FRANCE, April the 17th, 2020,

Dear music lovers, music makers, dj's and friends,

When I wanted to buy music to support my fellows music producers, I realized that with the overload of music available and my plight situation due to this health crisis, i had no other choice than being a lot more selective with the amount of tracks or album I would have liked to purchase.

With a radical cut on all live acts and dj sets fees, our economic system reveals its weaknesses. Only a few of us are able to make a living.
As independent artists, what would allow us to face such an unexpected critical situation ? the answer is more than obvious : a regular income would let us breathe and bring us a little bit more security.

The direction to follow was now clear. Let's imagine a limited edition based on timeline instead of numbers, continuously renewed for music lovers and sustainable for the artists...
After some worktime and putting things together, let me introduce you to System Overload State - S\O\S.

To start, this project consists of a Bandcamp label account following 4 simple rules :

• 100% of all downloads income payed directly to the artists.
• A part of each artist music work (chosen by him) will be available exclusively by subscription plan. Subscriptions incomes will be split equally between all the artists (minus label expenses*) and paid in a monthly basis.
• Artists are free to remix each other whithin the label. It's up to them to propose the remixes via download on both accounts (artist & remixer) or exclusively on subscription plan.
• With consent of the Artist, Music will be released on others streaming plateform 1 year later.

To do the maths :
Let's suppose 100 artists bring 20 of their followers per country (based on 36 countries of OCDE) to a subscription. So we have 72 000 subscribers (100 x 20 x 36). Let's take a fair Bandcamp monthly subscription of 5 €. So it's (72 000 x 5) 360 000 € income/month.
To be sustainable, an organisation should spend more or less 1/5 of its global revenu, so let's take project expenses for 70 000 €, it's 290 000 € net income.
Result is : 180 000 € shared between 100 artists = 2 900 / month / artist. Now you add on this each download income payed directly to each artist, and of course their already existing revenu environment.

At the top of a vast world of expression, freedom to control balance of the avaibility of their Music between download and subsription only, as well as (re)mixing, (re)editing, (re)arranging freely between them, the equal and monthly share of subscription revenues will provide to artists financial security and above all will help those most affected by this situation.
Now it's up to us to see how this project will evolve, however we have a choice to give this system the opportunity to become a serious base on which arists could find peace of mind or/and a regular extra income, and for music lovers, a direct and unique acces to dedicated music.

Bruno

• * Starting expenses are : bandcamp royalties & subcrition fees + paypal payment fees + daily management work & communication (1 person to start).
• * As the core of the project is the equal share of subscription revenues, expenses in the future (new website, artwork or video, extra collaborators needed, R&D...) will be to be discussed and decided by vote in a common groung, and in a short future an online page will also inform everybody in real time global number of subscriptions. All this to be as transparent as possible.

how ? back home
music makers, join us ! music lovers, subscribe !