The Interledger Community 🌱: Hessel van Oorschot

Progress Report FMA

Hessel van Oorschot — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 10:24:18 +0000

We are back with an FMA Progress Report and we did our best to summarize all the relevant bits for you to reuse, learn from or in some cases even avoid. Have fun!

Looking Back at 2021
One of our main objectives to research during our first project with Grant for the Web was Coil's communication towards new users and creators. Observing and learning from the Web Monetization Community remains essential to our research for implementing Web Monetization on Free Music Archive (FMA).

If you search for "FMA" on this community portal you will find more published reports and documents by us. One document I like to highlight for now:

FMA Explores How To Introduce Coil To Users

Hessel van Oorschot for Free Music Archive ・ Feb 14 '21 ・ 13 min read

#music #coil #community #research

Our research last year combined examples of the different directions other teams took. What did they have in common? They tried to tweak the language and keywords to match their specific target audience. Obviously to increase the adoption rate.

FMA's power on the web, for many years, is its leading position on search engines and massive traffic. But we were lacking professional tooling and strategy to understand how to Web Monetization on FMA.

Ubersuggest
After extensive research we picked Neil Patel's all-in-one SEO tool Ubersuggest.

We are now able to track and analyze FMA keywords and gather insights based on real-time traffic. Fun fact; the most visited pages on FMA are the FMA genre pages with Instrumental, Christmas, Soundtrack and Hip-Hop Beats.

With the same observation strategies as FMA Explores How to Introduce Coil to Users, we began analyzing top keywords opportunities. We learned that FMA ranks high for the keyword “Free Music” and by simply adding the keywords “Royalty- Free Music” our FMA pages boosted more users.

With Ubersuggest data, we can strategize our communication on FMA better. Not just for the artists but also for curators, netlabels and the tens of millions of monthly visitors.

January – February 2022

According to radio experts, many famous podcasters started their career using FMA repertoire for their podcast episodes. And yes, it’s no secret that more and more podcasters today use FMA music for intros/outros and background music to enrich their series.

Ubersuggest combined with Google Analytics backed this story. Most of the data we receive back are backlinks to services recommending FMA to video makers and above all podcasters sharing their episodes and crediting FMA artists.

We know FMA should start her own podcast too. We have the traffic, we have amazing artists and (web monetization) tech to showcase.

And it just happens to be that one of our objectives for this Grant for the Web project, to start our own FMA podcast to combine research, musician's stories, new web monetization tools and of course great music. Fortunately, Marko Roca, our Head of Music is not only a talented artist, producer and MC. He is also a seasoned radio host so perfectly suited for the job.

While Marko designed the format and started on his wish list of guests, we sent out a message to our audience:

“The FMA Team is proud to inform you that FMA will soon have a new Podcast Series for you to follow called; Music Insiders by Free Music Archive! We are excited to be able to create more space to highlight FMA Members, the FMA Community, Music Peers & all Music Insiders. But first, FMA needs your help!”

For the Music Insiders by Free Music Archive podcast, FMA musicians submitted tracks, vocal or instrumental, no longer than 20 seconds all under a Creative Commons License Type: CC BY SA 4.0 After checking all submissions, the track Narcissistic-Primadonna by FMA artist Crush Limbo became the intro and outro of Music Insiders.

Music Insiders

On the 10th of February, Music Insiders premiered on FMA's home page with multi-talent Ketsa as our first guest. Music Insiders by Free Music Archive have now surpassed 110,000 listens. For us this podcast series is an important tool to communicate new Web Monetized opportunities to artists, media creators and FMA visitors.

New FMA content like Music Insiders will help us reach more audiences and will be additional to the traffic already generated by our FMA home page and popular genre pages, a combined 1.5M pageviews per day. On both channels we will highlight web monetization, Coil and how to get involved.

Read more about our journey with these new tooling's in:

Inside FMA - Chapter 6

Meghan Laclé for Free Music Archive ・ Aug 12 ・ 6 min read

#music #musicians #research #community

March – April 2022 MozFest 2022

FMA loved to participate at MozFest, listen to all the updates and learn new ideas for Web Monetization. One of the highlights was to try the new Coil tipping feature.

We invited FMA artists and members to get their free MozFest ticket including a free 6-month membership. A great initiative to introduce Coil to first time users.

Lesson learned while researching FMA content creators playing with the tipping feature for the first time themselves: The tipping feature influenced their perception of Coil and web monetization in a positive way.

FMA Treasure Hunt
To strengthen the community we designed a creative strategy to combine fun, music discovery and educate participants about web monetization.

Based on data from Ubersuggest, we picked top visited FMA pages, combined those with FMA artist pages already web monetized and launched a "treasure hunt".

During MozFest we gave presentations and participated in sessions to explain the Treasure Hunt. Every participant received a thank you note and a link to a bespoke MozFest Music Mix (only accessible if your Coil plugin is activated). And... one lucky winner walked away with cool BOSE noise canceling earbuds.

Most questions we received from other teams were about the tipping feature and our popup script with a hidden hint to complete the treasure hunt. More information can be found in our blogpost FMA's Treasure Hunt.

FMA Next Club

For our current Grant for the Web project, one of our objectives is to help 1,000 musicians to monetize their FMA artist pages.

