Indie Music Streaming Service Vocana Enters Public Beta

Music streaming and social platform Vocana is officially in public beta, promising fairer royalty payouts for independent creatives and a mix of social features designed to nurture artist-fan communities and music discovery.

The platform:

• Vocana was founded by entrepreneurs Jim Knight and Dale Chorba with the aim of getting independent artists paid and heard more.

• It boasts a 100% indie catalog, eschewing major labels to offer “real music from real, independent creators.”

• It has done deals with CD Baby and DistroKid, with more on the way.

Payments:

• As per its media release, Vocana deploys a user-centric royalty payout model, as opposed to the pro-rata system at Spotify.

• For example, if a subscriber pays $8 for Vocana and listens to four artists, those creatives each get $2 instead of sharing a fraction of a cent with high profile artists, all of whom are paid out of one pot of money.

• Artists will see payments from every listener from the first stream.

Listener insights:

• Vocana also offers listener data, right down to stream level.

• Artists can see the profiles of potential fans and message them, while fans can connect with other fans.

• Fans can also opt in to share their email with artists.

Social connection:

• Vocana offers a full mix of social features that revolve around hubs, which it describes as online gathering places for music fans of certain genres, scenes or artists, as well as around human-curated playlists.

• Artists will soon be able to pitch these curators – non-commercial radio DJs, tastemakers, and music influencers – directly from within Vocana by pressing a button and filling out a simple form.

• Vocana claims to aid discovery by relying on fans, tastemaker curated playlists and authentic recommendations over data.

What they said:

• Neil Sheehan, Vocana President: “Right now, only about four million tracks out of more than 200 million are served up algorithmically to listeners on services like Spotify. We want to surface music that isn’t from that thin layer of top tracks.”