The Interledger Community 🌱: Meghan Laclé

Free Music Archive — Grant Report #2

Meghan Laclé — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 15:00:28 +0000

Project Update

Big updates for FMA! The new Free Music Archive (FMA) was launched!! Since 2019, with the help of Grant for the Web, our team has reached out to the FMA community for their insights and input; on needed features on all the four types of member pages, FMA search and navigation, web monetization toolings and community engagement.

Through numerous surveys, one-on-one video calls, community calls, round tables and direct emails, we have received their feedback, suggestions, requests, and overall advice for a more sustainable space where they are valued and heard. The entire FMA community has waited patiently, and their wait was finally over on the 27th September 2022!

With this big milestone comes another big update: Now all FMA Curators and Netlabels are able to set up their digital wallets, add payment pointer(s) and monetize with Coil! Before, FMA Artists tried out Coil, as we focused on onboarding musicians first. Now, Artists, Netlabels and Curators are also able to add payment pointers of fellow peers and charities to increase support!

We shared more of the new Free Music Archive to the Interledger community in this article:

Welcome to the new Free Music Archive!

Meghan Laclé for Free Music Archive ・ Oct 25 ・ 7 min read

#music #community #webmonetization #announcements

Progress on objectives

FMA Deliverable 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.

With the revamp of FMA, we were able to put together a start on a monetization toolbox for FMA creators. Under one roof, FMA creators can enable web monetization with Coil by adding their payment pointer and co-monetize with other FMA members and charities. In that same space, they are able to add a donation link, PayPal donation link and link their Tribe of Noise PRO page for users and media makers with budget.

Moreover, to enable artists to co-monetize, we gave them the option to add multiple payment pointers. When storing a payment pointer you can give it a name and a weight, which determines how the payments are divided between payment pointers. To store multiple payment pointer per artist, we had to move away from a payment pointer column in the artists database table to a separate database table for payment pointers, which has an artist ID foreign key to relate the payment pointer to an artist.

If an artist has multiple payment pointers we use Javascript to probabilistically select the payment pointer that receives the micropayments. This doesn't just happen once (on page load), but instead a payment pointer is selected every 20 seconds that a user is on a monetized page. So, if a user opens a track page and listens to a 3:00 track then a payment pointer will be selected at least 9 times. The more times a payment pointer is selected the likelier it is that the revenue is shared correctly according to the weight set by the artist.

To continue to add more options to the monetization toolbox, we sent out surveys to FMA members, curators, artists, and netlabels asking them different questions for the new FMA. One of those questions was about monetization on FMA.

We asked the musicians; which type of monetization tooling would you like to link to your artist page?
50% of FMA artists choose Bandcamp or Patreon
48% choose Ko-Fi, Buy me a Coffee or Tipeee
19% of FMA artists selected Coil, Flattr, Vemno or Coin Drop.

It was important for us to get their input to see how we can broaden the monetization toolbox. We see that many FMA musicians use and follow the communities that their peers are in, they feel more familiar and comfortable in spaces where they can see other artists exists and better yet, thrive. We hope to be one of those spaces and introduce more creators and members to Coil.

One FMA artists wrote an additional comment:

“I would like to link my Coil/Flattr and Ko-Fi/Buy me a Coffee/Tipeee monetization tooling to help me as an artist to generate revenues. Actually, I did try Ko-Fi and/or Buy me a Coffee, but unsure how to use well.”

This has been a common input that we have received from FMA members, where they are eager to join but the process and system is not clear to them right away. They encounter obstacles and back away. We will continue to make it a priority to do our best to inform and guide our members through the correct steps, however, certain obstacles are out of our hands such as Identification, Payment methods, mobile phones etc.

Another FMA artist shares a comment:

“I don't know them all, so my choice above is random. I am open to any monetization tool as long as it is easy to use.”

Onboarding creators can be different each time and as mentioned above, the easier the process the faster they join. However, this comment continues to come forward as we know many FMA artists would like to increase opportunities by a hundred and earn some bucks. We are ecstatic to know they are open to all kinds of toolings. With our survey findings, we are drawing a plan to see if we can meet their preferences and broaden the monetization toolbox for FMA.

Now that we have added the option for all Curators, Netlabels and Artists to co-monetize, the objective is to continue onboarding new users to FMA and therefore increase Coil users and support.

FMA Deliverable 2

Participating FMA & Tribe of Noise musicians from Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Europe, and Australia to focus on underrepresented communities as part of this journey.

FMA is home to independent musicians all over the world and the numbers increases every day. We have communicated Coil and the web monetization toolings to our members via newsletters where we can see the number of opens and some on the map. For example when we shared the new Web Monetization Page on FMA:

It's great to see that our members are spread across the globe and we are eager to assist them in the best way we can. However, we did experience different obstacles to engage with them and therefore onboard to Coil. Even though we are keeping tabs on new artists that joins FMA, per country, some do not upload tracks right away or monetize their page with Coil for example.

It is unclear which part of the process they stop at, however we will go hand in hand with each one to help them set up their pages. We will use surveys as well to ask them specific questions on how we can help them make the steps easier. Our objective here as we continue is to improve our data categories to connect and cater, in more detail, to musicians in specific countries, so we can present and promote them front and centre.

FMA will continue to prioritize inclusivity and add spotlights to minorities in the FMA community for more support. With the new FMA revamp, our team will release more content to introduce FMA to new users and creators. Our focus and duty is to make sure that all users and creators feel at home on FMA.

These are some of our FMA templates we are sharing with the world to introduce them to the new FMA and Web Monetization toolings. Feel free to share and post them on your social media channels.

FMA Deliverable 3

Onboard music enthusiasts to curate, co-produce, promote and
monetize music together with the FMA artists.

As mentioned in the updates, Curators and Netlabels are able to add their payment pointer and monetized their FMA pages with Coil. We have not reached a large group of monetized curators yet, but with this new option available for them with the 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.

We know FMA curator pages a great profile for co-monetizing, co-producing and co-promoting. In a recent survey,
64% of FMA curators want to focus on adding spotlight to FMA musicians
50% would like to focus on helping media makers find tracks
43% wants to focus on curation for their projects
14% would like to blog on FMA.

We didn't want to wait with such nice templates, thus we are taking measures to show the FMA community the perks and power of an FMA Curator page. We have been sharing mixes and blogposts with the community to FMA listeners and FMA socials.

With the FMA Monetization page, our plan is to create a digital hub where all members can learn of Coil and join the ecosystem. This page will continue to be updated.

FMA Deliverable 4

Exclusive content seducing people to sign up for WM

Our team has not met this objective in full yet. However, we have tested this out with the FMA Monetized Treasure Hunt during MozFest 2022, to see how different strategies and content can onboard new users.

