Founded in Stoke on Trent in 2010, Sonstream is a streaming start up offering an alternative user-centric and musician focussed model compared to Spotify. With a basic set up and still in beta development, Iain Hutton gives us a behind the scenes look at Sonstream, one of the more ethical streaming and digital platforms along with Resonate and Bandcamp.
Why we started Sonstream
Sonstream was born out of SONS Records, a small indie label based in the industrial city of Stoke-On-Trent. The label charted in the top 10 indie charts (including a number one) on numerous occasions during the period that saw the transition from CD sales to downloads – a period that saw the beginning squeeze on unit price and unit based profits by the internet’s emerging giants on the waning, arrogant and grossly out of step Record Industry bosses. Seb Clarke soon recognised (around 2006 / 7) that even downloads would be superseded by streams if anyone could figure out a way to monetise the concept and established the basics of the Sonstream concept in 2008. Sonstream was officially set up in 2010.
The concept.
Sonstream is unit-centric. It is “Pay-per-Play” streaming. No ads, No subscriptions, No algorithms. The service offer singles and album streams. Albums cost 10p to stream in their entirety (so the unit price is dependent on the number of tracks on the Album) where as singles comes in three different tariffs, the most being 3.3p per stream, the cheapest being 1.5p per stream. By proxy of the model; unsigned music artists receive 2.5p for every pay of their tracks… The model is designed to provide full accountability by providing a pay-per-trail (pardon the pun) which ensures the users money goes directly to the rights-holder without any pesky algorithms stacking arbitrary stream value towards the major artists. This eliminates the blatantly corrupt process of divvying up the pot, a factor which is inseparable from the subscription model (even with UCPS).
Apps & Development.
Being the product of a disenfranchised back street indie label in a run down pottery town, Sonstream does not have the Scrooge McDuck levels of cash that the major services have… So up until now we’ve had to do it all on the cheap (relatively speaking)… We needed to release the current version of the website to prove the concept; that’s been successful enough for us to raise the investment to develop some major improvements to the platform and roll out the IOS and Android Apps in early September. These are priorities for us going forward.
The Tyranny of Daniel Ek.
Daniel Ek’s comments last week show just how out of touch, and unconscionably greedy he is… It demonstrates that he knows nothing of the sheer hard graft, skill, expertise and cost it takes to produce great music – the very thing that is providing him with custom, and millions in advertising and subscription revenue; it shows that the man is as profoundly ignorant as he is arrogant; he is a man without an ounce of creative problem solving, instead eager to simply point the finger and pass the buck. It also reveals an even more cynical truth; In reality, for services such as Spotify, the “product” isn’t the music, it is in fact platform itself – the music is simply a loss leader there to sell platforms advertising packages and hope to pick up some subscribers along the way.
The reality
Everyone needs to face the fact that neither the Streaming Industry or the Record Company hierarchy have no intention or reason to change anything. SONS Records boss Seb Clarke, the creator of Sonstream, is actually a Writer, Singer and Producer himself – and so created the Sonstream model from the perspective of both an Artist and a Music Lover. And so, in contrast to all the other streaming services, the product at Sonstream is the music, and only the music – just like how Record Shops used to be. The Sonstream model prioritises the artists, and compensates them very generously. Spotify holds the reigns on this industry for now. They are willing to pay Joe Rogan 100 million for exclusivity because it will sell advertising. The existing commodification of music, which is the exploitation of the whole music community in truth, is reaching an inevitable tipping point.
We have no illusions as to the insurmountable task of toppling such an entrenched industry status quo, but we hope that if we make enough noise, then just maybe we can change the conversation as to how music is monetised; and just maybe we can restore some sovereignty to the artists and the fans. It’s an uphill battle, but the SONS Records story has always been that of the underdog. Our studio has leaks in the roof, cracks in the walls big enough for your hand (from the city Coal Mining past) and DIY Acoustic sound treatment made from off cuts of wood out of a timber yards skip; it does however have a cracking 20’ x 14’ Neon Sign ! Our successes over the years have been built out of passion and poverty – in that order!
One of our artists at SONS Records – Neil Isaacs, recently quoted Chairman Mao in his track ‘Best Wishes From Tiananmen Square’. ‘A revolution is not a dinner party.’ This is no exception.
Our Roster
Our main distributer/supplier at this time is State51 but we are work to acquire the licences to all the music can – and hope to have some important news to announce soon. But our big USP is also the You-Release model. All our new label releases [SONS Records] are now exclusive to Sonstream ‘You-Release’ in order to prove that fans will be willing to follow the music they love and are happy to pay in a radically different way, to anything SONS Records / State51 are now releasing exclusively on our platform, one particular being Minerva Daisy, a Manchester singer songwriter who in a week have earned more on Sonstream than in years on Spotify! This week saw a Roland Johnson (godfather of Illinois Soul) track put out on Sonstream’s You-Release service by Northern Soul label MD Records. We are definitely gaining support by the week!
Find out more.
If people want to find out more about what we’re doing at SONS Records and Sonstream, then we have an active social media team on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter predominantly. Go to http://Sonstream.com and try it yourself; it’s rough but the proof is in the pudding.
Artist Quotes.
“My latest stuff is only on Sonstream and I will take all my music off all the other services when i get chance – there is literally no point in leaving the tracks there. My dream is to become a professional artist and in that aim sonstream has been wonderful to me – they help publicise when the tracks first got released and I then earned enough in a fortnight to buy a new phone! It sounds perverse to say that i couldn’t believe i’d actually made any money at all without actually gigging” – Minerva Daisy There is no service who are championing change like this in music. I’ve earned £164 with just 6.5k streams, I’ve not even made £3 off of Spotify in my whole life. Couldn’t have come better timed” – Neil Isaacs “When i committed to SONS Records and Sonstream i got a lot of criticism from friends, family – other musicians, who thought it all sounded too far fetched, and must admit to being nervous about it all… but then the people who did follow me, my music, did go to Sonstream anyway and although of course the site isn’t exactly as flashy as maybe Spotify to look at, no one has had anything but really good things to say – mainly that they like not having to commit to paying £10 upfront each month when they know they might not even listen to more than the odd album every now and then kind of thing…” “So what can i say, i got paid, everyone was really excited about the whole thing, and i got on Radio 6 despite the song not being on any of the usual platforms. It just goes to show that it can be done – and i’m proud to part of it in all honesty”. – Jayne Taylor