Our team created a structure (code name: FMA Next Club) to help the first 1,000 musicians. When signing up for this task we knew it would mean a lot of manual labor and convincing. Not because the idea behind web monetization is not sound, but because musicians are a tough audience. What's in it for me? Where is the money? needs to be answered as clearly and honest as possible.

What readers should know about musicians is that they heard too many promises from industry executives and returned home empty handed. So our Web Monetization mantra for this particular audience needs to be underpromise and overdeliver.

What did we offer the musicians invited? Our support to take them by the hand while we are rolling out new monetization tooling, tipping features, music upload wizards and a complete UI/UX overhaul of their FMA artist, album and song pages.

Web monetization means...

We scheduled an informal kick-off (Google Meet) for the first FMA artists who joined the FMA Next Club and explained a bit more about the FMA Next Project.

We interviewed FMA artists which type/level of participation they prefer:

online presentation with option to chat / ask questions (55%)
virtual roundtable with the FMA team (52%)
personal online video calls with FMA team (48%)
virtual meetups with FMA members to hangout / share ideas (35%)

The FMA Next Club is work in progress. More research showed that our audience is interested to learn more but not all are eager to participate in online round tables or similar active meetings.

With this responses, we are able to structure our events and continue to communicate in different settings and give FMA artists more spaces to come together to learn and help us co-create FMA.

We also premiered the 2nd episode of Music Insiders podcast with FMA artist Simon Mathewson. Simon allows visitors to support him via the Coil extension.

Read more about about these new FMA Next findings in:

Inside FMA - Chapter 7

Meghan Laclé for Free Music Archive ・ Aug 15 ・ 7 min read

#music #musicians #research #community

May – June 2022

To better understand what FMA Artists needs in a monetization toolbox, we sent out a survey to two subgroups:

Artists using commercial Creative Commons licenses on FMA
Artists using non-commercial Creative Commons licenses on FMA

The artists already engaged in commercial licenses prioritized:

“Help me with people who want to license my song(s) for commercial projects”
“Add tools that enable more interaction with fans”
“More stats about my songs, traffic, fans”

The first one is covered by our Tribe of Noise PRO service which made us decide to contact Tribe of Noise PRO artists and offer them our help to setup web monetization. One great example is a project we did with our Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science and national performing rights organization Buma/Stemra.

Talented artists in The Netherlands received cash to create new albums and in the process we helped them to setup their digital wallets for web monetization, FMA artist account and Tribe of Noise PRO account. We even asked our Head of Music, Marko Roca, to create a mix to generate more traffic from the home page to their artist, album and song pages.

All these new albums are fully web monetized!!

Avant la Lettre by Another Brick
The Crown & Lobster Trilogy Selection By Eric Van Der Westen
Winter Haze, Summer Daze By Mr.ruiZ
Shall we Move On? By Balkin Jingles
Berlin To Bamako by Dieter van der Westen
Mentallogenic by Alex Figueira
CASLO Vol. 1 by Caslo
Another Day by Another Day
Het regent in Europa by Jules FK

While researching the artists using non-commercial Creative Commons licenses we wondered if they would be open to test web monetization. This part of the survey resulted in:

“Help me with people who want to license my song(s) for commercial projects”
“More stats about my songs, traffic, fans”
“Any help with making money with my music is appreciated”

The major difference between the two artist groups? While scoring low under the "commercial group", 40% of the "non-commercial group" prefer to “Host everything related to me as a music creator perpetually in one place” on FMA. Interesting!

For the FMA team, this is a clear direction to continue rebuilding FMA for all types of artists, especially those that want to use FMA as their digital hub for their music catalogue.

Read more about our CC Licenses research and artist initiative in:

Inside FMA - Chapter 8

Meghan Laclé for Free Music Archive ・ Aug 15 ・ 7 min read

#music #musicians #community #research

July – August 2022

We are eager to participate in the FMA Community Calls with Grant for the Web. Not just to share our updates and introduce FMA to new grantees, but also to learn from the other projects as much as possible. For example, we loved seeing the Coil scrollable paywall on Mural and micropayments sharing feature on Hyperaudio.

In recent months we pulled UI/UX experts together and asked them to start working on a new front-end for FMA. Of course because we listen to a large group of talented artists willing to host all their music and related data on FMA.

But, while many startups are figuring out "Web3" this is also perfect timing for us to integrate payment pointers, shared monetization, tipping and other relevant features in a user-friendly workflow. Combined with the global community, traffic and trust FMA already enjoys this can morph into the global, open standard for music (revenue) sharing. As you know, without open standards there will be no web3.0

The more we interact with Grant for the Web participants, FMA user groups and UI experts the clearer it gets: there is a real hunger to try new tech and revenue models but the real challenge for the upcoming months is to increase the user adoption.

Hello world, this is Coil

As we continue to onboard more FMA musicians we put together a strategic plan to communicate Coil to FMA listeners. Based on the our research and the Coil Help Center, we published the FMA Coil Page for new users and creators with a clear FMA message:** New Way To Empower Musicians on FMA.**

Our objective is to grow this space into a web monetization hub on FMA. We can highlight new artists, web monetized content, stories and tools. Of course this is also the spot for artists and visitors to learn how they can participate.

