To change listener and artist membership standards

All good things @Hakanto! I appreciate your additional reminders here, and for your willingness to bring this issue to the forefront.

I agree that Resonate wouldn’t be a “failure” if we don’t meet a particular payout level for artists, as there are a handful of factors that go into this payout. However, I do agree that if Resonate was something that could support artists socially - through our forum, AND financially - through our streaming platform, that would be a game-changer for how people interact with music, and would be a wonderful thing to accomplish!

I think part of the confusion here comes with what you’ve clarified in that

Besides voting as a perk of membership (and potentially sharing in profits) what other perks are there for becoming a Resonate member? Should voting rights be enough to encourage people to become members? I think first clarifying, or adding more value to what being a Resonate member means could help us come back to better qualifications for membership.

It is exciting to think however that we can focus both on welcoming new artists and listeners to the platform AND improving the value and qualifications for membership since being a listener or artist on Resonate is different than being a lister-member or artist-member.

Side-note: Even if we had a more structured/static approach to membership (I kinda prefer this to the points idea I threw out above), I still think it would be neat to have different badges and varying privileges for diferent memberships. This way, you would still be encouraged to be involved with Resonate in a few different ways, if you’d like, even though you would still only have 1 vote and (ideally) one account, if you wanted.

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I’m personally also in the super-niche no listeners camp and so would feel disincentivized by the €15 payout proposal.

I would imagine that Resonate would benefit from a serious influx of back catalogue in the long term. Resonate could/should be as much a platform for me to keep abreast of new german-death-reggae as to seek out 90s-shoegaze I missed the first time around. I would think that maintaining catalogue is potentially as valuable as contributing new material. I’m not sure where that leaves either metric of artist membership (2 yearly uploads or €15 payout) or how to approach measuring the value of works contributed vs costs of running the platform but I’m wary of disincentivising artists/uploads.

Elsewhere, in a discussion on supporting DJs needs and downloading tracks @macmac said:

I really want to see more music on Resonate, and therefore more artist members, as a route to more listener members. Making artist membership as open as possible seems preferable from this perspective.

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Late 2 the game but some of my thoughts that definitely regurgitate a lot of what is mentioned:

  1. I agree it’s important to keep a sense of sobriety of the co-op’s needs (re: upping the annual member fee, applying an automatic payment cycle to pay the actual fee)
  • Within this, I think the notion of the sliding scale is noble in intention, and we do need to consider the weight of 5-15 euros relative to position, but I also don’t want us to be rushed about this. 15 euros a year is on par with REI’s expectation, but it’s also distinctly very easy to accomplish this expectation given the average price of product put out by REI — I think you can maybe get stickers and some socks there for under 15 dollars, so like the average person clears it with just one purchase. That isn’t nearly as easy on the player. The lifetime membership fee is 20 dollars, and while every year that amount is expected to be purchased, this is a notoriously low threshold because REI gives it’s members 10% off purchase thus incentivizing purchase there and not somewhere else. I think the other consideration is that when we say purchasing credits but not using those credits is a distinction, we get into weird territory with whether or not we’re providing a catalog that sufficiently allows for this use of credits. REI doesn’t lack in providing what it’s consumers want. We’re getting there, but at this current moment, it’s hard to argue our catalog is as robust as it should be.

But anyways, more impt stuff — @remst8 I think nails it with not swapping one arbitrary metric for another, as @richjensen points out the very clear importance of not in anyways disincentivizing artists from approaching the platform. Objectively, we’re young, we’re small, and our relationship in the market involves attracting artists to us, not the other way around. We need to provide the benefits before we build towards re-evaluating the artist membership is my potentially hot take. The listener membership, yah, I think we can finagle with it. But it’s a little presumptive to ask for so much in this current stage (maybe that’s harsh, idk!)

Additionally, I’m honestly not principally for evaluating the the morality and weight of an artists contributions making some votes more legitimate than others, somehow. @Hakanto i know you mentioned directly that you’re concerned about catalog artists and voting members and the delegitimizing of voting power. That’s a perspective that admittedly I wholeheartedly disagree with.

