[HN Gopher] Subvert - Collectively owned music marketplace
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Subvert - Collectively owned music marketplace
Author : cloudfudge
Score : 134 points
Date : 2024-10-18 16:17 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (subvert.fm)
(TXT) w3m dump (subvert.fm)
| ozornin wrote:
| What exactly is meant by co-ownership in your case? What exact
| "Ability to influence platform policies and features" would I
| have and how are product/business decisions made? What is the
| organisation structure?
|
| The phrase "Collective ownership" sounds romantic but it can mean
| many things, from very good to outright scam, depending on
| implementation.
| n-exploit wrote:
| It's structured as a multi-stakeholder cooperative, from what I
| understand.
|
| "Building an artist-owned platform is a complex challenge, but
| it's one we are uniquely positioned to solve. Our growing
| coalition includes founders of Ampled, a project that helped
| pioneer the concept of cooperative platforms, as well as
| artists, music industry professionals, and specialists in
| cooperative law and platform economics. "
|
| From a introductory blog post.
|
| https://subvert.fm/blog/a-collectively-owned-bandcamp-succes...
|
| More on the co-op model in the FAQ.
|
| https://subvert.fm/docs/what-does-it-mean-to-join-the-co-op/
| factormeta wrote:
| would this be like open-collective for musicians?
| n-exploit wrote:
| I could see the economics working similar to
| OpenCollective, but different governance. I know OC
| announced a restructuring recently, but I don't think it's
| a co-op model.
| ozornin wrote:
| I've read the Docs https://subvert.fm/docs/, co-op bylaws draft
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zbobfJY4a7-dVdrgk6bSJh89AI7...
| and roadmap https://subvert.fm/roadmap/ and got answers to all
| the questions above.
| n-exploit wrote:
| I'm glad to see new concepts emerge like this that challenge the
| governance and benefit of platforms by shareholder corporations
| for their own self-interested purposes.
|
| I joined as a "Founding Supporter" of the Subvert co-op last
| night when I saw a post on my Twitter (X) feed.
|
| I really hope to see more tech cooperatives in the future. The
| dominant paradigm of neo-fiefdom tech platforms is both tired and
| uninspiring.
| jsheard wrote:
| How is Bandcamp doing nowadays? I know the backstory of it being
| bought by Epic, then Epic realizing they have no use for a music
| store and selling it off to Songtradr who immediately gutted it
| by firing half of the staff, but I don't use it enough to know if
| enshittification has set in yet.
| n-exploit wrote:
| This sounds like enshittification itself, in its own way.
| Rotating hands to the highest bidder.
| joemi wrote:
| How in the world is it enshittification if there's no
| noticeable change to users? Nothing got shittier, so doesn't
| that by definition mean it's not enshittification?
| mixedbit wrote:
| I haven't notice any degradation so far. Recently they even
| announced a Bandcamp Friday - a day when a Bandcamp commission
| is 0 and all income from sales goes to the artists. Doesn't
| look like they try to squeeze as much profits as possible and
| slowly kill the platform in doing so.
| lancesells wrote:
| I think that's been going on since early 2020. And yeah, I
| can't really tell a difference between Bandcamp before it was
| sold and today. It's a shame that they not only sold to Epic
| of all companies but then fired so many people.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > fired so many people.
|
| If there's no degradation, it should have been done long
| ago. Those salaries come out of musicians' pockets.
| the_other wrote:
| I've got both artist and fan accounts. I've not noticed any
| significant change in service or tools in this whole period of
| change. The one thing that's new is "listening parties", but
| that seems fairly "on-beand" to me. BC was profitable for years
| prior to the first sale. Why mess with something that works?
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _A Collectively Owned Bandcamp Successor_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41309217 - Aug 2024 (2
| comments)
| pragma_x wrote:
| The most recent blog post they have up is titled "The Mondragon
| of Music" which, frankly, is all I needed to see.
|
| https://subvert.fm/blog/our-50-year-roadmap-the-mondragon-of...
|
| The article mentions the highlights, but a deeper drive into the
| Mondragon Corp can be found here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
| n-exploit wrote:
| Mondragon is a great model demonstrating the greater
| possibilities within complementary-industry cooperative
| economy. Mondragon is partnership between and across
| industries.
|
| I could see the regional distribution of industry across/within
| geography, as applied within Mondragon, mapping well to genre
| distribution across/within industry production
| tooling/technologies for Subvert.