Next to sharing Coil and web monetization news to our FMA community, we directly communicated Coil.com to at least 500 new FMA artists that joined FMA since 2021, onboarding and helping each artist interested in monetizing their artist page.

We will use the relaunch of Free Music Archive (new UI/UX) and our participation at the Future Music Forum 2022 in Barcelona as our next "web monetization" communication events.

Read more of these new upcoming FMA features in:

Inside FMA - Chapter 9

Meghan Laclé for Free Music Archive ・ Aug 16 ・ 5 min read

#music #artist #community #research

FINALLY! WHAT ABOUT FMA'S DELIVERABLES?

1. Relevant online monetization toolbox (as part of the new frontend on FreeMusicArchive.org) for music rightsholders to self-register and publish music from anywhere in the world. Result: 1,000+ original songs licensed and ready to "co-monetize" (Probabilistic Revenue Sharing)
We surpassed the 1,000+ monetized songs on FMA. All artists, curators and netlabels will soon have a user friendly wizard to add their payment pointer and monetize their pages together with the option to share their micropayments with other Coil creators and charities. We will continue to research co-monetization between FMA artists, curators and netlabels. We are reaching out to 500+ new FMA artists at the moment.

2. Participating FMA & Tribe of Noise musicians from Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Europe, and Australia. Result: Spend at least 50% of our focus on underserved and underrepresented communities as part of this journey.
Next to reaching out directly to underserved artists via email and video calls, we have put together a plan to not only help these artists set up their page to the best of our abilities but also use those artist pages to premiere, introduce, and release the new FMA UI/UX to the world and continue to showcase them in our future journey with web monetization.

3. Onboard music enthusiasts to curate, promote and monetize music together with the FMA artists. Result: Reach an audience of at least 1,000,000 listeners. All of them will be invited to join the web monetization program and offered exclusive perks if they install the WM plugin. And of course a revenue share if they monetize FMA music.

In our new UI/UX we will have more visual options to position the web monetization program more actively. So while the audience surpassed the 1,000,000 listeners we can do a better job converting listeners to curious early adopters. Next to our role we believe the "FMA Next Club" members can play an active role when they are happy with the FMA redesign.

We will continue to explore new technology like Coil, Rafiki, OpenPayments and other relevant services. As long as they can contribute to the success of our artists, curators, netlabels and visitors we will be interested to make a move.

Read more about the FMA deliverables in:

Inside FMA - Chapter 10

Meghan Laclé for Free Music Archive ・ Aug 16 ・ 4 min read

#music #musicians #artists #community

Till next time ;-)

MOZFEST EXPERIMENT DAY 5

Hessel van Oorschot — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 13:13:50 +0000

Day 5 of Mozilla Festival!

Officially, this is the last day of MozFest 2022. However, if you have a MozFest ticket you can still access the MozFest Plaza in the upcoming months to watch the recorded sessions AND play our web monetized Treasure Hunt.

Our team built an online Treasure Hunt for you to showcase web monetization in a fun way. Every participant will be rewarded and one will be the lucky winner of proper BOSE noise canceling earbuds!

We also published our earnings in this Grand Web Monetization Daily Report*:
March 11 Wallet NET Worth: 117.42 XRP (+3.17 XRP)
March 10 Wallet NET Worth: 114.25 XRP (+12.38 XRP)
March 9 Wallet NET Worth: 101.87 XRP (+18.04 XRP)
March 8 Wallet NET Worth: 83.83 XRP (+14.84 XRP)
March 7 Wallet NET Worth: 68.99 XRP

This is the revenue coming in from tipping and Coil streaming on our own web monetized FMA pages. The money that people are spending on the Free Music Archive musician, podcaster, curator and netlabel pages is not part of this report.

MOZFEST EXPERIMENT DAY 4

Hessel van Oorschot — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 14:57:20 +0000

Day 4 of Mozilla Festival!

In the last few days we participated in multiple MozFest sessions explaining Interledger, Web Monetization, Coil and of course invite people to participate in the experiment.

Our team built an online Treasure Hunt for you to showcase web monetization in a fun way. Every participant will be rewarded and one will be the lucky winner of proper BOSE noise canceling earbuds!

We also publish our earnings in this Grand Web Monetization Daily Report*:
March 10 Wallet NET Worth: 114.25 XRP (+12.38 XRP)
March 9 Wallet NET Worth: 101.87 XRP (+18.04 XRP)
March 8 Wallet NET Worth: 83.83 XRP (+14.84 XRP)
March 7 Wallet NET Worth: 68.99 XRP

This is the revenue coming in from tipping and Coil streaming on our own web monetized FMA pages. The money that people are spending on the Free Music Archive musician, podcaster, curator and netlabel pages is not part of this report.

MOZFEST EXPERIMENT DAY 3

Hessel van Oorschot — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 13:54:39 +0000

Day 3 of the amazing Mozilla Festival!

Do you have your free Mozilla Festival Ticket?
Did you receive Mozilla's welcome email with the link to the Grand Web Monetization experiment, Coil's free 6-month trial and $10 in free tipping credits?
Installed your Coil browser extension?

Wonderful! Let's play a game: FMA's first ever Treasure Hunt.

