News / Streaming
New Bristol music streaming service will pay artists fairly
“We’re not trying to be the next Spotify, that’s for sure,” says Simon Metson, the director and founder of new streaming service.
“Audiotarky is more about building something that pays artists fairly and directly.”
Created using funding from Grant for the Web, Audiotarky is a Bristol-based music streaming platform that allows music fans to listen to their favourite artists, while ensuring that they’re paid fairly.
And, instead of using algorithms and data, the new platform hopes to create a network, so that fans of one band can easily find and enjoy another, with Simon saying: “Fans can see they’re directly supporting the musicians they love rather than some shareholders. It doesn’t need to be some world dominating corporation profiling it’s users.”
The platform uses Web Monetisation to pay artists and labels as soon as someone listens to their music.
Payments start at $0.36 an hour, with the founders claiming this to be the highest “pay per stream” rate globally.
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“Unlike other streaming services, we don’t profile users, we don’t even know their name,” say the founders. “You don’t need to sign up for an Audiotarky account to listen to, and pay for, great music.
“Using Audiotarky is simple – browse the site, find music you like & just click play. However, if you want to support the artists you listen to, and avoid the robotic message at the start of each track, you’ll need to sign up for Coil.”
Coil is a web monetisation service that allows users to pay a monthly subscription fee, which is then distributed in the form of micropayments to creators. Streaming platform Twitch already uses this system.
“As fans of music, we hope to help open people’s eyes to a more ethical way to enjoy streaming creators’ content, not only via Audiotarky but also across other web monetised supported platforms across the web,” says Simon.
“We’re really just trying to organically grow the artists, labels and listeners on the site. We’re hoping to galvanise the support of the Bristol music scene to begin with before expanding further afield, but already have folk from Spain, Sweden, USA, Mexico and Oxford on the site.”
The team behind Audiotarky are still launching some features, including playlist sharing, but are encouraging artists to get involved, giving £50 to the first 50 to sign up.
Main photo: Audiotarky
Read more: Community radio station wants to be the voice of south Bristol
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