What is TuneFreq?

TuneFreq is a better and fairer music streaming service built by independent artists - for independent artists.

Our unconditional and eternal promise

100% of profits paid to artists
$0 for artists to upload music
No investors - our artists are our investors and our investment
No ads
App available on all platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android)
Lengthy free trial for the app
Fair pricing for the app

Can you answer my concerns?

Hopefully we can answer most of your questions here, but if there's something we haven't addressed, please get in touch with us, and we will answer you publicly on our blog so that everyone can benefit.

Who is TuneFreq for?

TuneFreq is for:

Independent musicians wanting to publish their art, and;
Listeners wanting to appreciate independent music.

Why are you creating another music streaming service?

The business model of current streaming services is for-profit. As a result, artists are second class citizens, well below investors and shareholders. TuneFreq is a fairer and better option that pays 100% of profits to the artists.

Simply, as artists with a tech background, we have the skills to build a better music streaming service, so that's what we're doing.

How much does it cost?

For artists: FREE. FOREVER.

For listeners:

Free tier: $0 (enjoy music that artists choose to make available for free)
Unlimited tier: $10USD per month (listen to all music)
30 day free trial of the unlimited tier

I want to upload my own music and also listen to other artists, what then?

It will always be free to upload your own music, then to listen to other artists you can use the free tier or pay for the unlimited tier.

How much do you pay the artist?

100% of profit is paid to the artists.

How do you calculate how much an artist is paid?

First, some definitions are required:

Artists are paid monthly
Revenue = app subscription income + donations
Expenses = outgoing money required to operate the organisation
Stream = a song playing from the start and for greater than 90% of its duration

At the end of every month:

The artist payment pool is calculated as revenue minus expenses
The total streams across all artists is calculated
The total streams for each individual artist is calculated
The number of streams each artist has as a percentage of the total is calculated
The artist payout is calculated
The artist is paid via electronic bank transfer

For example, how much would the artist "QuadBeats" get paid in September 2024?

Window: September 1 2024 to September 30 2024 inclusive
Payment pool: $300,000 revenue minus $100,000 expenses = $200,000
Total streams for all artists: 1,000,000
Total streams for all QuadBeats songs: 20,000
QuadBeats streams as a percentage of total streams: 20,000 / 1,000,000 = 2%
Payment for QuadBeats: 2% of $200,000 = $4,000
NOTE: The values of these numbers are only an example. Once we are operating we will change this example to use values that represent the current financial state of the system.

Are there minimum thresholds on streams or payments?

No. Every artist and every stream is paid, no matter how small.

When is it available?

There are 3 main milestones we aim to achieve:

Community feedback and viability (IN PROGRESS)
Artist onboarding and music uploading (commencing Q1 2024)
Listener engagement (commencing Q2 2024)

What does it offer?

Listeners can:

Enjoy music and videos created by independent artists
Create their own playlists
Browse organic (not paid or promoted) lists such as new artists, popular artists, artists by genre
Search for artists, albums, songs
Chat with artists
Purchase physical media (CD, Cassette, Vinyl)
Purchase merchanise
Store music locally in the app (for offline enjoyment)

Artists can (via their dedicated artist dashboard):

Upload and edit albums, songs, and videos (any genre, any length, albums, EPs, singles, live concerts)
View metrics including how many plays each song has and what countries are listening
Edit your own artist website
Chat with fans (if you choose to offer this)
Sell physical media (CD, Cassette, Vinyl)
Sell merchandise
Chat with TuneFreq support

Will you accept outside investment?

No.

Investors demand a return on investment, which means profits go to investors, not to artists.

Artists are the true investment.

We will accept donations, and they will be added to the pool of funds paid to artists.

Will you ever include ads in the app?

No, no, no. Never. Not in a billion years, not for a billion dollars.

Ads are philosophically opposed to everything we believe in.

Will you sell TuneFreq once it's popular?

No, we have no intention of selling TuneFreq now, or in the future. There is no exit strategy.

Our strategy is to build the platform that we, as artists, want. Selling to someone else means that there's a risk of that vision being corrupted, and that would serve no good.

We aren't building a music platform to get rich - we are building it because artists need it.

Will you make mistakes?

Yes. We are human. Mistakes are how we learn.

But when we make a mistake, we will publicly:

admit to it
be transparent about it
analyse the cause of it
find a way to become better

How can we trust you?

We are proposing to register TuneFreq as an Australian not-for-profit. This requires us BY LAW to be transparent, all profits to be used for the benefit of the members, and to be regulated by the Australian government.

NOTE: There are challenges associated with operating as a not-for-profit, and we are taking legal and financial advice on this at the moment.

Regardless of our corporate structure, we will be publicly held accountable to our eternal promise (at the top of this page).

What kinds of things are you spending money on?

Once we are operating we will have a public page available outlining our full financials.

Some of the things we spend money on are:

Staff salaries for roles such as admin, operation, support, development
Server hosting (Amazon Web Services)
Marketing

Our goal is to keep expenses as low as possible, while ensuring growth (more listeners means more revenue to the artist) and stability of operations (e.g. paying for redundant servers so the service remains online)

Do you make deals with labels and/or pay them licensing fees?