Our Grand Web Monetization Daily Report*:
March 9 Wallet NET Worth: 101.87 XRP (+18.04 XRP)
March 8 Wallet NET Worth: 83.83 XRP (+14.84 XRP)
March 7 Wallet NET Worth: 68.99 XRP

This is the revenue coming in from tipping and Coil streaming on our own web monetized FMA pages. The money that people are spending on the Free Music Archive musician, podcaster, curator and netlabel pages is not part of this report.

MOZFEST EXPERIMENT DAY 2

Hessel van Oorschot — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 14:48:31 +0000

Click here to start the Treasure Hunt.

The FMA Treasure Hunt will take #mozfest-participants from our web monetized pages to artist pages monetized by self-releasing musicians. For the pages we monetize (stream per second, tipping) we will publish the numbers during the Grand Web Experiment at MozFest 2022.

March 8 Wallet NET Worth: 83.83 XRP (+14.84 XRP since yesterday)

Want to have your own web monetized audio (podcast, music etc) on Free Music Archive. Send an email to meghan@tribeofnoise.com

MOZFEST EXPERIMENT DAY 1

Hessel van Oorschot — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 11:30:40 +0000

Participate in the FMA Treasure Hunt.

Click here to start the Treasure Hunt.

March 7 Wallet NET Worth: 68.99 XRP

Want to have your own web monetized audio (podcast, music etc) on Free Music Archive. Send an email to meghan@tribeofnoise.com

FMA's Treasure Hunt - MozFest 2022 Web Monetization Action Plan

Hessel van Oorschot — Sun, 27 Feb 2022 12:48:19 +0000

Project Description

As most of you know, music is still the #1 enabler to interact with your audience. So especially for MozFest 🦊 2022 we are launching the first ever, web monetized, online Treasure Hunt!

First Prize

Coil will offer ALL MozFest atttendees a free 6-month trial and $10 in free tipping credits to start streaming payments and supporting web monetized content. Amazing!!! Free Music Archive will reward the attendees playing our Treasure Hunt with more free goodies and.... one of them will receive our first prize 🥇 These cool BOSE noise canceling earbuds.

How to prepare for the Treasure Hunt?

MozFest attendees will be asked by Coil to activate their free trial. Once activated they can install the Coil browser extension, login to Coil and visit FMA's Treasure Hunt page. We actually created a welcome / help page for people without the extension installed and an instruction page for people who installed the extension but forgot to login to Coil first.
🆘 In all cases we included an email address for additional help.

If the extenstion is installed and they are logged in, this Treasure Hunt will unlock magically:

Treasure Hunt Objective

During the Treasure Hunt you will get 6 clues 🧩 from us to find 6 words on web monetized pages. If you use the 'tipping' feature in the Coil browser extension during the Treasure Hunt we will unlock 1 more clue. This last clue reveals itself in the 'thank you' popup after tipping. The 7th clue will help you to put the 6 words in the correct order to finish the Treasure Hunt Sentence we are looking for.

Example

You will find the first word by visiting the web monetized artist page of Another Brick. On this page you will find an album named ‘Avant la Lettre’. Start track #6 ‘Hear the Birds’. What instrument do you hear from 01m41s onwards? Write down the name of this instrument. Like ‘clue 1 = ...’

Tipping

Free Music Archive was involved in an earlier Coil tipping experiment and we ❤️ this feature. The interface for tipping has improved. This is how it looks like right now:

You can change the tipping amount with the '-', '+' symbols or the presets $1, $2 or $5. When you hit the 'send' button and confirm your tip an animated 'thank you' image will pop up. We made this one special by including another clue that will help the participant to finish the Treasure Hunt successfully. This is a screenshot of the animation:

Web Monetized Resources at MozFest

Free Music Archive has integrated web monetization in several ways:

Some of our own pages are web monetized e.g. 'home', 'search', 'genres' like 'hip-hop' and even a podcast episode.
Tipping. As explained above.
Every artist individually can enable web monetization on his/her Free Music Archive Artist page. See screenshot below.

Examples of web monetized FMA artist pages are:

Please, share our Treasure Hunt

Image to share on Social Media

Link to share on Social Media
https://freemusicarchive.org/curator/mozfest22

Sample post for Twitter
Part of FMAs Next (Creator Empowerment) program: @freemusicarchiv is launching their first ever, web monetized, Music Treasure Hunt during #MozFest2022! This is fun! More here: https://freemusicarchive.org/curator/mozfest22

Our payment pointer supports the Empowerment of Creators

This Treasure Hunt is part of a bigger project, FMA Next. FMA Next will help individual musicians with tooling, exposure, revenue models and our full support. Step by step we will add more super powers to their FMA page in the upcoming months.

Empowerment of Creators? Why now?

The FMA team has been on a journey to improve Free Music Archive for all participating musicians, netlabels, curators and millions of fans worldwide. But we think it's not enough.

The world has drastically changed for self-releasing music creators. Live music events were paused, fans are hardly buying CDs anymore and major streaming services facilitate millions of musicians but only the happy few are featured on their popular playlists. FMA is privileged to have a strong online presence with over 2,5 million websites linking back to our home page, half a million daily visitors and over 1 million page views every 24 hours. With these numbers, strong partners and our vision to focus on empowerment we have a great opportunity to ❤️ help individual creators anywhere in the world ❤️.

We welcome your help!