With the new monetization toolbox, FMA Curators are able to hide specific content for only Coil members to see. We hope this power brings in more curators and curious users to Coil. Our objective here is to improve this functionality as best as we can for the rest of the FMA member pages.

FMA Deliverable 5

Shareable research and documentation of this journey

For this journey we shared our progress and process by continuing the Inside FMA article series where we published research, survey findings and updates on our project with Grant for the Web:
• Inside FMA - Chapter 6
• Inside FMA - Chapter 7
• Inside FMA - Chapter 8
• Inside FMA - Chapter 9
• Inside FMA - Chapter 10

Next to publishing Inside FMA chapters, we also began a new FMA podcast show/series called Music Insider by Free Music Archive, to combine research, musician's stories, new web monetization tools and of course great music. 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.

Moreover, 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.

In the latest episode of Music Insiders by Free Music Archive (FMA) podcast, our Head of Music; Marko interviews Hessel van Oorschot; CEO of Free Music Archive (FMA) and Tribe of Noise, about the new FMA revamp and monetization models for musicians.

Key activities

FMA Top pages.
Using Ubersuggest to narrow down top visited FMA pages to strategize where we can establish a faster communication for Coil. Ubersuggest have shown us in more detail, different pages on FMA that receives many visitors, fun fact; the most visited pages on FMA are the FMA genre pages with Instrumental, Christmas, Soundtrack and Hip-Hop Beats as top visited FMA pages.
New FMA Podcast.
Music Insiders by Free Music Archive podcast premiered on the Home Page of FMA with our Head of Music: Marko as host and FMA artist; Ketsa as the first guest.
https://freemusicarchive.org/curator/music-insiders-by-free-music-archive/

Insights about these two activities in chapter 6:

Inside FMA - Chapter 6

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

#music #musicians #research #community

New Curated Journeys.
To try out exclusive content on FMA, we designed a FMA Monetized Treasure Hunt for Mozfest 2022.
New FMA Events.
We scheduled an informal kick-off session for FMA artists on Google Meet where we invited the FMA artists and explained a bit more about the FMA Next Project. We also created a community call for FMA artists to join and ask questions.

Insights about these two activities in chapter 7:

Inside FMA - Chapter 7

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

#music #musicians #research #community

Gather insights for co-monetization opportunities.
For the FMA artists that shared their tracks with Commercial licenses, we wanted to know if they were eager for more specific tooling’s in order to see if presenting and proposing potential co-monetization and revenue sharing on FMA as a good direction to continue going on.
Connecting Communities with FMA.
Our team has encouraged Tribe of Noise artists to join FMA and share their original tracks with FMA users. A great example of this is the initiative of Buma/Stemra and the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science, where 5 Tribe of Noise PRO artists were encouraged and financially supported to create new music for Tribe of Noise Pro clients and Free Music Archive users. These artists are also monetized on FMA.

Insights about these two activities in chapter 8:

Inside FMA - Chapter 8

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

#music #musicians #community #research

Learning from the WM Community.
We loved seeing the Coil scrollable paywall on Mural, micropayments sharing feature on Hyperaudio and verification system on Fliptoons. FMA members have now additional payment pointer sections for the artists to add collaborators, but also charities of their picking in order to spread the support further with Coil.
New FMA Web Monetization page.
As we continue to onboard more FMA musicians to Coil and putting together a strategic plan to communicate Coil to FMA listeners, with the past FMA research and the Coil Help Center, we published the FMA Coil Page for new users and creators to follow with instructions and relevant links.

Insights about these two activities in chapter 9:

Inside FMA - Chapter 9

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

#music #artist #community #research

Communications and marketing

FMA Curator page: https://freemusicarchive.org/curator/fma-team/
Music Insiders Podcast: https://freemusicarchive.org/curator/music-insiders-by-free-music-archive/
Twitter Updates: https://twitter.com/freemusicarchiv
Facebook posts: https://www.facebook.com/freemusicarchive/
Linkedin posts:
https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/freemusicarchive/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hesselvanoorschot/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghan-lacl%C3%A9/
Summits & Conferences:
MozFest 2022
Creative Commons Global Summit
Future Music Forum 2022 in Barcelona
Eventbrite
Sendinblue Newsletters
Survey Anyplace

What’s next?

Adding "web monetized" filters to the genres and chart pages so that users can find musicians that are web monetized easier.
Updating and broadening the FMA web monetization page in a more digital hub feel with list of monetized artists, curators and netlabels.
Onboarding more curators and netlabels to Coil.
Growing the FMA monetization toolbox with Fynbos, Rafiki and other monetization toolings that help creators.
Creating exclusive fun content for users and listeners to find and explore.
Adding more genres and subgenres from across the globe.
We recently started experimenting with ads on a limited number of FMA pages however this is all early testing. FMA has always been ad-free and we are taking strict measures to ensure that no ads will stop users from exploring FMA.

What community support would benefit your project?

We will be keeping an eye on grantees with exclusive pages for Coil users, to learn and brainstorm how we can best adapt this feature to FMA.

We are open to connecting with all grantees, currently we began a new collaboration with gFam live to see if we can introduce the FMA community and gFam live community to each other.

Additional comments

We would love to invite our fellow grantees to check out Free Music Archive catalogue for their projects and also welcome them to the FMA community in all areas. If any grantee needs a space to share info and data to a large community, please feel free to let us know. We will create a curator page for you right away!

On behalf of the entire Free Music Archive team, we would like to thank Grant for the Web, Interlegder Foundation and Coil for their support through the FMA journey. Special thanks to Chris, Erika and Ayesha, the Fynbos & Rafiki team for their continues hard work on the amazing new ecosystem we are part of.

Relevant links/resources

Join FMA today!

— Interested in your own FMA member account?

— Do you have original music you want to share with media makers?

— Would you like to become an FMA Curator and blogger?

Sign up/Register for an FMA account here.
Email meghan@tribeofnoise.com with the subject: FMA curator page, and include the title for your curator page.

— Looking for a new space and community for your artists and bands?

Sign up/Register for an FMA account here.
Email meghan@tribeofnoise.com with the subject: FMA Netlabel page, and include the title for your Netlabel page.

FMA Journey with GftW!

• Inside FMA - Chapter 1
• Inside FMA - Chapter 2
• Inside FMA - Chapter 3
• Inside FMA - Chapter 4
• Inside FMA - Chapter 5
• Inside FMA - Chapter 6
• Inside FMA - Chapter 7
• Inside FMA - Chapter 8
• Inside FMA - Chapter 9
• Inside FMA - Chapter 10

Other FMA Publications:
• FMA's Treasure Hunt - MozFest 2022 Web Monetization Action Plan
•FMA Explores How To Introduce Coil To Users
• Web Monetization: Impacting the DIY Music Industry
• Read more here: Free Music Archive on Interledger Community

For any questions, suggestions, feedback, recommendations but most importantly, collaborations and partnerships, please don't hesitate to reach out to meghan@tribeofnoise.com

Welcome to the new Free Music Archive!