  1. I don’t think (realistically) the average troll is going to take advantage of their voting power anyways, and like some kind of co-op ending apocalyptic assault on randos is probably deeply in tin foil hat area (that is to say, a little paranoid).
  2. Who cares if they do? When we start building our policy around engaging and enabling people we “like” or “care more” to feel their vote matters more, or is more informed, we risk inevitably sliding into constructing our membership policy around favoring those who achieve the most success by the co-op’s parameters. We shouldn’t conflate the desire to encourage people to become active co-op members from creating a policy that favors them and alienates potentiality. A member is a member is a member. How that power is used shouldn’t be shaped by the often misguided notion that less enthralled engagement invalidates active engagement. I think as we all know, there about a million different historical cases that point to this being a terribly isolating tactic when it comes to democratic voting policy. Our mission is to construct governance that inspires artists to engage more, not cut out those who engage less (huge hill I’m willing to die on quite honestly). Badges might be the right approach here, but as stated by like, everyone, a lower threshold with room to build up keeps the gates open
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I enjoy hearing additional perspectives like the ones above for this topic, so thanks for commenting!

@thehouseorgan, I would love to see more music on Resonate as well! My only pushback would be: Do you think artists wouldn’t want to put their music on Resonate if it wasn’t extremely viable for them to become a member? From my understanding, people can be artists on the platform without also being artist members, and that is perfectly fine, so it could make it worthwhile to have a more value-driven approach toward artist-member qualifications in exchange for Resonate adding more value to the artist through additional perks…kinda thinking like how they have Bandcamp Pro for $10/month.

@sganesh, never too late to add your awesome insight as well! You bring up some interesting points when comparing the REI membership to Resonate’s, and I appreciate your moral viewpoints of the conversation as well. Where I start to take a different stance compared to you is in talking about how to deal with these potential “trolls.” From my perspective, I don’t care too much about their voting power devaluing others’ because I agree when you mention how a member is a member. My only issue would be around the fact that if there are minimal requirements to become an artist member, and being an artist member grants you the same or similar power than any other member-class, it would be smart for most people to be artist members, therefore bypassing any potential revenue for the co-op, and potentially devaluing other artists on the platform who truly care about their art and are more committed to Resonate.

With this said, I also think…

A. This community seems to be very down to earth and respectful, so I don’t see many “trolls” taking advantage of Resonate like this.

B. Even if people eventually took advantage of the lenient artist-member qualifications, I think the revenue from the streaming platform would still be a majority of Resonate’s total revenue, therefore hopefully not impacting much when it comes to supporting the Co-op financially.

Overall, my thoughts on the topic come down to preserving the integrity of being a Resonate member, and generating revenue for the co-op, but it is important that everyone feels welcome and that becoming a member at Resonate is something that is reasonably attainable for them too.

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Great question and, tbh, I’ve no idea. I like the idea that contributing music (I recognise there are other contributions too but am focused upon music here) gives you a say in the governance of the platform. Perhaps that’s actually a sense of entitlement I hold that needs challenging.

The simple bit - I agree with @sganesh that there’s more room to finagle with listener membership at this stage.

The reflective philosophical bit - Thinking through this ‘entitlement’: I make unpopular music >>> I ascribe it my own value separate from e.g., popular value metrics such as sales or plays >>> I expect Resonate to adhere to my valuation of my work despite the other factors that might require it to operate under a different value system.

I’m forgetting that value is something generated dynamically through interaction with other systems. In this case, my work also needs to create value, e.g., listenership, within the platform/community.

I use the term listnership here though because an artist’s work could contribute to bringing listeners even if few direct plays. I’m thinking that if a particular genre community established a strong presence here it might attract listeners though not all artists would attract the same level of listens. Listens are distributed over time, perhaps a popular example of a genre might lead to deeper exploration of said genre, leading to a ‘forgotten’ band having a resurgence of listening. Is potential listnership of value?

The weight of my initial reaction against artist-membership being tied to €15 payout, is simply the likelihood of me losing artist-membership under such conditions. It’s probably flawed of me to think this way, and it should be challenged, but, it’s still worth considering the risk others might think like this and how it might disincentivise them.

At the same time Resonate needs to be constantly addressing/readdressing how it ascribes value ethically (something I think it is doing, including this thread, but I think it’s worth restating as it is important).

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Said it before, will say it again, but those who can have the luxury to “engage more” might often be precisely the ones who already own more as well as opposed to those who “engage less” being precisely the ones who (wether or not we consider that a good choice on their part) feel for multiple reasons that they don’t have the luxury of spending time on that because first they must ensure their ability to eat, house themselves etc.

Low engagement might and is often related to high needs, which in turn means that we actively need to seek the experience, knowledge and specificities of the “low engage crowd” so that we can answer to their realities.

It’s a good hill to die on I believe.

