Resonate is a really cool co-op and they could really use some volunteers & users.
I've been looking for a more ethical music streaming service since I discovered Spotify and other streaming platforms are terrible for small artists. Only the top 3% of artists make $1000/yr and only the top 1% make more than $5000/yr. You'd have to be in the top 0.2% to actually earn a living of $50,000/yr on Spotify.
Resonate is the only platform I've found that's doing something radically different. They have a stream to own model in which listeners pay artists directly about 1/4 of one cent for their first stream then the price increases exponentially with each stream until the 9th stream at which point the listener has paid ~$1.50usd. At that point the user can download the song for offline listening and never has to pay to stream that song again.
Perhaps the coolest part is they are a co-op, 45% of governance weight is reserved for artist shares, 35% for listener shares, and only 20% for staff.
Resonate is a small project that could use all the help it can get. If anyone knows of any other cool music platforms, I'd love to know about them, too!
Every online music store I've ever used has allowed me to listen to at least a 30 second clip of the song I'm interested in before I buy it. There's no risk there. I dunno, I'm still not convinced. But anyway, don't mean to hijack the thread or anything. Carry on, citizens! :)
Not only that, but the best online store to buy music from (Bandcamp) generally will let you listen to entire songs, if not the entire album before purchasing.
I friggin' LOVE Bandcamp...
I own... a lot of music on bandcamp haha:
I stopped paying for streaming services a looong while back and now I just buy things on bandcamp (or elsewhere if unavailable on bandcamp) and put it all on my plex server.
Heck yeah, dude. I just discovered them about a year ago and I've been finding so many new artists that I absolutely love. I have nowhere near the amount you do, but I'm definitely happy with what I have and the service itself. :)