| mmooss wrote:
| It's a great start. Co-ops and non-profits can also be subverted
| and taken over. I hope you look ahead and plan very carefully.
|
| For example, according to an (unverified) story someone told me,
| a vendor to US east coast food cooperatives now controls many of
| them; they get their person in, pass bylaws empowering them and
| disempowering the board (the board usually lacking
| sophistication), and have deeper pockets for any legal struggle
| than any co-op member does.
|
| Also, I remember in the news that a non-profit or limited-profit
| company in the IT industry, founded for the public good, is going
| to be turned into a for-profit. The board actually fired the
| person behind this plan, but that person came back and fired the
| board members.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| The FAQ has:
|
| > Is this a crypto thing?
|
| >> No.
|
| I realize that crypto is a bad word for some people, but I
| think that the above answer has a corollary:
|
| > Does it have a single point of control that will attract
| corruption if enough of us start using it?
|
| >> Yes
|
| Certainly plenty of poorly designed crypto things also have
| that point of control, but a well designed crypto thing at
| least has a shot at resilience.
| fwip wrote:
| I think the failure rate for crypto organizations is much
| higher than the average org.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| centralization is easy
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Certainly, but when the average org becomes corrupted, you
| just stop buying its project and let it die. This thing
| endeavors not to sell you a product, but to sell your
| product. If it's going to get buy-in from artists, I think
| it's going to need to make significant promises about not
| making them regret it. I'd love to see it succeed, but
| building enough social capital to back long term promises
| like that is a difficult thing.
| theamk wrote:
| Smart contracts only affects on-chain stuff, and this deals
| with real-world things. No smart contract is going to help
| you if webmasters update website, or if a board decides to
| add a rule.
|
| See also: NFT delisting.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| When I imagine using crypto for this problem, the on-chain
| portion is a registry of hashes (for the songs) which maps
| them to addresses which I can send money to and then the
| contract multiplexes the money out to the appropriate
| people. So if it's one dude with a guitar and a microphone,
| 100% goes to him. But if it's a remix of a remix of a
| remix, then maybe that money gets split 50 ways.
|
| I don't know if I need a website or a board for that. Of
| course I'm not the one building this, so my imagined design
| doesn't matter. But the question is: if not that, then
| what? I'm curious, I'm just gonna sleep on it before I
| decide that I'm $100 curious.
|
| Edit: I see I can get the zine digitally first before
| deciding to be an owner. I guess I have some reading to do.
| Self-Perfection wrote:
| But it possible to host a website almost on blockchain (see
| TON Sites as example) and withdraw certain modification
| permissions once the contract in launched.
|
| It seems to me that it is possible to implement fully
| decentralized bandcamp-like site.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| > _Does it have a single point of control that will attract
| corruption if enough of us start using it?_
|
| By opposition to crypto, which attracts distributed
| corruption when enough people use the project?
|
| I'm being glib, but complaining that a project not using
| crypto makes it inherently unsafe is pretty rich.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| It's not really a complaint about the project itself. I'm
| actually considering paying the $100 to be a member because
| I think they're attempting to address an important problem
| and I want to see how it goes and it would probably be more
| fun to do so as an owner.
|
| But you've got to admit that its a peculiar rhetorical
| choice to explain at the landing page that your strategy
| doesn't involve coupling ownership/control of the platform
| with the ability to control tokens on a blockchain
| somewhere, without using the same space to explain what it
| does do instead.
| zepton wrote:
| Musicians want to accept credit card payments (you lose a lot
| of potential sales if you only take crypto), which requires a
| central party to handle payment processing.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > Certainly plenty of poorly designed crypto things also have
| that point of control,
|
| They all have. They just claim they can work against social
| dynamics with technology but that's a fool errand.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Several technologies have managed it. The printing press,
| the vaccine, the nuclear bomb. It's even crazier to not
| try.
| cloudfudge wrote:
| For the record, I'm not affiliated with Subvert and in reading
| the docs I find their arguments about the "problem" with
| Bandcamp extremely weak/hypothetical and stated over and over
| again without any evidence. I am skeptical that they understand
| the economics of running a music retail site and think they
| might find that the cut Bandcamp takes is actually pretty fair
| for the value bands get. And I also don't really get how they
| plan to make this "collective ownership" actually work for
| real, but I also got really exhausted reading the doc and gave
| up, so maybe it's buried in there. The real reason I posted it
| here was hoping the HN hive mind would dissect and critique the
| actual plan for me. :)
| anticorporate wrote:
| > For example, according to an (unverified) story someone told
| me, a vendor to US east coast food cooperatives now controls
| many of them; they get their person in, pass bylaws empowering
| them and disempowering the board (the board usually lacking
| sophistication), and have deeper pockets for any legal struggle
| than any co-op member does.