PS: let us never forget the original sin of Resonate is believing Streaming platforms in and of themselves (that is, separated from the datametrics they can sell from listeners and without adveritising) create value/money as a business. For now this has never happened and so this is why we’re having so many headaches to solve this weird puzzle of “what is worth what”.

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I desire to participate in a community that embraces the observation that popular and unpopular are so fluid as to be operationally meaningless as categories. In fact, the design success of this co-op as an enterprise will be determined by its resilience in the face of these fluid dynamics. Genre after genre, personality after personality, social tendency after social tendency moves from obscurity to global glare (and back again) in an instant in this society.

There are social conditions that attend to popularity. It is difficult to hide, difficult to change ones relation, social time becomes incredibly dense, relationships become stressed, one becomes a mark for every kind of hustle, great quantities of people intimately loath, misrepresent and threaten you for superficial reasons over which you have no control, etc… Resonate’s success will be determined by being as welcoming to Members suffering under these conditions as it will be by showing solidarity, tolerance and making every effort to minimize demands on anyone whose time and resources are precarious.

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Resurrecting this discussion now that I have read the Resonate Rulebook and the Operating Manual Requirements

I have a better understanding now about the different classes of membership, and how that granularity is used for governance and dividend distribution. That seems foundational to the co-op’s theory of operation, so I respectfully back away from my prior suggestion to eliminate them.

As far as I can tell, the documents I read refer to all participants in the co-op as members.

Reading between the lines, I infer:

  • Each person must have an account to interact with the service.
  • A person may have an account but not be a member under 2 circumstances:
    i. Their membership is still pending because the membership process has not yet completed.
    ii. Their membership has expired because they have not made another qualifying contribution per the standard.

Is that correct?

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This breakdown should help:

  • The Rulebook (bylaws) expresses the expectations for members of the co-operative.
  • The Terms and Conditions express the expectations for users of the co-operatives’s products and services.

You can be a user without being a member. Members are those who have both:

  • completed a qualifying contribution for a particular membership class
  • completed whatever other administrative/registration/governance process is required for membership in that class

For example, by the current rules, one becomes qualified for worker membership after doing 20 hours of unpaid work as a volunteer/intern of Resonate over a three month period. But to become a worker member, they need to either be approved by an ordinary resolution of all members or class resolution of worker members.

Here’s the terminology distinction I use:

“Worker” - someone contributing work
“Qualified Worker” - someone who has contributed enough work to be qualified for worker membership
“Worker Member” - someone who has been approved/registered as a Worker Member

“Musicmaker” -someone contributing music
“Qualified Musicmaker” - someone who has had a song published on the player
“Musicmaker Member” - someone who has had a song published on the player and been approved/registered as a Musicmaker Member

For listeners, this terminology doesn’t work as smoothly since (currently) listeners cannot qualify for listener membership by contributing listening. Instead they pay annual dues. Nevertheless, their membership isn’t official until it is approved by the board (basically just a rubber stamp thing but that’s the process).

As a footnote, someone could be qualified for a membership and never become a member simply because they don’t want to be.

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@remst8 Taking another look, I’m surprised to see that the Terms and Conditions says:

“Unless otherwise noted, use of Resonate services is restricted to members in good standing.”

This has not been how Resonate has operated. We have many users who are not members and such a restriction has never been pursued or enforced.

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@Hakanto - I agree that clause is overdue for clean-up/aligning with how we operate. I suspect the original vision for Resonate assumed all users would be co-op members, but we have since adapted it provide a listening service for all.

Circling back to qualifying contributions for Musicmaker Members, has our transition away from WordPress created a paradox?

  • To become a Musicmaker Member, you must publish at least 1 song to the service.
  • We expose the link to the new Music Submission Form on the profile page for Musicmaker Members. (Right?)
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Nah, you only need an Artist Account to access the submission form, not a membership :slight_smile:

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I see our core project as creation of a profitable democratic business which:

  • supports the livelihood of Workers and Musicmakers
  • recognizes those who sustain the business with democratic governance rights
  • uses its financial independence to enable its self-governance, rather than being swayed by grantors and big donors
  • reinvests or distributes profits back to its members

To me, all our aspirations are made possible by us being a profitable, democratic business which provides a need and does it well. When I picture Musicmaker Members in this context, I picture those whose musical contributions help sustain the co-op – and who in turn need the co-op for their own income and livelihood. That cyclical relationship and inner economy is part of the strength of a co-operative.

A hesitation to the “all artists get to be members” model is this:

If my music made no money for me or the co-op, but nevertheless granted me Musicmaker Membership, it could mean that someday I would potentially vote on issues which affect other artists’ livelihood but don’t affect my own.