Meghan Laclé — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 17:07:26 +0000

We are celebrating!

On the 27th of September 2022, the new Free Music Archive (FMA) was launched!! The FMA team, at that time was in Barcelona, Spain for the Future Music Forum event that took place from 26th to 30th of September. But first, FMA Next!

As we arrived in Barcelona on the 26th of September, we were in awe of the Sagrada Família. We stayed a street away from such a unique, beautiful architecture and cannot help but feel their immense dedication to finish a lifelong dream. It's hard not to reflect on our own journey rebuilding FMA, even though it is not as long of a journey as the Sagrada Família, lol. It was a great symbol of working towards a new and more sustainable Free Music archive!

Since 2019, our team has informed, guided and shared the FMA journey and objectives with the FMA community. Many Curators, Netlabels, Artists and Members helped us with their feedback, suggestions, requests, and overall insights for the rebuild of Free Music Archive through numerous surveys, one-on-one video calls, community calls, round tables and direct emails. The entire FMA community have waited patiently for us to rebuild FMA corner by corner and on the 27th of September, their wait was finally over!

Welcome to the new FMA!

The new FMA is more user friendly to roam with newly revamped genres pages, charts, improved search functionality and a new exciting feature: Artist shuffle button that takes users each time to a random artist page to explore. FMA remains free to access and new users can make use of FMA without an account. Each month, we welcome new artists joining from all over the globe who continues to enrich the giant catalogue of Free Music Archive.

New Home for FMA Artists!

One of our top objectives during the FMA rebuild was to create a more sustainable digital home for FMA musicians. Now, listeners, users and media makers are able to get a taste of the artist catalogue on a new overview page! Here their top tracks are front and center with their own Featured list and get to highlight specific albums or tracks with the In The Spotlight feature.

FMA artists have a brand new Biography section to share relevant info to new users and listeners while users are able to browse and listen to the artist's latest albums there.

Another FMA objective was to bring back community functionalities so that our members feel more at home and connected to FMA listeners. Now, artists can see and find their followers on FMA, while FMA members are able to show support via comments.

For more support, users will find the Tip artist button; this leads them to the artist's personal donation link, and the Support Artist button leads users to the FMA Web Monetization page where they can learn how to join Coil and share their support!

Coil for FMA Creators!

FMA creators are able to monetize their FMA pages with Coil! Before, FMA artists tried out Coil but now all FMA Curators and Netlabels are able to set up their digital wallet, add their payment pointer(s) and monetize with Coil!

On top of that, Artists, Netlabels and Curators are able to add and share their micropayments with fellow peers and also be able to add charities to their monetization to increase support! We will continue to update the charities list, but if you have any suggestions for us, please feel free to reach out! More FMA Web Monetization updates coming soon!

New FMA content!

Now that all FMA members can enable monetization on their FMA pages, we are eager to invite and welcome new users to become FMA curators! This specific member page has the superpower to create blogs and featured mixes!

In a recent FMA survey, we asked FMA Curators; Which top two topics would you like to write about on your curator page? 57% would like to blog about the mixes they make and 50% wants to share blogs of artists journey, 36% selected blogposts about the music industry and 29% chose to blog about music equipment for artists. All these topics and blogs are more than welcome on FMA! In the same survey, we also asked; Which top two media makers do you wish to visit your curator page? 64% would like Podcasters/Radio Hosts to visit their curator page, 43% wants Bloggers /Journalists, 36% prefers to be found by other FMA musicians / New Artists and 29% would like visits from other FMA curators/ Netlabels.

FMA Curator pages will put the spotlight on FMA musicians, help media makers find tracks for their projects, and have the amazing power to create relevant and important content for creators on FMA!

Meet the FMA Community!

With suggestions and feedback from the FMA community, a new weekly series called; Meet an FMA artist was launched. In this series, we invite musicians to share short stories with us about their music journey, albums/tracks releases or anything they would like to highlight to FMA users. With the FMA curator pages, we are able to put their short stories in a blogpost and put a spotlight on their selected tracks in a featured mix. Each featured mix will be added to the FMA homepage for more exposure and support! In the short story of last week, we introduced Black Pudding Poetry aka Johanna Wedin-Duda, an alternative singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and DIY music producer from Sweden.
Johanna writes:

Free Music Archive (FMA) has made strangers from all over the place (planet) feel familiar. My Lo-fi recordings, unpolished and intimate, have travelled the world and ended up in heartfelt projects and film productions.

Follow the FMA Team curator page for weekly new community blogs, and keep an eye on the FMA homepage for new FMA mixes!

Music Insiders Podcast!

The third episode of Music Insiders by Free Music Archive (FMA) podcast also premiered! Our Head of Music; Marko interviews Hessel van Oorschot; CEO of Free Music Archive (FMA) and Tribe of Noise, about the new FMA revamp and what lies ahead for FMA. In this episode, we also meet FMA artist; Makaih Beats, born in New Orleans, Louisiana, but currently resides and creates his music in Australia. He shares with FMA listeners a bit about his music journey and gives an inside glimpse into his studio. Check it the latest episode of Music Insiders podcast here: https://freemusicarchive.org/blog/listen-to-episode-3-of-music-insiders-by-free-music-archive-podcast/

Join FMA today!

— Interested in your own FMA member account?

— Do you have original music you want to share with media makers?

— Would you like to become an FMA Curator and blogger?

Sign up/Register for an FMA account here.
Email meghan@tribeofnoise.com with the subject: FMA curator page, and include the title for your curator page.

— Looking for a new space and community for your artists and bands?

Sign up/Register for an FMA account here.
Email meghan@tribeofnoise.com with the subject: FMA Netlabel page, and include the title for your Netlabel page.

FMA Journey with GftW!

More insights we gathered and shared with our fellow grantees.
• Inside FMA - Chapter 1
• Inside FMA - Chapter 2
• Inside FMA - Chapter 3
• Inside FMA - Chapter 4
• Inside FMA - Chapter 5
• Inside FMA - Chapter 6
• Inside FMA - Chapter 7
• Inside FMA - Chapter 8
• Inside FMA - Chapter 9
• Inside FMA - Chapter 10
• FMA Grant Report
• FMA Progress Report

Other FMA Publications:
• FMA's Treasure Hunt - MozFest 2022 Web Monetization Action Plan
• FMA Explores How To Introduce Coil To Users
• Web Monetization: Impacting the DIY Music Industry
• Read more here: Free Music Archive on Interledger Community

For any questions, suggestions, feedback, recommendations but most importantly, collaborations and partnerships, please don't hesitate to reach out to meghan@tribeofnoise.com

Inside FMA - Chapter 10

Meghan Laclé — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 10:21:16 +0000

In this short article, FMA Team shares inside updates, outcomes and follow ups related to the rebuild of the global iconic music service: Free Music Archive. The FMA mission remains clear; create sustainable spaces & systems in favor of independent creators to continue creating and sharing original music online.

