Community Pulse Check - Patreon

Glitchpulser Discussion
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We’re putting the word out to our members, because we want to keep you involved. We plan to create a Patreon page. As members of this community, what would you pay $1, $5, or even $10 a month for if we provided it? After all, you guys are our most dedicated members, so if you wouldn’t pay for anything, then who else would?

Is anyone here a member of someone else’s Patreon page and what do you benefit from that?

Based on what you have seen in the past 10 months of our label’s evolution, what would you like to see more, (or less) of?

Before you ask, the Open Genre Comps is here to stay, but it will be run slightly differently. Consider the comp ALWAYS open for entries, either from this community, or friends of this community. We are always listening in the Listening Booth and we aim to release once a year. If entries become more plentiful, then that may work up to twice a year.

Send us your thoughts and ideas. We’d like to hear it, and build based on those. You are the driving force :slight_smile:

Edit: $10 teir gets you access to me doing Lose Yourself rap videos @SUBQUiRE ha!

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I’ll just throw some shit out there:

  • Jams
  • Tutorials and workflow hacks
  • Sound design sessions
  • Modular or hardware fuckery
  • Artist interviews

Maybe it’s just me, but all of these YT and Patreon channels drifting toward philosophical and existential shit (cough, benn jordan and venus theory) is just not getting people into the spirit of jamming, and there’s a pretty big void that might be easy to fill

Although with that said, my patreon page has only ‘free’ tier subscribers, so don’t listen to me :slight_smile:

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I sub to 1 patreon atm - Colugo for Blockhead DAW 5$ a month. I feel 5$ a month is a perfect price point. Home dude regularly posts updated versions and seems like a generally nice dude.

I like the idea of giveaways - like a plug in or a cheap-ish pedal thats around 100$ or something per 6 months to a year depending on subscription numbers

Maybe custom sample packs?

I kinda feel like the “pay to promote” thing is not cool - but eh that may be just me.

Just riffing here yall.

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Thank you both for your input, i will digest this and formulate a response.

I’ve been trying to figure out what you mean by this but I can’t. Are you saying that it’s not cool to ask fans to pay for your stuff, or not cool for anyone to have to pay to promote their stuff?

Or are you speaking about something specific, like instagram ads or patreon as a concept?

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Thinking back on it that may have been not the correct thing to say. I kinda forgot where I was going with that statement.

I think I was going for “hey ill pay ya money if you promote my stuff” ala instagram and facebook style ad’s.

I really dig that this forum does not have ad’s - yall do the little sticky at the top of whats being currently released and thats about it.

Werdz and feelingz are hard.

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Here are just a few ideas.

Behind the scenes type things (interviews, track walkthroughs, artist deep dives)
Tutorials
production related tips and tricks in video.
Artist presets / samples (or other assets for music making)
Artist stems
Discounts for upcoming GP releases. Or early access to those releases.
You get to potentially pick themes for forum compilations. (Maybe like a raffle system or something)

I don’t know if this is what @mundainmonstre maybe meant, but I would NOT like to see special treatment from GP for artists or potential artists. Ie, if you pay, you’re more likely to have your music released on the label or get more promotional material put out for your work, things like that. In the end I think that sort of thing should fall solely on talent and not be a pay-to-play sort of thing.

It’s not really a concern from me.

I will say that I feel like many of those things already exists for free on the forum though. (Stems, samples, presets, tutorials, etc) so it kinda makes me wonder how we would make the offer look tasty enough.

Also, as far as things like potentially having the labels artists contribute directly or indirectly to patreon content; I feel like things like sample packs, presets, stems, interviews, video tutorials are all of those kinds of take between some and a-lot-of time. We would potentially be taking a good amount of time to do those, and then in a sense “donating” those things to the label so the label can make some money. (Not necessarily a bad thing)

I’m not opposed to this to try and help get things moving, but at some point there will likely have to be some sort of payback or compensation to artists or other contributors that do this, otherwise I fear that no matter the intentions of the artists or label or other contributors, the endeavor wouldn’t be sustainable.

Just food for thought, I don’t think any of us on the label are really doing it for the money, but in reality there is only so much we can contribute when we all have other full time jobs and lives to live.

Again, just want to be clear, I’m not opposed to a patreon, but the label should try and recognize all the potential challenges it can before undertaking something like that so that there is at least a good awareness.

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Good points all around. I was going to recommend the potential of contributing as well, but once I ran it through my head I decided not to. You said it better than I could’ve, and I genuinely like the idea of contributing to something so that it grows in size and allows more of those things to become feasible, if it ever does.

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This is 100% the biggest issue behind most problems with the forum/label.

As for Patreon …

Good suggestions so far. I don’t have any others. Just as an objective statement, it isn’t something that would interest me. However, I would most likely sign up on some level just to be a booster.

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I realized that i never actually responded to the actual questions that you posted.

I’d be willing to go somewhere in that range for sure. I’d probably be ok to toss in 10$ a month, personally.

I had several subscriptions until recently. My household did a budget reset so i cancelled all of them. One of them was music and the others were just artists and content creators I wanted to support. Benefits ranged from tutorials, giveaways, exclusive content like unreleased music and art, sample packs, discounts on some products occasionally, etc, etc.