You are here so you are interested in web monetization. So first of all, be our eyes and ears. Test our Treasure Hunt or the individual web monetized pages. Reach out to Meghan (meghan@tribeofnoise.com) to share your findings, comments, suggestions, ideas. And feel free to pitch any project you are involved in or know about that should matter to us.

Example: Can FMA facilitate podcasters to monetize their podcast episodes on FreeMusicArchive.org?
Yes, we can. Here is an example of a web monetized podcast on FMA!

Let's Stay Connected

We love to hear from you. As mentioned, if you have any suggestion, question or comment regarding the Treasure Hunt feel free to email Meghan (meghan@tribeofnoise.com). Anything relevant but not per se related to this MozFest experiment? Welcome! Connect with our Chief of Noise, Hessel.

Did you make it all the way to the end?

Incredible! As a big thank you we want to reward you with this MozFest 2022 playlist. Web monetized of course. Just hit the big 'PLAY PAGE' button in the top right corner and enjoy your day!

Who Are You?

Hessel van Oorschot — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 09:01:06 +0000

Dear community,

Free Music Archive needs your help!

As you may know we facilitate independent musicians around the world to connect directly with people in need for music. Part of this journey is to develop as many relevant monetization models as possible.

This year we are stepping up our game. Together with you hopefully.

Help needed: Who can recommend a super easy, highly adaptable and secure e-identity system so we can verify and certify 'rightsholders' (aka composers and performing artists)?

User experience: Musician visits his/her profile page on Free Music Archive and is asked to verify his/her identity. In return - after successfully going through the steps - we will reward the artist with a 'verified by FMA' badge.

The verification process should be done by a trusted third party preferably. I can think of two options:

The trusted third party already did a KYC process (ID card, face and document verification). So FMA will use their tooling to authenticate the person on FMA. This could work for FMA artists who already have an account with this partner.
The trusted third party integrates a tool on FMA to onboard and verify the artist. This should be accessible for all FMA artists anywhere in the world. And if one party can't guarantee this coverage we could offer a screen with multiple KYC verification partners.

What we don't want is a script to verify a musician simply by sending them a confirmation email to click on. We want the same or even higher level of verification as international banks apply. The outcome should be that 'verified by FMA' has true value to any stakeholder helping the artist to monetize their creative IP in the future.

Ideas? Suggestions? Companies and initiatives we should be aware of? We would love to hear from you!

Keep up the good work,

Meghan
meghan@tribeofnoise.com

Open Minds Podcast: Hessel van Oorschot of Tribe of Noise & Free Music Archive

Hessel van Oorschot — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 17:01:26 +0000

In this episode, CC’s Ony Anukem sits down for a conversation with Hessel van Oorschot, founder and “Chief of Noise” of the online music business Tribe of Noise. Tribe of Noise is a music community that connects artists, fans, and professionals. Founded in 2008 in The Netherlands, its main objective is to create fair and sustainable business opportunities for talented artists.

Tribe of Noise are the stewards of the Free Music Archive, an online repository of royalty-free music. Established in 2009 by the East Orange, New Jersey community radio station WFMU, and in cooperation with fellow stations KBOO and KEXP, it aims to provide music under Creative Commons licenses that can be freely downloaded and used in other works. Tribe of Noise acquired the Free Music Archive in 2019.

During the conversation, Hessel shares his unconventional path to discovering his passion, his insights on the biggest opportunities for music licensing right now, how he got involved with the open movement and Creative Commons, and more.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also subscribe via the show’s RSS feed.

FMA Explores How To Introduce Coil To Users

Hessel van Oorschot — Sun, 14 Feb 2021 11:53:42 +0000

To continue our FMA research, we visited numerous websites within the Web Monetization Community with one main goal; to learn and brainstorm how we should communicate Coil to the creators and users of FMA.

All platforms have different content and creators, therefore it was important to explore the possible communication strategies different services have taken to present Coil to their members and users.

The services mentioned below are from different industries and cater to different target groups. Please note, we did not register with the services but merely browsed each page as a new visitor / unknown user of Coil.

[Disclaimer: This article is not intended to offend any of the services we reviewed. Our main goal is to help the community by sharing our research and opinion.]

The main focus of the research is to spot keywords used and observe the general introduction approach to Coil. Before we explored all those interesting services, we had to focus our research first on the Coil website, to see how Coil is introduced, communicated and explained to visitors and members.

Coil
Imgur Emerald
Cinnamon
Robot Butt
The Nordly
Widget Magazine
js13k
CSS Tricks
Sally Lait
FMA

Coil

Firstly we visited the Coil Home Page, where new users will start learning about Coil and the benefits. Our main observation here is that the focus and approach are targeting all content creators, as individuals, not perse referring to services or companies only but to all.

