this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2025
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An open source, self-hostable music platform will soon allow people on the Fediverse to buy music and support artists. Here's why it's a big deal.

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[–] aasatru@kbin.earth 31 points 3 weeks ago (14 children)

the flagship instance of Bandwagon.fm will be taking 0% of any money musicians make.

Good stuff.

To support development, Bandwagon’s flagship instance will be offering a $10 per month Premier plan that allows musicians to sell their music and offer their tracks at a higher bit-rate, among other features.

So they will take 0% of money, except a flat fee of €10 every month in order to be allowed to sell music at all? This seems a bit more problematic, as smaller artists would lose money every month by trying to position themselves in the market.

I like the business model of selling subscriptions to the artists but giving them 100% of proceedings quite a lot, but it would be nice if they for example only had to pay a monthly fee once sales surpassed €10, or if they could sell a limited amount of tracks for free in order to test the waters before putting all their music out for sale.

Writing this comment listening to @torstentorsten@bandwagon.fm by the way. Recommended to anyone interested in German singer/songwriter music. Who isn't.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 14 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (12 children)

as smaller artists would lose money every month by trying to position themselves in the market.

They are not "losing money", they are making use of the service anyway. Any type of venture you are building incurs costs and risks, why should it be different for someone that is running an online presence?

If the developers of bandwagon were to carving exceptions for other users, pretty soon they would be taking the risks themselves of dealing with loss-leaders customers and would have to find other ways to make up for it. 10€/month is an absolute bargain for a service that will provide you a storefront and a distribution channel that can reach anyone in the world and demands absolutely nothing in return from you.

[–] cabbage@piefed.social 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Fair enough. But musicians are not really "any type of venture".

Bandwagon is already taking on a risk by hosting music for free for listening. If they could find ways in which both them and the artists could profit from music published on the platform that lacks the commercial potential to justify a €10 subscription, this would be a win/win. Considering that it seems they are already hosting the music for free.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

musicians are not really "any type of venture".

If they are looking for a way to make money out of their work, it is. And it is totally fine.

If they could find ways in which both them and the artists could profit from music published on the platform that lacks the commercial potential to justify a €10 subscription, this would be a win/win

Flip the equation here. The subscription is something to fund development of the platform. So anyone that wants to have a viable libre alternative to Spotify that can be useful to all indie artists should consider paying for it, even if they are not intending to sell stuff.

[–] cabbage@piefed.social 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Sure, but that doesn't take away from the fact that under this model, small artists with little money seem to have a strong incentive not to put their music up for sale, which will cost both them and Bandcamp potential profits.

Maybe they could offer fans to sponsor a membership for artists if they want to unlock premium features.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 1 points 3 weeks ago

I'd argue that if you can't afford to pay for a $10/month service and if you are so unproven that no one would be willing to back this up for you, "looking for ways to start a career in music" should be waaaay down on your list of concerns.

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