Essentially, there would be two types of Musicmaker Members: those who need the Co-op and are seeking to support themselves using its services, and those who don’t need it. It seems to me that these are not the same stakeholder, although they share an activity.

This isn’t a perfect articulation of what’s on my mind, but these are some of the themes of why I feel some distinction is important.

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Like Ampled, I believe the threshold for Musicmaker Membership should be placed low enough to be accessible, yet high enough to show the artist has an economic relationship with the co-operative.

I want to remind folks that I’m an artist and musician myself. I’ve been writing the same album for the last 13 years, pouring myself into that art. That album is one of the most important things in the world to me – extraordinarily precious.

Despite that effort and passion, I wouldn’t want to earn Musicmaker Membership simply from uploading it to the platform. To me uploading it would be like planting a seed. Until there is some sort of fruit – a harvest I can share – I wouldn’t feel right being a Musicmaker Member.

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Profitable? Or sustainable? We must be careful to avoid conflating these two concepts.

If our core objective is profitability, our Manifesto must be updated (in particular, point #9: “Culture > Profit”) - otherwise we’re lying to everyone. I fully support incentivizing ways to keep Resonate sustainable, but limiting our lens for artists to monetary return seems absolutely counter to our manifesto as it stands today.

Artists who don’t need Resonate’s services won’t host their music here. My interpretation of the manifesto is that Resonate fills a cultural need, not a capitalistic one.

How many tiers of Worker Members should there be? They can participate in governance if you added a feature, but not if they just fixed bugs? Shall we put an asterisk on the word “Everyone” for manifesto item #6 to clarify who actually gets to “own the platform” by contributing directly to the bottom line?

With this caveat in mind, please forgive the forcefulness of my response. I appreciate that you have concerns about the underlying monetary needs to keep Resonate afloat and fully support exploring ways to address those concerns. However, I have concerns about any attempt to correlate value/membership with stream-based remuneration.

This sounds like an argument for separating “membership classification” from “contribution to the co-op”…or abolition of membership classifications altogether–you’re either a member or not.

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In the context of a co-operative, I don’t see much of a distinction. The profits would be treated as a surplus and either reinvested by the co-op or distributed to members as a dividend. I think we’re so used to see “profit” as meaning extraction by shareholders or management, but in our case there isn’t a separation.

Since dividends are part of our model “on years of surplus”, profits seem prerequisite, although there may be a subtle terminological distinction I’m not aware of. Merely “sustainable” rather than “profitable” it seems would suggest that the co-op never do more than break even each year and would never distribute dividends to members (as there would be no dividend to distribute).

@remst8 I hope not too much forcefulness is heard in my responses either! This is a valuable conversation and I’m enjoying it, even if the subject can be a bit prickly.

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Re: Point 6 in the Manifesto “Everyone should own their platform, own their data, and their own network.”

If this point means “all users of the platform/data/network get to be members of the co-op”, then our dues model for listener members actually contradicts it. There is no requirement for listener members to use the platform. When it comes down to it, they can just buy a vote/ownership for 10 euros a year.

It’s all good! We’re digging into this topic because we’re passionate and care deeply about it. We all want Resonate to succeed! :blue_heart:

I view it differently. We recognize that profits are a likely (but not guaranteed) outcome of success, so all who contribute to that success should share in the rewards. That’s why it’s a conditional “on years of surplus” instead of a mandate “all years must have surplus”.

It’s possible this was was also drafted under the original assumption that all users would be co-op members. And/or it was written with an economy of words to span the different scenarios where Resonate offers an alternative to VC-owned streaming platforms:

  • Music-makers should own the platform that hosts their music.
  • Listeners should own their personal data when using the platform to listen to music.
  • Music-makers and listeners should own their relationships to each other (network?) through their interactions via the platform.

And if I may circle back to this insight (which is deeply personal, so thank you for sharing it):

Per Resonate’s Manifesto, you have the right to determine the value of your art. And it sounds like you assess value by the response to your art. Others may derive value from the act of manifesting their art–and they should have the right to determine that for themselves. These are just two data points from a spectrum of expectations that cannot be programmatically realized, which is why I have an allergic reaction to any single-metric-based evaluation (especially monetary profit).

I have watched Schindler’s List exactly once. I have watched an internet meme video numerous times. Is the internet meme video “more valuable” or “better art” because I watched it more times than Schindler’s List? My answer is “NO”, but others may disagree (including the creator of the internet meme video).

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