Visitors will quickly learn about Coil through an inviting summary list of Coil services. We also peaked at the vocabulary used to explain Coil and highlighted the main keywords:

A new way to enjoy content
Experience web monetized content in your browser while supporting sites you love in real-time.
Are you a creator? Monetize your work.
What you get as a member/ Become a member: For $5 per month you get access to all web monetized content everywhere on the internet with strong privacy protection.
Support creators that have Web Monetization enabled content on their site.
Support creators across the internet.
Get your Coil Membership for $5 per month.
Log in to Coil and enjoy web monetized content and features across the internet

Keywords:

Web monetized 5x
$5 per month 2x
Browser 3x
Supporting sites 2x
Supporting creators 3x
The internet 3x
Coil member/membership 3x
Privacy Protection 1x

Top conclusions/remarks/findings exploring Coil Creator Home Page:

There is no mention of the word subscription but membership is mentioned 3 times on the home page. The word subscription could be connected to the idea of monthly plans & payments which a lot of online users know by paying numerous services each month and could be strongly more connected to the feeling of a cost. Whereas the word membership connects more to benefits and a feeling of being part of a unity.
The word Web Monetization is written 5 times on the home page, giving the user a clear term to connect Coil with. Since a lot of users are still unaware of Coil and what Web Monetization entails, it is crucial to keep informing and educating users, especially on innovative technologies that will continue to change the way we all consume content online.
Next to mentioning supporting creators 2 times, they also use the term supporting sites instead of partnering up or teaming up. The word support might give the readers a more sense of aid, assistance, helping when connected to Coil and already forms an idea in their minds of the structure and/or norm: to consume content is to support creators.

We continue to the Coil Creator Page where we notice that vocabulary became more formal with more terms. Our general observation here is that the Coil home page starts with; a way to enjoy content and on the creator page writes; a new way to monetize your content, making the approach depending on the specific target group.

Coil also added a brief summary list to introduce the creators to Coil services. We looked at the vocabulary used to explain Coil to creators and highlighted the main keywords:

A new way to monetize your content online.
Whether you choose to publish on a web monetized platform or your own website, we make it easy for you to get paid for content online.
Start monetizing. It's free!
Use it with your: Videos, Blog, Articles, Podcast, Game, Stream, Website, Articles
Sign up, link your wallet and start monetizing
We will guide you through the steps to link your digital wallet.

How does Coil work?

Coil Members pay a monthly fee.
You set up a digital wallet and monetize your content.
Coil streams payments to your wallet while Coil Members enjoy your content.
You make money as Coil Members spend time on your web monetized content. The longer they stay, the more money you earn.
You need a digital wallet to receive payments! Certain digital wallet providers support a protocol called Interledger. To receive payments from Coil, you need such a wallet.

Keywords/phrases:

Web monetized platform/content 2x
Own website 2x
Monetize 4x
Your content 4x
(Digital) wallet 6x
Coil Members 4x
Stream/send payments 2x
Micropayments 1x
Money 3x
Interledger 1x

Top conclusions/remarks/findings exploring Coil Creator Page:

Coil refers to users as Coil members and gives more detailed information on how Coil works including payment details. It is clear they have divided the information and level of depth between users and pages.
The word wallet is brought forward 6 times. This does add more understanding to the process and make it more normalized. Moreover, a lot of new users and visitors might not know the ins and outs of how Web Monetization works and by simplifying and finding the correct words where almost all ages can follow goes a long way.
Using the word streams to define the manner of payment flows is wise since it is connected to streaming. Nowadays, the majority are streaming content online thus making it still easy to understand and follow this new procedure.
In three short sentences, Coil manages to give 3 steps to explain how Coil works. Even though there is more information to give, these 3 steps are efficiently put together to understand how Coil works. This is crucial and an important part to successfully communicate Coil to the public.
Coil uses a more subtle approach to further explain Coil payments with the longer the members stay on your content, the more money your earn, it's an easy to get formula, very clear yet super persuasive.

Also on the Coil Creator Page, we got our first glimpse into how other services are defining Coil benefits to their users:

Simmer: Distraction-free mode while playing games
Cinnamon: Access to the exclusive video library
Coil Blogs: Access to exclusive bonus content in articles
Back 2 Back: Unlock exclusive game modes

Keywords:

Distraction-free 1x
Access 2x
Exclusive 2x
Bonus content 1x
Unlock 1x

A Gaming website defined Coil benefits as a distraction-free mode or unlock features which makes it feel a bit more informal but more like going to the next step/next level.
It is clear already that some of the gaming sites definitely matched their Coil language to their gaming environment.
Exclusive and Bonus Content are used when referring to premium content. These are very attractive and persuasive words but it would not work for all websites, some target groups either do not care, are not impressed, or might even be intimidated/hesitant to use the premium side of the service.

The Coil About Page is very simple and does not go into in-depth details but does elaborate more on how it works and the main factors behind it:

We do this by using a new, open technology called Web Monetization.
Web Monetization enables streaming micropayments - aka tiny fractions of a penny - to instantly flow to websites as you read, watch and listen. Open ecosystem
Coil was intentionally built using open technology to ensure compatibility with competing services and any currency so that you and the publishers, platforms, and creators you want to support have more freedom of choice now and in the future.

Keywords:

Business model 1x
Better ways/access 2x
Reward Creators 1x
Streaming payments 1x
Streaming micropayments 1x
Open technology 2x
Web monetization 2x
Open Ecosystem 1x

Top conclusions/remarks/findings exploring Coil About Page:

Coil uses the word to better for the vision and mission goal of Coil. Since there is a gap between the value of creators and content online, improving or in this case using the word to better, even though solving this gap is urgently necessary, to better makes the mission and vision sound more logical and doable. Using the word to change or to redefine can sound too extreme at times and to some users out there, unlikely.
The word reward is used instead of support, help or credit in connection with an incentive for creators. Even though there is nothing wrong with using this word, it might be best first to identify the environment, the target groups, and the communication norms and styles mainly used.
Coil gives a more simple explanation on Micropayments as tiny fractions of a penny clearly still focusing on the general public understanding of the term Micropayments and also trying to make sure the nontech users can understand right away.