We do not pay licensing fees to labels.

We will only deal with a label if they:

Are owned by the artist themselves, or;
Retain no rights to the artist’s music (that is, the artist owns their art), and pass 100% of fees directly to the artist, without exception.

Our platform is designed to make it easy for artists to self-publish, but we understand that some artists like to use labels because they can provide marketing and distribution value. That’s fine. Ultimately our goal is to allow the artist to get their music listened to, and to receive full and fair payment.

Will you publish AI generated music?

Updated: 28th October 2023

The AI music landscape looks terrifying, but is still a vague shadow lurking in the corner. Until it comes fully into the light, we won’t know whether we should be fearful or not.

The current state-of-the-art in AI is such that a human still has significant input into the process of creating music, so we aren’t seeing 100% machine-generated music en-masse yet.

Our current position is that we will only publish music that a human has substantially contributed to (for example if you played keys, played guitar, but used an AI generated drum track, that's OK).

This is going to be a wavering and fast moving topic though, so watch this space, and please feel free to (rationally) join in the conversation and contribute your ideas.

How do you mitigate against artists abusing the system for their own profit.

Unfortunately every system that provides financial benefit is subject to abuse.

The 2 main ways an artist can abuse the system are by:

Using bots or humans to produce fake listens, and;
Creating lots of very short songs (e.g. 10-30 seconds) to produce more “unique streams”, whereby the artist gets paid “per stream”.

In the first case, we have some technical ideas on how to detect fake streams.

In the second case, one possible solution is to pay artists per minute of listening. In which case a 5 minute song is just as valuable as 10 x 30 second songs.

In both cases, there will be an option for listeners to report an artist, album, or song.

We hope that our desire to do good is reflected in the artists that use our system, and any abuse is accidental and very rare. Any time and money we spend fighting abuse is time and money we would prefer to spend benefiting honest artists.

Criminals will always evolve their methods, so if you have ideas on how to fight abuse of the system, we are all ears!

What happens when a song is reported?

A real human will investigate all reports.

When a report is received, it will be reviewed in context. For example, if there is only a single report, and the evidence is underwhelming, benefit of the doubt will be given. In the case of multiple corroborating reports, the outcome will generally be conclusive.

When an artist needs to be disciplined, a real human will contact the artist, and a real conversation will take place in order to resolve the transgression.

Punishments are yet to be decided (please contribute your thoughts) but may consist of fines, permanent or temporary artist/album/song removal, or something like a 3-strike system.

Will you use algorithms to suggest artists/albums/songs?

At this stage, no, with one exception.

We believe that a listener is the best curator of their own music, and they will be able to build their own playlists and favourite artists. In addition to those manually created lists, there is value in the listener receiving organic recommendations (as opposed to promoted recommendations).

I (Brendan) have discovered lots of amazing new artists thanks to the “if you liked X then you might like Y” recommendation engines. Jon Hopkins lead me to Rival Consoles which lead me to Principleasure (an artist who I fear I would have never found on my own).

We do maintain a recommendation network in the database, and that will be used to provide organic value to the listeners.

Other lists, such as “Popular Artists” or “New Artists” aren’t algorithmic in nature, and so will likely be included for listeners to browse.

Additionally, we will have a regular “Featured Artist” article here on the website in order to help promote artists.

What metrics or telemetry do you record?

Most importantly, we absolutely do not (and will never) share or sell your data.

We are personally opposed to tracking on the web, so we've tried to keep what we record to the absolute minimum required to benefit the artist.

We record:

Your email address and name when you first register.
A counter for the number of times a song is played. We record this so that artists know which of their songs is most popular.
The IP address of the location each song is played. This is anonymous, and not linked to a user account in any way. We record the IP address because it helps us detect fraudulent streaming.
The country of the location each song is played. This is also anonymous. We record this so that artists can see on a world map what countries are enjoying their music. This can help artists know what countries to tour live shows in.

We do not:

Share your data with anyone.
Sell your data to anyone.
Use 3rd party analytics (e.g. Google Analytics)
Use 3rd party tracking pixels in newsletters or marketing.

My question isn’t answered here or I want to improve some of your answers

Please contact us below, and we will reply to you via email as well as publish our response on our blog.

The only way to build the best music streaming service is by having conversations with you (our artists and listeners) to find out what you really want. So please, we’d love to hear from you.

Are you interested in TuneFreq?

If TuneFreq sounds like something that can make a positive difference, and you'd like to be involved, please register your details below.

Why register? When we launch:

Artists will receive a streamlined onboarding experience
Listeners will receive a bonus free trial period and fixed pricing for life

Thank you :)

Hi, my name is Brendan, and I'm the founder of TuneFreq. My heart tells me that music streaming can be better for artists, and that I have an opportunity to improve it.

TuneFreq is my effort to put the artist back at the core of music streaming, and to improve the experience for everyone, but especially for the artist - without whom there would be no music at all.

I don't want to get rich, I want to be of service.

I hope you can come with me on this journey, because I can't do it without you.

Hugs and high fives,
Brendan