Chapter 10

As we continue our journey with Grant for the Web, our main focus remains to continue to execute FMA Deliverables and FMA Next objectives.

FMA Deliverable 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.

FMA Deliverables 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.

FMA Deliverable 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.

The Journey Continues

As Free Music Archive is hosting unlimited amounts of CC licensed music while the musicians can enable web monetization on their artist, album and song page, we know we must do more.

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.

The FMA team has learned a lot about individuals willing to spend time curating, sharing and promoting artists successfully. The missing link today is the toolkit for musicians and enthusiasts to monetize content together. When do we know it's successful?

We believe it will be a combination of valuable insights about fair revenue sharing via web monetization and the community of participants starting to spread the word and showing others how to join and contribute.

Our main goals?
To research and unleash a resilient payment infrastructure and promote inclusive and sustainable monetization models for musicians in the music sector. We have to start with artists 100% in control and willing to experiment with new business models.

Our next steps?
The FMA team wants to do our best to ensure our support for FMA musicians with new tooling and opportunities on Free Music Archive to bring forward their value in the music industry, in societies, cultures and around the world.

We will continue to keep an open-door policy to all artists, musicians and members that has any advice and suggestions for FMA.

More inside stories by FMA?
The FMA team will share insights we have gathered with our FMA community and publish them on Coil.com
So, make sure to follow us and check out our previous chapters!
• Inside FMA - Chapter 1
• Inside FMA - Chapter 2
• Inside FMA - Chapter 3
• Inside FMA - Chapter 4
• Inside FMA - Chapter 5
• Inside FMA - Chapter 6
• Inside FMA - Chapter 7
• Inside FMA - Chapter 8
• Inside FMA - Chapter 9

Coil.com?
Coil is a fun way to enjoy original (premium) content from journalists, musicians, photographers, game developers, podcasters and many other creatives. With your Coil Creator account enabled in your browser, small amounts of money will travel from your account to the content creator. All-you-can-consume-content. You never pay more than $5 for a month access to tons of creative content while supporting the creators. More information? https://coil.com

Inside FMA - Chapter 9

Meghan Laclé — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 10:10:00 +0000

Chapter 9

After hosting an FMA Community call with Grant For the Web, it was time for our team to host an FMA presentation for FMA artists to join and ask questions. We didn't have to think twice where to host the FMA presentation as we have been participating in other community calls on Eventbrite.

During the FMA presentation, we presented a timeline of the past journey and what our objectives for the coming months. We also gathered feedback and suggestions from FMA artists such as:

FMA Artist suggestion 1:

“User Statistics”
“Random button within genre”

FMA Artist Feedback 2:

“I personally would want to add a comment tab.
“I think the emoji's is a great idea. I would take inspiration from NewGrounds, but doing it in a more simple and professional way”

Most participants were FMA artists interested to follow FMA news and updates. We will continue to use platforms such as Eventbrite to host call so the FMA and Web monetized community.

Learning from the WM Community

As mentioned, FMA were 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, micropayments sharing feature on Hyperaudio and verification system on Fliptoons.

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.

With the new upcoming template for artists and learning from the web monetized community, we were able to integrate a more efficient and user-friendly monetization wizard for FMA artist to add their payment pointer on FMA.

Also, artists will have additional payment pointer sections for the artist to add such as collaborators, but also charities of their picking in order to spread the support further with Coil.

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.

More Coil Creators on FMA

As we continue to onboard more FMA musicians to Coil and putting together a strategic plan to communicate Coil to FMA listeners, with the past FMA research and the Coil Help Center, we published the FMA Coil Page for new users and creators to follow with instructions and relevant links.

Our objective to grow this space into a web monetization hub on FMA, where new artists with can always have a chance to be in the spotlight, help us showcase monetization to other artists, and where FMA listeners can learn about Coil membership and get to know Coil Creators on FMA.

Next to sharing Coil and web monetization news to our FMA community. We also have directly communicated Coil 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 continue to reach out to assist and make sure the monetization of the artist is set up properly and implement upcoming Coil communication on FMA to also help onboard FMA users to become Coil members and support FMA artists!

The FMA team will communicate web monetization at a larger scale when we relaunch of Free Music Archive (new UI/UX) at the Future Music Forum 2022 in Barcelona, which will be our next "web monetization" communication event.

New FMA Objective

As Free Music Archive is hosting unlimited amounts of CC licensed music while the musicians can enable web monetization on their artist, album and song page, we know we must continue to do more.

We will continue to keep an open-door policy to all artists, musicians and members that has any advice and suggestions for FMA.

Inside FMA - Chapter 8

Meghan Laclé — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 13:55:00 +0000

Chapter 8

As you know, Free Music Archive is part of the Creative Commons Community offering FMA artists creative Commons licenses to add to each track they upload on FMA. We think it is special & remarkable that millions of people from around the world can listen to, share, and reuse music of talented independent artists with their consent. We bet many FMA tracks are part of amazing videos, short films, and podcasts!

Creative Commons has open doors for many online creators throughout the years. This is why we had no hesitation to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Creative Commons. Our chief, interviewed Creative Commons' CEO, Catherine Stihler, who is so proud to represent CC creatives all over the globe. Her message to you and the global Creative Commons community is available online: video.

New FMA Licensing Opportunities

In the spirit of the 20th anniversary of CC and to better understand what FMA Artists needs in their new upcoming monetization toolbox, we sent out a survey to two subgroups: The CC Commercial License Allowed artists and the CC Non-Commercial Allowed artists to ask them which type of help and tooling on FMA needs the most.

For the FMA artists that shared their tracks with Commercial licenses, we wanted to know if they were eager for more specific tooling’s in order to see if presenting and proposing potential co-monetization and revenue sharing on FMA as a good direction to continue going on.

From the CC Commercial Licenses Allowed artist group, the majority of artists selected:

63% - Add tools that enable more interaction with fans
50% - Help me with people who want to license my song(s) for commercial projects
50% - More stats about my songs, traffic, fans

The FMA team is eager to bring forward new licenses wizards that gives the CC Commercial Licenses Allowed artists more control to be flexible and be able to take on many opportunities that come their way.

An FMA artist wrote down:

I have a very hard time to make people pay me for when they use my music in commercial context. They keep on doing it and I have a hard time to name a price when they do email me and ask to use my music in commercial context and I would like to have something for that.

For the CC Non-Commercial Allowed artist group, it was important for us to know if they were open use commercial licenses for their tracks on FMA for users to use in their projects.

