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Subvert – Collectively owned music marketplace

subvert.fm

61–70 of 140 posts

Re: Subvert – Collectively owned music marketplace

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> fired so many people.

If there's no degradation, it should have been done long ago. Those salaries come out of musicians' pockets.

Re: Subvert – Collectively owned music marketplace

#62
post #3

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.

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.

Re: Subvert – Collectively owned music marketplace

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

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.

Re: Subvert – Collectively owned music marketplace

#65

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…

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.

Re: Subvert – Collectively owned music marketplace

#66
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Subvert – Collectively owned music marketplace

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Several technologies have managed it. The printing press, the vaccine, the nuclear bomb. It's even crazier to not try.

Re: Subvert – Collectively owned music marketplace

#68
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

That only works for a subset of music. It works well for electronica. It works less well for singer songwriters.

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.

Re: Subvert – Collectively owned music marketplace

#69
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Subvert – Collectively owned music marketplace

#70
post #26

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…

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.

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.

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