|
| For anyone interested in learning more, this is a reference to
| the National Cooperative Grocers and the role of UNFI (a
| primary distributor for many food coops) and CDS (a cooperative
| grocery consulting firm). I've been pretty involved in my local
| grocery cooperative's governance over the past two decades.
| From my vantage point, there's some truth to this, but also
| some exaggeration (or more accurately, the pinning of other
| grievances, which themselves might be legitimate, on something
| that might not actually be related).
|
| I don't endorse or necessarily agree with the views expressed
| on these two websites, but they might help give some
| background:
|
| https://organizing.work/2019/04/why-do-coops-hate-unions/
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20210213141044/http://www.takebac...
| jimbokun wrote:
| Sounds like the key for this entire venture succeeding is the
| quality of their legal counsel.
| n-exploit wrote:
| The public document - PLAN FOR THE ARTIST-OWNED INTERNET - zine
| subvert published yesterday has quite a bit of detail on the
| complexities and possibilities in the governance and benefit of
| the co-op. The team supposedly includes lawyers and economists.
|
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/1znV0Q8_jjxFTiKeT_FETTZieiXl...
| bee_rider wrote:
| A successor to bandcamp would be really nice. I think it is hard
| to determine if a site will become one, because it is largely
| about network effect--Bandcamp had enough users (customers and
| artists) that it was, like, worthwhile to give them your credit
| card info...
|
| Totally tangential and probably revealing that I have absolutely
| no understanding of the music creation ecosystem and process, but
| is there room for, like, an online collaboration system? Like a
| Unity asset store for samples or something? Allow people to remix
| and then handle the pay out automatically when songs get bought?
| colkassad wrote:
| There is this: https://www.kompoz.com/
|
| It's geared more towards collaboration and there is some system
| to share any income that gets derived (not sure how it worked).
| You find someone's song page, download the existing tracks
| (stems) and work on your own, uploading to the collection when
| you are finished. I collaborated with some artists and it was
| fun and I met some folks. They set up payments but I never
| expected anything to come from that. I thought finding projects
| that are interesting to collaborate on was difficult. It's just
| a big pile of music of varying quality and genres.
| pdntspa wrote:
| The "Unity Asset Store" is effectively Splice
|
| But the licensing doesn't do pay outs, with sampling you pay
| once and its yours to use as you see fit. As it should be, we
| don't need anyone else sticking their hands out.
| bee_rider wrote:
| In general, imo, if somebody contributes usefully to a
| project they should get paid in line with their contribution.
|
| The flat rate makes sense from an era when tracking that sort
| of stuff was difficult, but I dunno, it seems like it ought
| to be possible to track this sort of stuff automatically
| nowadays.
| thenoblesunfish wrote:
| This is so awesome. Not because it will necessarily work or be
| incorruptible, but because it can be replicated.
| n-exploit wrote:
| They're being very open about the legal structuring too, with
| open source legal docs and agreements.
|
| https://subvert.fm/changelog/
| mitchitized wrote:
| Finally, a website that convinced me to write my own CSS
| overrides.
| freedomben wrote:
| I think this is great, but I do hope thought is being put into
| solving the hardest problem of all IMHO: Music Discovery
|
| I have bought a lot on Bandcamp, but would have bought 10x more
| if I could just find stuff I liked. The existing system makes
| discovery nearly impossible unless you happen to like the stuff
| being mainly bought and curated or are in a lucky genre.
|
| Discoverability is especially hard because 99% of the music
| people create sucks. This may not seem true if you mainly listen
| to "radio" and playlists, but if you ever get access to a large
| catalog of independent music, try picking stuff at pseudo-random
| and take notes. As much as I love good art (and I do), most art
| is not good art. You can't go on popularity because some of the
| great artists (especially on Bandcamp) are relatively unknown and
| therefore are not popular. For example, Thousand Needles in Red
| is a phenomenal band with great albums, and almost completely
| unknown. These Four Walls is similar (but at least they are on
| Youtube Music/Spotify/etc). I'd buy the crap out of similar
| albums, but discovering them is very challenging. I mainly found
| those two out of random luck.