From the CC Non-Commercial Licenses Allowed artist group, the majority selected:

64% - Help me with people who want to license my song(s) for commercial projects
60% - More stats about my songs, traffic, fans
56% - Any help with making money with my music is appreciated

Even though these responses are almost similar to the CC Commercial Licenses Allowed artist group, 40% of the CC Non-Commercial Licenses Allowed artist group would prefer to “Host everything related to their music perpetually in one place” on FMA. 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.

One FMA artist wrote down:

It's a great platform and community, just maybe needs more ways to help fans and users support the creators in a way that make sense so we don't need to direct people off platform. It would be great to send fans to my FMA page and everything is there.

These survey results, helps us narrow down which tooling's we need to implement in the new upcoming FMA toolkit and which features we can add and connect monetization with.

Furthermore, the FMA team believes the FMA Curators are the most suited to help share music and co-monetize with the FMA artists. FMA Curators have the power to feature and promote all FMA tracks on their curator page. They are also the main Bloggers on FMA and their mixes and playlists are be eligible to checked for the FMA Home Page feature mix.

As mentioned in Chapter 6, the FMA Home page is another strong FMA tooling we use. This way FMA Curators help connect FMA tracks to new online stakeholders and boost opportunities for FMA artists.

Connecting Communities with FMA

For both artist groups, the FMA Team will definitely look to the Tribe of Noise Pro model, which has been helping Tribe of Noise Pro Artists since 2018. Next to all the new monetization opportunities, giving creators on FMA the option be flexible and to co-exist on big communities with different stakeholders and users, will broaden their music scope and most importantly, help reduce the immense value gap musicians continue to face everyday.

In the opposite direction, our team has encouraged Tribe of Noise artists to join FMA and share their original tracks with FMA users. A great example of this is the initiative of Buma/Stemra and the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science, where 5 Tribe of Noise Pro artists were encouraged and financially supported to create new music for Tribe of Noise Pro clients and Free Music Archive users.

This shows first examples of independent artists using both services for their main purposes and being able to be present in different audiences and environment without any obstacles or hindering's. Check out the 5 new albums available on Tribe of Noise Pro and Free Music Archive. Read more about this imitative below.

Five New Album Releases for the WM Community to explore and share!

Meghan Laclé for Free Music Archive ・ Jul 5 ・ 3 min read

#music #community #creators

More connections on FMA

Next to that, the need to interact more online has taken over the internet and it’s no surprise FMA artists want more ways to reach and communicate with FMA listeners and fans and we hear it loud and clear.

As another FMA artist wrote down:

For artist it's important to be in touch with their fans.

This is why the FMA team is also prioritizing new community section for artist pages, where fans and new listeners can connect and comment. This community feature will be added to the upcoming new artist templates for FMA artists to start growing their own community and audience within FMA. This will deepen the support for FMA artists and help us implement new tooling to improve the artist and user relationship.

One FMA artist wrote down:

You are doing already an outstanding job in connecting artists and users. It has been a wonderful journey with you, and the great feedback from users has enhanced my life. If I have one suggestion, it is to make this direct connection even better. For example, I would like to know more in writing where my music is being used. It is no obligation of users to let me know, but building in incentives for users to share that information with the creators would be great.

These responses give us three directions to focus on for the FMA artists new upcoming toolbox and the motivation and direction to continue improving FMA for all.

New FMA Objective

As Free Music Archive is hosting unlimited amounts of CC licensed music while the musicians can enable web monetization on their artist, album and song page, we know we must continue to do more.

We will continue to keep an open-door policy to all artists, musicians and members that has any advice and suggestions for FMA.

More inside stories by FMA?
The FMA team will share insights we have gathered with our FMA community and publish them on Coil.com
So, make sure to follow us and check out our previous chapters!
• Inside FMA - Chapter 1
• Inside FMA - Chapter 2
• Inside FMA - Chapter 3
• Inside FMA - Chapter 4
• Inside FMA - Chapter 5
• Inside FMA - Chapter 6
• Inside FMA - Chapter 7

Inside FMA - Chapter 7

Meghan Laclé — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 10:25:18 +0000

Chapter 7

With the Music Insiders by Free Music Archive podcast release, we were eager for more opportunities for FMA artists. We didn't have to look far. The FMA team was ready to join the MozFest 2022, specifically to try out the new tipping feature for Coil creators and a new way for FMA members and listeners to give support to FMA musicians.

New Curated Journeys

In order to try out the tipping feature on FMA and present a creative yet valuable communication strategy, the first ever FMA Treasure Hunt was created, using web monetized artists pages on FMA.

Using data that we learned in Inside FMA Chapter 6, we were able to choose top visited pages, together with monetized FMA artist pages, we were able to put together a cohesive and interesting treasure hunt throughout FMA that also works has a fun tutorial to explore FMA; see how to roam and use it. This way, we were able to test out the tipping feature with Coil users while they get to know FMA right away.

We invited FMA artists and members to get their free MozFest 2022 ticket with their free 6-month membership, a great initiative to introduce Coil to new users, especially to creators. There are FMA artists that became Coil users for the first time to try it out the tipping feature which has a great influence on how they will continue to perceive Coil and Web Monetization as creators. Inviting both subgroups to try out the other side helps a lot in strengthen the community.

The FMA Team added a BOSE Noise Canceling Earbuds as winning prize for the first FMA artist or member to submit the correct answer. FMA artist; Siddartha Corcus is the winner of the first FMA Treasure Hunt!

Thank you FMA team for these epic earbuds! I’ll be sure to put them to good use, and hopefully they will inspire more and better music! Wishing you all the best from sunny Portugal… - Siddhartha

Siddartha Corcus is a Coil Creator, you can show him support with your Coil membership on his FMA artist page! Don't forget to take the FMA Treasure Hunt with your Coil Membership right here!

The FMA Treasure Hunt is another strategy and tooling that we will continue to use to take online users on curated journeys on Free Music Archive. This way we can highlight web monetized pages on FMA and put spotlights on FMA Artist pages with monetization enabled. Read more in the FMA Treasure Hunt Action Plan for MozFest 2022 below.

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

Hessel van Oorschot for Free Music Archive ・ Feb 27 ・ 5 min read

#actionplan #music #webmonetization #mozfest

The tipping feature was right on time as one of our main objectives is to directly communicate, help and onboard 1000 musicians to monetize their FMA artist pages. For this objective, we created the FMA Next Club for the first 1000 musicians interested in monetization and new tooling's for their FMA pages.

New FMA Events

In true FMA fashion, reaching out to the FMA community to gather insights for FMA has always been a valuable approach for the FMA team. We scheduled an informal kick-off session for FMA artists on Google Meet where we invited the FMA artists and explained a bit more about the FMA Next Project.

During the kick-off, FMA artists got updates on FMA rebuild and informed of the perks and tooling's they could expect on their new upcoming FMA artist page(s). Their feedback and input is essential as this continues to be an opportunity to co-create the ideal online experience for self-releasing musicians, their fans and the professionals they want to reach.

