The Resonate player - we recently launched a new player. It features “genre” tags for easy discovery, embedable tracks/releases for easy sharing, collections feature to make your own playlists and more. What’s you experience of using it?
Alternate:
We recently launched Version 7 of the Resonate Player, with new features like browsing the catalogue via genre tags, embeddable tracks and releases for easy sharing, album pages with liner notes, and the ability to make and share playlists. What’s your experience so far with the new Player?
calling it “Version 7” shows folks that we have history and commitment
Collection is a list of your purchased tracks. Playlists is a different tab and feature.
Hmm. We did indeed “make the new player available”, but we also removed the old player. It was a significant shift. If the language emphasizes that and how much work went into it, it will be clearer to folks that there was an upgrade
“Resonate catalogue is currently only independently released music from around the globe. Should Resonate eventually expand its audio offering to include…”
Is it accurate to say that the catalogue is only independently released music?
That’s fine, but we made no significant marketing outreach around it (yet). To say it was launched means a) when we launch it it would be a relaunch b) people will say ‘why didn’t I hear about it?’ inviting the conclusion c) we have no capacity to reach audiences, which is a false and unhelpful conclusion to invite.
Also, it isn’t done. Which has both positive and negative consequences. The negative is - is isn’t done - it isn’t ready to provide the accounting we need to offer artists, and numerous features remain to be developed and improved on. But the Positive is that it is owned and managed by a co-operative community. The additions can be influenced (fairly radically) by vested participants in the community.
The vision is to release the player with a suite of upgrades and capacities in coordination with artist, press and industry allies both within and outside the co-op.
Yes. We have not released music owned by the 3 major labels and their production and distribution systems, nor should we have that on our roadmap from my point of view. Our area of success and significance is in building sustainability for emergent culture in the traditional ‘independent sector’ outside those highly-capitalized, monopolistic systems.
I think this stuff (version number, the view that we didn’t market a change) matters more to us, but please think of the usability/readability of the survey. many people may have no experience of the old player, they may investigate the new player only when prompted by this (same with the forum), they may not even have noticed the changes. so past experience is adding a layer of complication we don’t need in this context - we want to know about now and the future, the past is already done.
remember, we’re also having meetings, where people can give this kind of feedback about new vs old. the survey is people less likely to engage with an in-depth meeting environment.
regarding launching a new player - see your point @richjensen , except we did announce the new player in the newsletter and on socials.
I would suggest this amendment - The latest version of the Resonate Player features more advanced browsing of the catalogue via genre tags, embeddable tracks and releases for easy sharing, album pages with liner notes, and the ability to make and share playlists. What’s your experience so far using it?
Yes but open-source platforms and game companies make a huge amount of fanfare when they release updates. It is core to their development, revenue, and publicity model.
Examples:
The brilliant worker co-op Motion Twin builds entire publicity campaigns around their game updates, even hiring animators and artists to make short films and supplementary materials. This has kept the game so relevant that years after its initial release, news blogs joke about it being one of the best games of the year every year.
Ubuntu gives silly/catchy names to each release of the operating system, building momentum and coordination around them, and selling merch like shirts and stuff.
If we were a conventional company, I’d agree with you. But as a co-op and an open-source platform we have a different relationship with users, members, and contributors. “Version history” is a big part of establishing our common timeline and sense of progress.
This poll may not be the right place to highlight that, but it is core to what we are.
Well, we actually did announce it on socials and in the newsletter back in November. We just didn’t send out a press release to the media, as it’s only half done and the renewal as fully envisioned is still in progress.
Well, @Hakanto we are an organization operating in a professional space with significant conventions. For that reason we are very fortunate to be able to build strategy that benefits from the expertise of people who have successfully operated in the independent music sector for many years. Such people are not a dime-a-dozen.
Comparisons between the gaming and general open-source sector and our environment are quite weak. Gaming does not involve navigating the trust of independent artists, each of whom has put years of effort into maintaining a specific context for their work and delicate connections to their communities of listeners. The fragility of these relations has established certain conventions, expectations and customary practices for workers in this space.
Meeting those expectations is within our grasp when our outreach and product strategy is informed by the expertise of our professional Artist Relations team.
We’re looking at this from different angles which are complementary. As a multi-stakeholder co-op and open-source platform we’re gonna be navigating many kinds of conventions at once. And we need them all.
However, as a MUSIC organization, specifically operating in the traditional independent sector, either we meet that community’s professional expectations, or we are doing something else than providing a Digital Streaming Platform.
Once again, I don’t think these ideas are in conflict. If they were, we should not have made Resonate open-source. As long as we are providing a commons of code, we need to steward that just as we need to steward music.
Done right, we will be more powerfully able to achieve the expectations you are highlighting and serve music communities. Open-source is another tradition which will help us be a great place for artists and music.
The only conflict I’m seeing is that you were suggesting that our outreach be modeled on a gaming company. I have pointed out that a gaming company does not handle anything as sensitive as the kind of partnerships that are required for a professional music service.
I don’t see why we can’t meet our obligations to professional independent artists as an open-source platform.
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