I think the label needs to find new ways to expose and promote itself. Targeted ads on social media are probably not a terrible idea, and funds from Patreon could potentially go towards such an endeavor. We’ve got some good talent here I think we just need to get it out to the world a bit more strategically.

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No idea about the Patreon world tbh and my time and budget at the moment is very limited, but I could help out with samples if you want to sell sample packs or offer it for patreon. I remember that we did one sample pack as a label release a while back - the second one didn’t have enough subs IIRC but maybe that would be different now. I think many of us make a lot of samples, so that shouldn’t be a problem. Stems for tracks, custom tutorials or teaching sessions with IDMf artists might be other ideas for Patreon? I’m sometimes doing tutorials on audio and game dev stuff, so i would be up for contributing something if there is some interest and this becomes a thing…

Starting some form of regular podcast or magazine with tutorials, Interviews of artists (including non-IDMf) might be another idea, might increase impact and interest in general - even though much additional work of course… just some ideas ^^

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Not an Eminem Rap Video

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This is a great idea, honestly.

I’d be willing to contribute to the cause, although my content is very left-field and probably not something that would really entice anyone. But, maybe once all of the normal bases are covered :wink:

I’d be interested in this for sure. Your tutorials are always awesome

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Thanks man! I think you have a lot of stuff to contribute, I saw some of your jams and you always show interesting stuff including nice sound design and crazy modular stuff. Also an extremely huge sample library I’m sure :smile:

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If it’s possible to set it up with options for one time payments as well, I think some would prefer that over automatic monthly payments. The option to pay for one year or half a year, for example.

Access to exclusive tracks or mixes would be attractive, maybe in the form of monthly podcasts. Members of the community could be asked to send stuff in for something like that, which would also give them an incentive to listen.

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This, a million times this. I despise subscriptions. Paying for a year or 6 months in one go would be great.

I currently have only one Patreon subscription, to cEvin Key’s. I decided to go with that when SP finally stopped existing (end last year). What cEvin does is post demos, odds & ends, as well as do a weekly (Sunday) live chat with a guest or going over a specific topic.

I considered that $60 a year is not all that much (I pay $5 a month) and I grabbed all the demos I wanted. As I expected, I never really find time to watch the live chats. I’ve watched 3-4 max. So I could stop my subscription already but I don’t mind helping cEvin so I keep it open.

So that’s the thing: I’m not sure I would get much out of a IDMf Patreon, mostly because I don’t have much time to allocate to that. Fun fact: I just purchased the whole IDMf discography on Bandcamp (finally got around to do that) as a support gesture, knowing full well that I’m likely to never listen to all the albums/EPs it contains…

There’s just too much music and nowhere near enough time because full-time job, wife, friends and energy levels being way lower than they used to be…

With all that said, I’m always happy to support independent artists if I can and IDMf rules. I think @Manton has been doing a tremendous job re-animating a forum that was flat-lining and I tip my hat to you, Sir Nick.

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I’m glad you brought this up. I understand subscriptions are a point of contention amongst a lot of people, so it’s good to hear this side of it. I guess what it boils down to is, if you like what people are doing and you have the means, it makes sense to support them, so they keep doing it! Thanks for grabbing the discog. Even that is such a massive help. Respect.

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i do: 6 artists, an indie station, and an artist. Was 10 but two creators stood up their own subscription service off the platform.

In terms of benefits it’s a pretty wide range which is one of the things i like. range from demos of songs that are getting released, behind the scenes photos/videos, monthly Q&A, yearly merch (one artist sends out a vinyl release each year at the level i’m at). but none of them are a community like this one so it’s hard to do a comparison.

For a community though i would think the benefits could be fun. here’s just some ideas:

  1. discount code for all digital releases (free at some tiers maybe?)
  2. artist track of the month w/interview?
  3. monthly sample library/pack
  4. zoom chat sessions (could be every month) for members to chat with members
  5. quarterly artist interview. could just be over email with members’ questions
  6. maybe a yearly bracket elimination challenge? could be as simple as a random pick of style/theme/etc. say there’s 10 people, that would be 5 pairs to compete for best 30s clip at the end of say a week? just thinking outloud
  7. a growing repository of tutorials, production tips, etc. the key here is to have it organized/tagged well to find things quickly.
  8. as mentioned, 6 and or 12 month discounts on the subscription.

I don’t like the idea of preferential treatment for supporting, but anything you offer is exactly that. Maybe instead it’s access to content sooner. So like “sample packs” are available to certain tiers a month (or 6) earlier? but @Guy_Wachtel pointed out that all of this is time consuming and someone would need to do it. and relying on only donated content isn’t really sustainable. so i would ask, what is the main motivation of doing a patreon? what would it take to make doing patreon break even? is it to try and have funds to expand the community? target ads? etc?

would i join a patreon? most likely, even if it was only to help put some money behind supporting a community i’m a member of.

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Fellow cEvin Key supporter here. Been there since the beginning and i rarely do the sunday chats but i love that he’s been doing them damn near every sunday for five years. the album retrospectives have been really good (if i watch its usually later).

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Yep, the album ones I’ve found to be the most interesting as well.

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Great post & the quoted above are very good questions indeed. Been wondering about that.

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