Before we could continue gather insights and update FMA artists, it was important to also do an FMA communication check to see how and where FMA artists prefer to meet up. With a quick FMA survey, we asked FMA artists which type of FMA event they would participate in.

55% - online FMA presentations with the option to chat and ask questions
52% - virtual round tables with the FMA team & FMA Next Members
48% - Online video meet ups with FMA team directly
35% - virtual meetups with FMA Members to hangout and share ideas

Since direct communication with FMA artists is top priority, we put our focus first on the FMA artists that selected direct online meet up with FMA team, to meet up and assist them right away, by answering their questions and updating them about our objectives for the coming months. It was then time to organize an FMA event.

However, before we hosted our own FMA Artist Community Call, we were eager to participate in our first Grant for The Web community call for FMA, where we were able to introduce FMA to new grantees, share the FMA journey and lessons learned.

Read more about the Grant for Web FMA community call below.

Free Music Archive Community Call

Meghan Laclé for Free Music Archive ・ Apr 26 ・ 2 min read

#community #discuss #music #webmonetization

The FMA team was now ready to reach out to FMA artists and invite them to an FMA presentation with the option to chat and ask question. These artists insights gives FMA team a clear overview of the structure for new FMA events and calls to come:

Virtual FMA Round Table where we will invite FMA artists, especially those with monetization enabled pages and have a open panel discussion together with other FMA artists, to focus on the need and value for the growth of monetization for creators.
Virtual FMA Meetup with FMA members to hangout and converse with each other, with the main focus on gathering insights on how we can start strengthen the FMA community between artists and users and increase more support for all creators on FMA.

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

During the Grant for the Web FMA community call, we also premiered the 2nd episode of Music Insiders by Free Music Archive podcast with FMA artist guest; Simon Mathewson/ Nul Tiel Records.

Get to know another FMA artist in the second episode of Music Insiders with our Head of Music; Marko and FMA artist; Simon. All background music used in the episode are original music by Nul Tiel Records available on Free Music Archive.

Next to FMA events and calls, the Music Insiders podcast is a new FMA tooling to introduce and communicate web monetized opportunities for artists, add spotlight to FMA Artist with monetization enable pages and grow new audiences and users for FMA, therefore potential new Coil members and creators.

New FMA Objective

As Free Music Archive is hosting unlimited amounts of CC licensed music while the musicians can enable web monetization on their artist, album and song page, we know we must continue to do more.

We will continue to keep an open-door policy to all artists, musicians and members that has any advice and suggestions for FMA.

Inside FMA - Chapter 6

Meghan Laclé — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 20:32:10 +0000

In this short article, FMA Team shares inside updates, outcomes and follow ups related to the rebuild of the global iconic music service: Free Music Archive.

Chapter 6

The FMA team is proud to be able to continue this journey with Grant for the Web. The FMA mission remains clear; create sustainable spaces & systems in favor of independent creators to continue creating and sharing original music online.

One of our main objectives to research during our first project with Grant for the Web, was the communication of Coil to new users and creators. Observing the Web Monetization Community was and is essential to our research for implementing Web Monetization to FMA.

Learning from the Community

It was important for us to analyze specific strategies that were and are used to communicate and introduce Coil to online users. We explored services with Coil and noted down the manner and keywords those services used to share Coil to their users, this data we gathered and published on the Web Monetization Community portal titled FMA Explores How To Introduce Coil To Users.

We got important examples and different directions to look at but all these services had one thing in common, and that is that they tweaked and adjusted their keywords to relate and/or match their target audiences and online environment.

Free Music Archive has shown us the power it has created on the web throughout these years, with its leading position on search engines and constant traffic of online user exploring new music and musicians.

It was clear that in order to best reach FMA users and musicians, we had to continue to get to know as many as we can and research the immense traffic of FMA in more detail to better understand how and where we can reach more online users on FMA to introduce Web Monetization.

We began using services where we can track and analyze FMA keywords and gather insights on the monthly traffic on FMA. These tooling's have shown us in more detail, different pages on FMA that receives many visitors, fun fact; the most visited pages on FMA are the FMA genre pages with Instrumental, Christmas, Soundtrack and Hip-Hop Beats as top visited FMA pages.

With the same observation strategies as past research, we began analyzing top keywords opportunities and essential pages on FMA. We with this data, we can know and strategize our communication to monetize on FMA, not only for FMA musicians but also for more online users to follow.

New FMA Podcast

It’s no secret that a lot of podcaster uses FMA tracks for the background music of their episodes. We know this for a fact, after we activated an alert for Free Music Archive sightings on the web, the majority of alerts where podcasters sharing their content to the world and using FMA for their background music.

Next to researching and rebuilding FMA, the FMA team wanted to give the immense amount of daily visitors more FMA content to explore, enjoy and create new means to communicate Coil and Web Monetization to the FMA community, which is why an FMA podcast was a no brainer.

But before we could premiere the first episode, an intro and outro was needed, we didn’t have to look anywhere but at the giant FMA filled with talented artists and musicians.

We sent out an open call to all FMA artists and musicians;

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 intro and outro of Music Insiders by Free Music Archive podcast, FMA musicians submitted tracks, vocal or instrumental, no longer than 20 seconds and under the CC 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.

On the 10th of February 2022, Music Insiders by Free Music Archive podcast premiered on the Home Page of FMA with FMA artist; Ketsa as the first guest. Check out the first episode of Music Insiders with our Head of Music; Marko and FMA artist; Ketsa, all background music used in the episode are original music by Ketsa available on FMA. Ketsa is a Coil Creator, you can show him support with your Coil membership!

Our team was already aware of the amount of traffic the FMA Home Page receives with the amount of Listens the Featured Mixes have reached that we have published throughout the years on the FMA Home Page. Thus, publishing Music Insiders on the FMA Home Page would have guaranteed listeners.

Music Insiders by Free Music Archive podcast have now surpassed over one hundred eleven thousand listens, an added FMA tooling to use to communicate new Web Monetized opportunities for artists and continue to grow different audiences and users on FMA.

The Home Page of FMA is another strong tooling FMA is and will continue to use to add spotlight, highlight, introduce and bring forward web monetized opportunities for musicians on FMA and communicate Coil to new FMA users and listeners.

New FMA Objective

As Free Music Archive is hosting unlimited amounts of CC licensed music while the musicians can enable web monetization on their artist, album and song page, we know we must continue to do more.

We will continue to keep an open-door policy to all artists, musicians and members that has any advice and suggestions for FMA.

Inside FMA article series is back, but first an Inside FMA recap!

Meghan Laclé — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 20:26:24 +0000

Inside FMA - Chapter 1

In the first chapter, the FMA team tackles the big question: Does online music, perceived as free, can still create value these days?