Lastly, on the Coil Discover Page there are not a lot of mentions of in-depth information on Coil but focused on a list of Coil connecting sites to explore. Some sites stuck to using similar words to Coil's website such as exclusive and experience but others still word it based on their target group or service:

Imgur Emerald - Enjoy an Ad-Free experience and More.
Cinnamon - Watch exclusive videos for Coil Members.
Coil Blogs - Read articles with exclusive bonus content.
Twitch - We will send Bits to the streamers you watch.
Dev - Getting together to help one another out.

Keywords:

Ad-free experience 1x
Exclusive 2x
Coil Members 1x
Bonus Content 1x
Bits to streamers 1x
Help 1x

Top conclusions/remarks/findings exploring Coil Discover Page:

Explaining how Coil works in a short simple sentences can be tricky but feasible since it will be easier to persuade non-tech users to Coil with a general understanding of it but this also boosts curiosity in those who would like to know exactly how it works.
Have different sections to explain Coil in terms of the user and creator. Explain the same way to the user and creator but go further and give the creator more relevant context.
Monetizing could be a new word to many users out there but connecting it with Coil will add deeper brand connection when more monetization services become popular.
Few services are defining and explaining Coil in their own way/connecting to their environment.

Imgur Emerald

On Imgur Emerald, there is a lot of Coil information for their users, with a FAQ on Coil services highlighting the main focus of Imgur Emerald: to reach independence of ads.

Key Words

Coil Membership 5x
Web Monetize 1x
5$ per month 1x
Membership fee 1x
One subscription 1x
Ad-free Experience 2x
Unlock features 2x
User-Focused and Community-Focused 1x

Top conclusions/remarks/findings exploring Coil on Imgur Emerald

Formulating and strategize the text to meet the language and understanding of the target groups of the service/ (not using the exact words on the Coil website)
One-sided monetized information: Imgur only mentions Coil membership fee to the service and that Coil supports content providers but no explanation that Imgur users can also be a content creator and benefit from Coil.
Using words like unlocking and features are connected to games and make it sound more of going to the next step/part which makes it seem easier and more interesting to join but the word does not give out all the grand benefits of Coil.
Be transparent and mention the cost/payment but follow up with the perks.
Mentioning that Coil is not obsolete and that users can use/visit the regular website if they do not wish to have Coil.

Cinnamon

On the Video platform; Cinnamon where users are content creators, visitors can scroll down and will find a brief section where Coil is introduced as Monetization without algorithms.

Cinnamon talks directly to their content creators and gives in-depth data on the possible amount of payments; Earn 18cents per viewed hour of your originals and 9cents off your shorts. Cinnamon also mentions that due to Coil, content creators will get paid 4 times per second.

With this direct approach to target their creators, the service has opted to add an extra creative feature for creators: a calculator to calculate your revenue in your account in connection to total watch time.

Keywords:

Web Monetization 2x
Earn 1x
Your Originals 1x
Your Shorts 1x
Content Creators 1x
Revenue 2x
Seconds/Hours 1x

Top conclusions/remarks/findings exploring Coil on Cinnamon

Even though the Coil communication on Cinnamom is very brief, the approach was created to strategically present Coil services to creators. A strong approach; highlighting right away how much creators receive for the hours watched /viewed.
Cinnamon altered the information to cater directly to the interest of visitors and manage to give them already an idea of how they can earn micropayments, the "show me the money" formula. This approach is short but impactful and is a solid start to begin to understand the logistics behind monetization of their content.

Robot Butt

Users do not see Coil or the mention of a digital wallet on the home page of Robot Butt but in the sections/categories options, there are is Members Only button.

The approach taken is that new users will read: Join the Coil Comedy Collective! The page has a Coil header image with the different logos of comedy services connected with Coil and the image is clickable redirecting users to the Coil site.

Keywords:

Members-only 3x
Comedy Bundle 1x
Collective 3x
Latest exclusive 2x
Team up 1x
Satire sites 1x

Top conclusions/remarks/findings exploring Coil on Robot Butt

Defining the Coil community as a collective is a positive direction and more attractive to follow up on. Seems like a big collaboration between all which is unique to users and why it is so interesting.
Even though they do reference the collective to be more in the sector of the comedy services it does still gives more meaning to Coil as an advantage.
Also using team up gives more emphasis on the word collective and puts a more positive spin on all other services, takes away the feeling of competition and comparisons for users.

The Nordly

On The Nordly website, users will be introduced to a Coil header fixed to each page, and Coil is mentioned as teaming up with the service and writes: a membership service that helps support online comedy creators. The header is clickable and heads to Coil Comedy page for satire sites.

Keywords:

Membership 3x
Service 2x
Online comedy creators 1x
Unlock 1x
Special features 1x

Top conclusions/remarks/findings exploring Coil on The Norldy:

The approach is simple, super-efficient, and keeps informing each user when roaming all over The Nordly.
Since The Nordly supports writers, it makes sense to mention the support to creators rather than the beginning with the feature to visit numerous sites.
Users will be curious to know which other sites are with Coil.

