonate’s Open Collective Page

Thank you,
– Sam Martyn

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Added some notes to the timeline. :slight_smile:

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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

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A post was split to a new topic: Page on new website for donations and support

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.

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Yes!!! To everything!!! :100: @LLK

I believe they do have this functionality. We just have to turn it on.

Goals/asks:

I recommend a two phase approach.

  1. Post ASAP: goal 20KEU by Feb 28 (Secures operations/ Renewal roll out to approx. May 1).

  2. 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.

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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

Resonate Open Collective About Page Draft

@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. :pray:t4:

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@Sam_Martyn, I’ve left all of my comments. Let me know what you think when you can. :pray:t4:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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