After analyzing an earlier survey of more than 5,000 respondents, it is certain that FMA members benefited a lot from a free, open and fair platform like Free Music Archive. Users go to Free Music Archive to find original music for videos, films, podcasts, radio shows, games and even school projects.

But does the general public understand that free to access does not automatically mean it’s always free to use? And do artists uploading music to FMA expect a fair trade or just a ‘thumbs up’?

Inside FMA - Chapter 1

Hessel van Oorschot for Free Music Archive ・ Nov 19 '20 ・ 4 min read

#music #research #monetization

Inside FMA - Chapter 2

In the second chapter, the FMA team analyzes the perception of Free.

Today, Free Music Archive equals “free to access” and “free to download”. In many cases it also means “free to share, remix and build upon”. But users that access and downloads original music under Creative Commons licenses without any Creative Commons licenses must understand the basics before reusing the original music. This short guide, although well-written, is ignored too often.

Lesson learned: if you need to educate users, make sure the information is offered at the right moment.

Outcome: We will introduce the most relevant licensing information the moment someone hits the download button.

Inside FMA - Chapter 2

Hessel van Oorschot for Free Music Archive ・ Nov 19 '20 ・ 4 min read

#music #creativecommons #research #community

Inside FMA - Chapter 3

In the third chapter, the FMA team strives for the better so FMA can contribute to an open internet.

However, we must put emphasis on the importance to understand and value the creator behind the Creative Commons licensed music. This is next to our mission to continue to inform and educate online users to keep in mind;

Help musicians to understand licensing before they upload.
Help visitors to understand open content before they download.

Inside FMA - Chapter 3

Hessel van Oorschot for Free Music Archive ・ Nov 19 '20 ・ 3 min read

#upload #creativecommons #music #copyright

FMA Explores How to Introduce Coil to Users

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

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

The services mentioned are all from different industries and cater to different target groups, we believe in learning from all corners of the Coil community and not stay in one lane.

Read more in FMA Explores How to Introduce Coil to Users.

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

Inside FMA - Chapter 4

In the fourth chapter, the FMA team welcomes back FMA Curators.

First, we invited FMA musicians to claim their page, login and upload new music. Within months we reached out to FMA Netlabels with management tooling to co-work with FMA musicians and as of May 2021... Curator Tools are back!

There is no doubt that self-releasing, independent musicians are struggling to make money with live gigs and royalty payments generated by the major streaming music services. Free Music Archive and Tribe of Noise - two leading services for free to download, original music for over a decade - are committed to step up.

Inside FMA - Chapter 4

Meghan Laclé for Free Music Archive ・ Jul 26 '21 ・ 3 min read

#music #research #creators #curators

Inside FMA - Chapter 5

In the fifth chapter, the FMA team seeks new opportunities for artists.

As our team continues to improve FMA member pages, our main priority lies with FMA Artists, to have a suitable and fruitful space to share new albums and tracks. Free Music Archive already has an immense catalog to browser through, thank you to the growing number of artists and musicians on FMA, but the FMA team will not stop reaching out to new creators and introduce FMA; a space for creators to grow.

FMA Artists can already use Coil / web monetization on their FMA pages but a big step forward would be to introduce web monetization to the millions of FMA users.

We are focused and determined to build more web monetized solutions together with Grant For The Web, as we will continue to search for new doors to open for Free Music Archive & Tribe of Noise Artists!

Inside FMA - Chapter 5

Meghan Laclé for Free Music Archive ・ Sep 16 '21 ・ 4 min read

#music #community #creators

Free Music Archive — Grant Report #1

As some of you might know: Free Music Archive is an iconic platform and community attracting hundreds of thousands of people downloading 2-3TB of music every day. But FMA’s backend was broken. Today, we are extremely proud that FMA is hosting unlimited amounts of CC licensed music while the musicians can enable web monetization on their artist, album and song page.

A great example of giving back control to creators without compromising free and open access, people’s privacy and community norms.

Our road to success? This project is successful when Free Music Archive and Web Monetization enable creators to share content with the world under their own Creative Commons conditions and users can reward creativity, context and services.

Read more in the Free Music Archive Grant Report #1.

Free Music Archive — Grant Report #1

Hessel van Oorschot for Free Music Archive ・ Nov 30 '20 ・ 6 min read

#grantreports

Follow Free Music Archive for new Inside FMA chapters.

Five New Album Releases for the WM Community to explore and share!

Meghan Laclé — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 17:44:59 +0000

In our previous post, we shared that while rebuilding the FMA front end to integrate web monetization in our DNA, we are also initiating other projects to learn how we can help independent musicians to monetize their original songs.

Tribe of Noise, with financial support from Buma/Stemra and the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science, invited 5 musicians to create new music and explore a wide range of licensing models.

The five brand new music albums and tracks are here and ready to be explored, enjoyed and shared with the WM Community!

Besides the fact that Free Music Archive is hosting these new releases, we have more great news; all artists agreed to license the songs on these albums; over 40 new tracks, to YouTubers, podcasters, and other media makers via commercial licenses on Tribe of Noise PRO.

And there's more! Our Head of Music, Marko, put together a brand new FMA mix for you to get a taste of the new albums: FMA Fresh Dutch Vibes Vol. 2 Mix You can read more about this great initiative in this brand new FMA Blogpost and explore the new albums below!

Berlin To Bamako by Dieter van der Westen
Commercial Use? Go to ToN PRO
Free to Share? Go to FMA

Mentallogenic by Alex Figueira
Commercial Use? Go to ToN PRO
Free to Share? Go to FMA

CASLO Vol. 1 by Caslo
Commercial Use? Go to ToN PRO
Free to Share? Go to FMA

Another Day by Another Day
Commercial Use? Go to ToN PRO
Free to Share? Go to FMA

Het regent in Europa by Jules FK
Commercial Use? Go to ToN PRO
Free to Share? Go to FMA

All tracks on these albums can be found on Free Music Archive (FMA) under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial No-Derivatives 4.0 License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Are you interested in using one of these tracks commercially? You will find direct links on the FMA artist pages to the specific Tribe of Noise PRO albums and tracks.

The FMA Team

5 Artists Creating New Music & Fresh Opportunities!

Meghan Laclé — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:31:34 +0000

While Free Music Archive is rebuilding the front end to integrate web monetization in our DNA, we are initiating other projects to learn how we can help independent musicians to monetize their original songs.

Here is a great example of new inspiring upcoming content to be shared and monetized.

Tribe of Noise, with financial support from Buma/Stemra and the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science, invited 5 musicians to create new music and explore a wide range of licensing models.

Dieter van der Westen, Alex Figueira (Music Got Soul), JulesFK, Calso, and another Day, all based in The Netherlands, are finalizing their albums right now. Unique artists, with totally different journeys who happen to have something in common: the ability to create music from scratch and make clever choices about distribution and licensing.

