For context: I recently set up a Funkwhale instance for Communick subscribers, where people can upload their music collection, stream on mobile/web and share with their friends. That’s useful already and can be thought of as a replacement to the original Google Play Music, but I guess that those with large music collections will either just play from their dedicated devices or self-host a service like Navidrome.
So I’d like to make my instance a bit more interesting by building tools for (a) musicians wishing to connect with their audience and use the space to showcase their own work and (b) people who want to support independent musicians but don’t want to commit paying a few dollars every month to lots of different people - the main complaint about Patreon after all is that those little contributions end up amounting to a lot of money.
In terms of funding, what I’d like to do is let users set up a fixed monthly budget (say $10-$25 per month) to be split between all the artists that are enrolled in the platform, however they want. One user might decide to get 100% of my budget and give to one artist, another might choose to give 10% to one and 1% to 90 other musicians. In the end of the month, the system would tally up everyone’s contributions and make the payout accordingly.
I wouldn’t even have to take a cut of these donations, because my business model already has revenue by simply providing the service.
Is this something that you’d see yourself using? I know that Bandcamp is king in this space, but with the recent changes maybe there is an opportunity to get more artists and supporters to the Fediverse.
This is a bad idea, I would never work for someone who openly admits that they will only make arbitrary payments to me based on nothing but a whim.
Nah, payment needs to be consistent and based on the number of times an artist gets played.
How is that different from the current situation? For most people, supporting indie artists is already an optional thing, those using Patreon could cancel “on a whim” as well, no?
Doesn’t that create a huge skew towards the pop-stars, who are already making money through other means (touring) anyway?
Do you really compare someone cancelling their pateron and a company taking all the money that customers have paid from the artists they want to support?
Sure, the payment would be skewed, but that is easily remidied by not having pop music on the plattform.
I think you misunderstood. What I mean is that the customer will choose how much of their allocated budget goes to each artist.
I would definitely reword your original post, it’s very misleading with how it’s worded now
(Eg “How I feel” -> “how individual users feel”)
The whole paragraph starts with “as a backer”. I can rewrite it, but to be honest it’s not that difficult to comprehend it as is.