|
| Anyway I'm rambling, but I do hope you can figure out a good
| means for discovery. I think finding and grouping people with
| similar tastes is among the best ways, and also having artists
| that a person likes recommend other artists can be super
| valuable.
| lancesells wrote:
| That's interesting that you say discovery is hard on Bandcamp.
| I've actually found their blog content great at finding new
| artists. Their editorial staff seems to be really tuned in and
| articles like this make me very happy:
|
| https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/aphex-twin-selected-ambient...
| pdntspa wrote:
| That's very simple...
|
| a) Find good DJs playing music you like (YouTube is very
| helpful here, as is partying)
|
| b) Listen to their sets
|
| c) Shazam (or just trainspot) the tracks you like. (Shazam has
| a really nice integration with SPotify that dumps everything it
| IDs into a Spotify playlist)
|
| I am a DJ and constantly on the hunt for new music, this is how
| I find most of it. No algorithms necessary!
| ebiester wrote:
| That only works for a subset of music. It works well for
| electronica. It works less well for singer songwriters.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| But there are so many channels that specialize in that sort
| of thing, NPR Tiny Desk being the most mainstream online
| curator. Also lyrics sites, if the singer-songwriter isn't
| completely marketing shy.
| freedomben wrote:
| Sorry for what's probably a stupid question, but how do you
| find DJs on Youtube? Do you literally just search for stuff
| like "Hard Rock DJ" and then start clicking through results?
| mg wrote:
| I run a self-learning music discovery engine called Gnoosic:
|
| https://www.gnoosic.com
|
| I can confirm that when you suggest a random band to a random
| user, they will dislike it with over 90% probability.
|
| I'd be interested to hear how well Gnoosic works for your
| musical taste.
| freedomben wrote:
| Neat, thank you! I'll definitely give it a shot and see how
| it goes.
| rsolva wrote:
| Wow. Simple user interface, fas and it gives interesting
| results! It did not find two of my favorite groups, gusgus
| and subgud, but I added a suggestion. Bookmarking this for
| later use!
| chx wrote:
| Band level doesn't quite work. Alas, it needs to be track
| level. There are a lot of bands where I like a track and
| that's it.
|
| My favorite example is Seven Sirens And a Silver Tear from
| Sirenia, a Norwegian gothic metal band. There's no metal in
| that. It took me a long long time before I learned this but
| the track is a direct descendant of the Midlight Sonata. And
| I was hunting for similar songs and I now keep a playlist of
| them -- but if you started from Sirenia you would never find
| any of them.
| l72 wrote:
| Discoverability of anything outside of the main stream is
| always difficult.
|
| I listen to a sub-sub-genre of an already niche sub-genre (raw
| black metal) where it takes A LOT of work to pick out the small
| amount of good from the large amount of bad. Many of these
| bands are NOT on any major platforms except for bandcamp.
|
| There are a few review blogs that highlight some of the top
| stuff (although, most of the reviews are at the black metal
| level, not the sub-sub-genre), but I find my main source of
| discovery is bandcamp.
|
| What I do is: 1) Follow LABELS on bandcamp that specialize
| solely in the music from bands I like, 2) follow other users
| that have a similar purchase history, 3) and of course follow
| your favorite bands for updates.
|
| My biggest issue with bandcamp is that I find their
| notification system and wishlist to be quite lacking.
|
| For notifications and discoverability, I take all the
| notification emails I get, filter them based on type (new
| release, new items [gear,stickers,vinyl], and general message
| updates) and move them into my RSS system (FreshRSS)[0]. I get
| new music updates every day of things I probably want to at
| least check out.
|
| For wishlist management, I wrote a simple desktop app[1] that
| lets me rate, tag, comment, and listen to my albums from my
| bandcamp wishlist quickly. Anything I _might_ be interested in,
| I put in my wishlist, then use my app to keep track of if I
| like it or not. Stuff I don't like stays in my wishlist, but
| gets a low rating and filters to the bottom while stuff I want
| to purchase filters up to the top.
|
| Don't get me wrong, you are still going to need to spend time
| exploring, as you aren't getting your weekly curated playlists.
