How artists will be paid

Hearhood is free today: nobody pays for it and nobody is paid by it. A payment model is in the works. This page says exactly where things stand, so that nobody reads more into it than there is.

Today

• Nothing is charged and nothing is paid. There is no subscription, no advertising income shared with anyone, and no artist is paid for plays.
• Members can upload their own recordings to their member page. The artist keeps every right. Hearhood asks for a non-exclusive permission to stream the file to visitors, nothing more, and never uses it to train AI.
• Nobody is asked to pay to be here, to upload, or to be found. That will not change.
• This page gives no numbers about members, listeners or money, and names no labels, collecting societies or platforms as partners. There are none to name yet, and a number that exists only to impress would be the wrong start.

The principles the model is built on

The agreements and the software behind a real payment are not finished. These are the rules they are being written to meet; when the model launches, the actual rates will be published here before any money moves.

1. Money follows listening. What a listener pays goes to the artists that listener actually played, not into one big pool split by market share. 2. The split is published. Every percentage between the listener's payment and the artist's statement is on this page, with what each deduction is for (tax, payment costs, Hearhood's share). 3. Artists never pay. No fee to upload, to be listed or to get a statement. 4. A statement a person can check. Each month an artist can see how many plays, from how many listeners, and how the amount was computed. 5. Rights stay with the artist. The permission Hearhood needs is the narrowest that makes streaming lawful, is non-exclusive, and can be withdrawn by taking the recording down. 6. Collecting societies are respected. An artist who is a member of Buma/Stemra (or a similar society) may have assigned some rights to it; the agreement will say which rights the artist licenses directly and which the society handles, and will not ask anyone to license what is not theirs to give.

One worked example

Suppose a listener pays €5.00 a month and, in that month, plays 20 tracks by 4 artists, 5 tracks each.

• The listener pays €5.00: the monthly price in this example.
• Less VAT, 21% in the Netherlands: −€0.87, passed on to the tax office.
• Less payment costs: −€0.25, what a card or bank provider charges per payment (an example figure).
• Left to share: €3.88.
• The artists' share, 70% in this example: €2.72, split among the artists this listener played.
• Hearhood's share, 30% in this example: €1.16, for hosting, development and support.
• Per artist, with 4 artists and equal plays: €0.68 each, from one listener in one month.

With the same listener, an artist who had 10 of the 20 plays would get €1.36 and one with 2 plays €0.27. An artist's monthly statement would add this up across every listener who played them.

What the example does not say: how many listeners there are (none pay today), what the price will be, what the final percentages will be, or that any of this launches on a date.

What happens before any of this is real

• An artist agreement, reviewed by a lawyer, that says in plain language which permission is given, for what, and how it ends.
• The rights check per recording (own work, co-writers, samples, a society's share) built into the upload.
• Statements that an artist can read and check, with a way to dispute a number.
• The rates on this page, published before the first payment.

Until then: the tools are free, the community is open, uploads are free, and this page is updated when any of the above changes. If you would like to hear when a pilot takes shape, the For artists page has a short form; it is interest only, not a licence and not a promise.

For artistsAbout Hearhood