The mantra of this project was: You create, you decide!

Tribe of Noise’s Head of Music, Marko Roca, explains: “We work with a combination of copyright law, non-exclusive exploitation agreements, and the global standard for sharing, Creative Commons. This combination gives artists maximum flexibility. They can share music under their own terms and at the same time make money via fair, transparent business models.”

All 5 artists agreed to freely share the albums on the popular Free Music Archive and offer the songs for commercial licensing opportunities to YouTubers, podcasters, and other media creators on Tribe of Noise PRO. Last but not least, they still have the ability to receive royalty payments for other use cases via their performing rights organization Buma/Stemra.

Marko continues: “During this project, we sat down to share the possibilities, talk about the different ways in which music licenses can be explored, and learn from each other's experiences. We also checked in from time to time while they were recording with session artists, trying different lyrics or reshaping the melodies. What we heard was very promising!”

Stay tuned for the new upcoming albums!

Curious about Vol.1? Get a taste of Vol 1. in the Fresh Dutch Vibes Mix & check out the four amazing albums, all original music with over 30 fresh tracks ready to be discovered on Free Music Archive and ready to license for media projects on Tribe of Noise PRO!

Free Music Archive Community Call

Meghan Laclé — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 09:22:34 +0000

Hi,

The FMA team would like to thank Grant for The Web and Ayesha for helping us host the FMA Community Call.

Thank you to all participants that joined us on the 19th of April! We shared ideas, suggestions and received valuable input for Free Music Archive.

During the FMA Community Call, the attendees shared ideas and input via Miro Board, where we asked 3 questions:

When using internet services, do you (dis)like specific reward / payment systems?

A participant liked and suggested: Brave Attention Tokens - it's built into the browser

Related to Coil: which web monetization mechanism is great and what do you still miss? Any suggestions?

One participant stated: Ability to condition access to content based on the price the creator wants

The floor is yours. What would you like to change for independent creatives online? How would you like to empower them?

Another participant recommended: Identity services - I am who I say I am

Visit the Miro Board to check the rest of the suggestions and add your input for Free Music Archive too!

The Miro board is open and active for suggestions and feedback from the Web Monetization Community.

FMA Community Call Miro Board: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVO7q0ttM=/

Incase a password is asked: fmanext

Thank you again to all participants! Our doors are always open for new connections with Grant For The Web grantees!

Any further questions, suggestions, recommendation or feedback, please feel free to contact: meghan@tribeofnoise.com | hessel@tribeofnoise.com

FMA Publications
Inside FMA Chapter 1
Inside FMA Chapter 2
Inside FMA Chapter 3
Inside FMA Chapter 4
Inside FMA Chapter 5
FMA Explores How To Introduce Coil To Users
Free Music Archive - Grant Report #1
FMA's Treasure Hunt - MozFest 2022 Web Monetization Action Plan

FMA Links
Visit FMA
Explore the FMA Homepage
Check out the FMA Charts
Get to know an FMA Artist
Follow FMA on Web Monetized Community
Try out the FMA WM Treasure Hunt
Get to know Tribe of Noise
License all rights included music?

Inside FMA - Chapter 5

Meghan Laclé — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 09:26:24 +0000

In this short article, FMA Team shares inside updates, outcomes and follow ups related to the rebuild of the global iconic music service: Free Music Archive The mission remains clear; create sustainable spaces & systems in favor of independent creators to continue creating and sharing original music online.

Chapter 5

As our team continues to improve FMA member pages, our main priority lies with FMA Artists, focusing on making sure they have a suitable and fruitful space to share new albums and tracks. Free Music Archive already has an immense catalog to browser through, thank you to the growing number of artists and musicians on FMA, but the FMA team will not stop reaching out to new creators and introduce FMA; a space for creators to grow.

FMA Invites New Artists

FMA already has countless musicians and artists all over the world creating music and sharing their talents with online users in need of original music. Even so, FMA must continue to reach out to new artists to inform, update and introduce new opportunities.

Recently, we invited more than 500+ new artists that has submitted their music to FMA in the past. Now FMA has gained 200+ new independent artists & musicians and the numbers keep growing. This means more completely new music in all kind’s genres on FMA for media makers to use for their projects.

Now new artists and musicians can easily sign up for a new Free Music Archive account & have the complete control and rights to upload and manage their music on FMA. Don't miss out and join FMA to share your music with online users around the world. To create your own FMA artist account, please follow the FMA steps & instructions here.

FMA Seeks New Opportunities for Artists

While rebuilding FMA, we recognize the need to create and/or find new opportunities and possibilities for all FMA creators to be able to benefit from.

In an effort to push forward more music productions and make way for new music to be shared, our team is proud to be part of the direct financial support from rights organization Buma/Stemra and the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science for their initiative, an investment fund for music, to help support artists and music publishers based in the Netherlands.

We invited multiple talented musicians to participate, supervised by Tribe's Head of Music; Marko Roca, who challenged each artist to create something different, unique for this project and the result speaks for itself.

4 amazing new albums with completely new original music! Over 30 new fresh tracks are ready to be discovered on Free Music Archive and ready to license for media projects on Tribe of Noise PRO.

Check out the brand-new albums and explore these amazing artists and musicians with the FMA Fresh Dutch Vibes Mix put together by our own Head of Music; Marko Roca.

We also managed reach out to 800+ FMA artists to ask for possible examples of their music featured in a (social) media campaign for a consumer brand, in order for FMA and Tribe of Noise to participate in a request for proposal for a Global Beauty Brand.

Our goal is to become a preferred music provider for future media productions on television, radio, social media, live and out of home entertainment. Another exciting opportunity for FMA artists to get their music out there.

FMA Team will continue to search for new doors to open for Free Music Archive & Tribe of Noise Artists!

For the next half of 2021, we are focused and determined to build more web monetized solutions together with Grant For The Web, an organization that values online creators and are working hard towards a more sustainable ecosystem of internet. FMA Artists can already use Coil / web monetization on their FMA artist, album and song pages but a big step forward would be to introduce web monetization to the millions of FMA users.

Our next steps?

As the FMA journey continues, we want to do our best to ensure our support for FMA musicians to bring forward their value in the music industry, in societies, cultures and around the world. Our team strives to rightly inform and guide users on FMA.

We will continue to keep an open-door policy to all artists, musicians and members that has any advice and suggestions for FMA. Part of this rebuild journey is to walk alongside the FMA community, introduce them to new exciting developments and new opportunities.

Coil.com?

Coil is a fun way to enjoy original (premium) content from journalists, musicians, photographers, game developers, podcasters and many other creatives. With your Coil Creator account enabled in your browser, small amounts of money will travel from your account to the content creator. All-you-can-consume-content. You never pay more than $5 for a month access to tons of creative content while supporting the creators. More information? https://coil.com