| [0] https://blog.line72.net/2021/12/23/converting-bandcamp-
| email-updates-to-an-rss-feed/ [1]
| https://line72.net/software/camp-counselor/
| hedora wrote:
| I wonder if they'd be better off creating a collectively-owned
| record label. Small independent labels do still exist, and I
| can imagine them leveraging the discovery mechanisms built into
| streaming platforms, etc., and also having a store front for
| merchandise / physical media (which would be great for co-
| promoting the bands in the co-op).
| n-exploit wrote:
| I assume there will be some energy within the cooperative to
| establish some shared means of production. It seems probable.
| l72 wrote:
| They discuss this in their blog post about how additional
| industries could be part of this co-op: like labels, studios,
| housing co-ops, vinyl pressing plants, venues, professional
| services, and credit unions.
|
| https://subvert.fm/blog/our-50-year-roadmap-the-mondragon-
| of...
| fallingsquirrel wrote:
| Both those bands go hard and I'd never heard of either. In the
| spirit of your last paragraph, if you have any other favorites,
| I'd love to hear them!
| jancsika wrote:
| > As much as I love good art (and I do), most art is not good
| art.
|
| Are you sure you're talking about "good art" and not merely
| "professionally mixed and mastered recordings?"
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This is what DJs and record labels are for. As I've pointed out
| many times before, the very understandable hostility of the
| public toward _major_ labels that inflict inequitable terms on
| artists early in their career has been applied to dismiss _all_
| labels in favor of platforms. Small independent labels actually
| do a ton to support and build up artists outside of mainstream
| genres, while many (most?) platforms are as bad as major labels
| in their own way. Imagine if you went to the record store in
| the pre-internet days, and they were giving away singles or
| whole albums for free, but there were ads mixed in with the
| music and if you tried to move the needle /forward the cassette
| past them, they'd break your hifi.
| chx wrote:
| Here AI _might_ be useful, I am not saying maroofy is perfect
| but it 's worth a try.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34635352
|
| It's one of the few uses where if the AI is wrong? oh well.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| So, great, another place to host and sell your music. Love
| bandcamp. Nothing really that special about it. It rose to
| popularity because it didn't take that much of a cut of sales
| from the artists and was offering the easy ability to host all
| the digital files etc. What's different about this? The 'artists'
| will have a say on the cut that Subvert is taking? Shrug. All
| sounds fine and not really that complicated. It will all come
| down to traction and getting a lot of artists/labels to move
| there, and that is a crapshoot really. Especially since Bandcamp
| currently hasn't been impacted in any major way. That and the
| usual not-really-that-minor challenges of
| hosting/bandwidth/payment processing fees at scale.
| n-exploit wrote:
| You might underestimate the power games that are artist
| royalties agreements and the current domination by large
| corporates.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I like it! Why aren't there more creator owned platforms?
| n-exploit wrote:
| I think silicon valley actually LIKES founder fiefdoms. Not
| really the same spirit as worker cooperatives. The cap table is
| the game.
| wavemode wrote:
| Edit: it's been pointed out to me that the zine actually is
| publicly available for free -
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ra6r2zSkw7NCYNTAqP9923ValZi...
|
| I really like the overall idea. Two thoughts I had while
| browsing.
|
| From the main page:
|
| > PURCHASE ZINE
|
| Is the only way to get a copy of the manifesto, really to
| purchase it (or join as a member)? How is someone supposed to
| even know whether they want to be involved in the project, if
| they aren't allowed to read the document first?
|
| and from the Docs:
|
| > How is Subvert funded?
|
| Unless I missed it, nothing in docs mentions the most obvious
| source of funding for a marketplace - a cut of revenue? Is there
| any plan for that?
|
| If I were a member of such a collective, I'd rather give the
| collective a small cut of my revenue than have to deal with the
| complexity and risks (and potential loss of control) of dealing
| with outside investors.
| n-exploit wrote:
| > > PURCHASE ZINE
|
| > Is the only way to get a copy of the manifesto, really to
| purchase it (or join as a member)? How is someone supposed to
| even know whether they want to be involved in the project, if
| they aren't allowed to read the document first?
|
| The ZINE is publicly available:
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ra6r2zSkw7NCYNTAqP9923ValZi...
| FireInsight wrote:
| FAQ: "Can I read the zine first?" has an email input box.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Ampwall is also a thing, a public benefit company -
| https://ampwall.com/
| lux wrote:
| I make music and would be the main contact for several artists,
| but I'm not a label per se. Would I join separately for each, or
| will there be a way for each artist to be added under my account
| or on separate accounts? Thanks!
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