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Change the model, change the world

3 min read / Author

Instead of starting with the business model, let's analyze music today, in general.

Here are a couple of facts:

Average streaming revenues have halved during the past 10 years and now sitting at $0.003 average per stream. This is true from Spotify to "Artist-friendly" platforms like Tidal.

Touring has been strangled with monopoly control restricting musicians' bulk of revenue.

If musicians cant afford to make music, most will not make it. This will happen, at least for streaming, due to a broken business model. My pitch here is for that change of mechanism.

Business models of Spotify are failing because people hold little value to gate-kept digital files online. This is because they are not scarce. We don't know what the musician is actually getting, and the server costs don't seem to justify the monthly subscription. This is also emphasized by Spotify's growing ad-revenue over the same time period, as nothing is more scarce than human attention:

That's the status quo. You can argue that Gen-AI will make infinite music that we will love, or that Spotify will recover, but these are all hypotheticals, potential futures. My own hypothetical is that neither of these things will come to pass, and we need to change course, at least partially. Future doesn't typically happen in a binary fashion, but rather probabilistic. It didn't happen enough for it to happen, or it happened part way. This is fine, I think a digital record collection is not mutually exclusive.

DigitRaver borrows it's business model from MMOs. Free to listen, but you can enhance your experience through virtual goods. These are like drinks at a club that does rev-share with a musician. In [[How much can you make]] I cover that this model works well at about $0.15 per user/hour, generating $4.4 billion in revenue for Fortnite from virtual goods alone last year. The reason that Fortnite itself can't eat our lunch is that DigitRaver is a music platform first, game world afterward. Fortnite is the inverse, and thus can't scale as much as DigitRaver, which currently can run 200-400 simultaneous users in a room. While Fortnite also has concerts, it's only for players that are already big, and involve a lot of expensive 3D production. DigitRaver is the YouTube of open worlds.

DigitRaver is also set to help not just musicians but the venues they play in. Why get paid only for headcount when you can monetize on the entire world? We have many customization options now and will only increase as we grow. The reason that "make the world a better place" became a farce because intentions aren't very good in shaping behaviour. Incentives are, and with a different business model, you can expect different results with confidence.

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Apply!

Are you a musician? Sign up here to play!

COMING SOON!

Musician Onboarding

3 min read / Author

Welcome

We’re thrilled that you want to be part of this project. 

We welcome all to apply, but will select based on genre fit and following size. 

Without headcount there’s no revenue to share with you, and with a style mismatch, well it just won’t mix. 

That said, if you don’t have a following, apply anyway. The platform’s not zero-sum, and history shows that talent is not always rewarded with an audience. 

As much as we can, we want to help up and coming musicians.

`Watch For Musicians Video`

-Apply to Join

Fill out the form, which includes your YouTube channel and preferred set times:

`Fill out form`

https://forms.gle/guAnRLB9ppC1Gf2aA

and then give us the URL of your avatar to include in the set.

Make sure your YouTube stream is allowed to be embeddable. Without it your set will not play.

We also have billboards that are free to use. There’s a main horizontal 16:9 billboard, and two smaller ones, vertical and horizontal. If you would like to brand your set, please set us high res images you would like to use.

In the near future, a cool company may advertise on the set via one of them, from which you’ll also accrue commission on.

-Let others know of your DigitRaver set

You will receive a custom “deep” link that will lead visitors directly to your set, when it occurs. Post it on your channel!

This link will prompt the user (when accessed on mobile) to either install the app, or, if installed, take them to the stage where your set occurs.

You can also access the `public line-up calendar` which will list the set for your day(s) that others can add notifications for.

While there will be cross-pollination of other ravers that are not directly inbound from you, the best way to funnel your listeners is to lead them to the platform yourself.

-Participate in your set with your avatar

Your fans are there because of you, so be there with them. The performers see only one instance of a room (250 users), but instances thereafter will see you, but you won’t see them. They can also take virtual selfies with you, so be on the lookout for social media. Your blurbs and blasts are free, but theirs are (mostly, there is a rewards system) not. Humans mirror behaviour, and this is the exact behaviour that we want to elicit.

When you login with your whitelisted account, you cannot participate as a raver. Your chosen avatar will load only when your set begins.

-Check your dashboard

When you’re logged in with your performer email, you have access to a realtime dashboard. If you read our business model metaphor that we are a club with rev-share, only the drinks are virtual, and with perfect attribution, this is actually less granular than the system. The ticks on your set are not purchases, they are usages of blurbs, blasts, and private rooms. In order to encourage repeat usage, we reward users with some virtual goods. Virtual goods are also sold at discount in large quantities. Long story short, virtual goods will result in different payments.

https://digitraver.readyplayer.me/

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-Payment

At the end of the calendar month, we pay performers via paypal if the total sum earned is over $3. We are a new platform, and don’t expect the first few months to be very profitable. You are making an investment in the platform as you will be one of the few and thus hold a disproportionate share of attention as it grows. For further analysis, please see Why join now, and How much can you make.

The music industry is currently lame, so lets change it together by changing the business model.

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