Widget Magazine

In the home page of Widget and on every page you visit, there is a header mentioning: 20+ sites, ∞ perks, 1 low price. Subscribe!" and goes directly to Coil Comedy page.

Coil is mentioned only 1 time on the home page but there are 2 links to direct you to Coil website via the home page. When users click on the Widget subscribe page, they will find the web monetization to verify if they have a Coil account.

Keywords:

Perks 2x
One Low price 3x
Partner sites 1x
Subscribe 2x
Peers 2x
Coil Comedy bundle 2x
Exclusive bonus content 1x

Top conclusions/remarks/findings exploring Coil on The Norldy:

Even though the message is very vague if you have never heard of Coil since the Widget website, it is still a smart way to introduce users to Coil, instead of saying checkout Coil, they already told you what it has.
Widget also refers to premium content as perks and refers to other coil connected satire sites as peers.
Calling premium content as bonus content while mentioning one low price even though at a low price is commonly used, using one is more convincing since a lot of subscriptions has 2 or 3 different types of prices and packages users must choose from.

js13k

On js13k, the approach of introducing Coil to their users is a very smart and tactical one. Since the gaming site hosts competitions for game developers. js13k has created a web monetization competition for their participants to compete in. And the prizes are also well-thought including Coil membership plans for six months each for every participant.

Keywords:

Web Monetization 2x
Get paid 2x
Your games 2x
Coil subscribers 1x
Micropayments 1x
Supportive players 1x
Additional content 1x
Expanding game mechanics 1x
Digital wallet 1x
Coil membership 1x

Top conclusions/remarks/findings exploring Coil on js13k:

This approach is still connected to their services but is a more creative and strategic approach to introduce Coil, a challenge, and a prize.
Adding a competition where users must implement web monetization is a great way to understand Coil better next to using it, pushing the knowledge of web monetization further.

There are many different approaches services can take to introduce Coil to their users. There are also services that approached this process in a more common and social manner; via a blog post.

In the Coil developers community, CSS Tricks introduces Coil through a blog post/manual titled: Site Monetization with Coil (and Removing Ads for Supporters) The writer gives detailed instructions and explanations to readers on how to implement Coil. Even though this approach is not dependent on the visitors passing by all the time but clearly informs the specific reader interested to learn how to work with Coil.
Another example is of the developer Sally Lait that introduces Coil in a blog post called: Exploring Web Monetization where she shares her interest and views on Coil. This approach is more subjective than using keywords to communicate information about Coil but can be a very effective approach to convince users since personal stories/ experiences and opinions have more influence and impact.

FMA - Free Music Archive

For the visitors, users, and members of Free Music Archive, it is important that we find the best approach and keywords to efficiently and effectively communicate Coil benefits on FMA. With this research and findings, we will brainstorm for the communication and language of Coil on FMA.

We understand all services have different users and backgrounds but we believe in the importance of learning from our peers, having a united front, and therefore strengthen the Coil community for creators, as we continue the rebuild of FMA.

If you are in need of music for your projects, games, and creations, please feel free to pass by Free Music Archive and check out the immense catalog of music shared daily by amazing independent artists and musicians around the world.

Meghan Laclé
Free Music Archive
meghan@tribeofnoise.com

(Photo banner by Micheile Henderson)

Web Monetization: Impacting the DIY Music Industry

Hessel van Oorschot — Sun, 07 Feb 2021 12:26:14 +0000

Greg Hannam (Vivid IoV Labs) interviewing Hessel van Oorschot (CEO Tribe of Noise, Free Music Archive) about fair trade and new revenue models in the music industry.

Discussed: Spotify, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, Tribe of Noise, Jamendo, The Creative Passport, Creative Commons, Grant for the Web, Mozilla, Coil, Free Music Archive (FMA), e-Residency, Interledger Foundation and... the fastest growing segment of the global recorded music business today: DIY independent musicians.

Pick your favorite tool to watch / listen:
YouTube
Anchor.fm
Spotify

Free Music Archive: A talk about the future of music and art on the internet - by Tom Ray

Hessel van Oorschot — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 12:37:19 +0000

Tom Ray is a musician (band Lorenzo's Music) and podcaster. One of Tom's favorite music sites is opening again, the Free Music Archive!

Tom talks with Hessel van Oorschot from the Netherlands who's company Tribe of Noise saved the site from going down. We talk about their plans for this iconic music discovery and sharing platform.

Watch Video

But we also talk about the future of art and music on the internet. How different organizations like Coil and Grant for the Web (37min35) are trying to find ways to help creators, artists, and musicians build their work outside of an ad-based revenue model.

This conversation isn't just for musicians it's a discussion about what the future of art on the web could be and what some of these organizations are trying right now.

Listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify

Links
Free Music Archive https://freemusicarchive.org

Tribe of Noise http://tribeofnoise.com

Coil https://coil.com/creator

Grant for the Web https://www.grantfortheweb.org

Support Tom Ray's show:

Check out the vintage pop-culture items available in Tom's eBay Store https://ebay.to/2vMYStC

Podcast Music by Tom's band Lorenzo's Music, listen on Spotify https://spoti.fi/2JJF39Q

Cover photo by Jonathan Farber