[dubme1]

Hey HN

I listen to a lot of music from small and independent artists. People who just do music for the fun and love of it.

I have always wished there was a simple way for me to show my appreciation for their work and support their projects. Sure I can buy their digital music (which I do!) but I was hoping to support them in a more personal way.

That's why I created SoundRat. On SoundRat anyone can upload their own music and let their fans listen to it without requiring listeners to have an account or pay for something up front. Fans can stand out and support their favorite artists through payments. When sending a payment they can attach a personal message to the artist and supporters get some "perks" such as being able to download songs and get access to lyrics.

I was planning to highlight some more artists and add a couple more feature before announcing the website. However, seeing as Spotify recently announced their way of letting fans support artists (US & UK only) I thought I shouldn't wait longer.

Let's be upfront about the most important points of the terms and conditions:

- Artists own their music. I only need the right to host the music.

- SoundRat takes 6% on all payments. This is used to pay for the servers. I believe this is a fair number

I have been working on SoundRat for the past few months and doing it learned a lot from audio encoding to payment integration (It is way easier to accept payments than processing payouts to users!)

I hope to offer artists a different way of sharing their music and connect with their fans.

Let me know what you think!

[Freak_NL]

> SoundRat takes 6% on all payments. This is used to pay for the servers. I believe this is a fair number

If you really want to be fairer than the competition, be transparent about costs and profit margin. Just stating that 6% seems fair reeks of rent-seeking. This might not be what musicians and fans want, and it won't differentiate your service from Spotify.

> perks […] get access to lyrics.

You will need to come up with better perks than that. The lyrics for any moderately popular song can be found on-line at a click.

[dubme1]

Thanks for your feedback. I believe 6% is lower than selling on iTunes, Bandcamp and co. With this number I do not think I can run this (any time soon) as a full time business but that is not my goal right now. I hope to use this percentage to cover some or all of the costs.

I did this for fun and for my interest in listening and discovering small artists.

[lucideer]

> I hope to use this percentage to cover some or all of the costs.

I don't think the commenter above was trying to make out that 6% is not fair, just that they'd like to see the breakdown of this percentage covering some or all of the costs.

iTunes, Bandcamp and co. might not offer that breakdown, so you're definitely not worse, but it would be a really nice differentiator.

[have_faith]

I disagree about the breakdown. I think the vast majority of people are going to go with their gut feel in whether or not the cut sounds reasonable. Reasonable and fair being the goal but evaluation of what is reason and fair from consumers is almost always subjective. The breakdown is going to change when features of the service change, maybe quality is upped and costs rise or a host of other things change. I think from a marketing perspective "this is less than anyone else takes and it allows us to provide the service" is enough.

[amelius]

I agree with parent. If you do this "for fun" then approach it as a non-profit organization, i.e. with full transparency.

[croisillon]

Kudos for delivering, very nice site. It's basically like Bandcamp? Maybe it would be good to tag artists by genre, to help discoverability.

[the-dude]

Who are your competitors?

[dubme1]

Definitely Bandcamp. I have used it a lot to support artists I like. However, the way I use Bandcamp I never think of it as a music streaming site. I usually download my songs and listen to it offline. On SoundRat I support continuous music streaming while browsing the site with the music player in the footer.

I also would like to experiment with some new ways for artists to connect with their supporters that is not possible on Bandcamp right now. Supporters can send a personal message to the artists when donating and leave comments on songs. I think there are some more "perks" that I can support in the future.

[DHPersonal]

Comments on songs are not currently supported by Bandcamp, but I think their implementation of comments make sense: users can recommend songs at the album level rather than per song, so that all rave and rants about a particular album's contents can be found together rather than pieced apart in each song's download page. SoundCloud chose to go to an even more granular level and allow comments to be placed within a track's duration, and then also comments below each track. Both are interesting methods of offering a community.

Another form of community-building is what Beatport did, which encouraged remixes by offering stems and integrating with software that the artists used.

Another indie music site is good news; I remember fondly finding some good music on Amie Street before Amazon gobbled them up.

[dublinben]

I would encourage you to check out the Bandcamp mobile apps. They allow the exact functionality you describe, of "continuous music streaming while browsing." You may be focusing on users like yourself who primarily interact with a desktop website, and download purchased music to a computer. I would urge you to consider the mobile-first use case, as this is how the trend in the market is going.