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Very awesome! Looks like with this making federation available there's just a need for someone to come in and set up a trustworthy portal that collects federat

Very awesome! Looks like with this making federation available there's just a need for someone to come in and set up a trustworthy portal that collects federated music and provides the customer (music purchaser) UX. Assuming they can find a way to federate the payments (skim a small fee for using the aggregator's payments, instead of direct linking to various musician's purchasing systems), this should make hosting the infra for a site like this manageable, based on the lower decentralized media. That's a long way to go to get to something that, in tandem, would be a 'bandcamp alternative', but I can't help but get excited for the small steps! They do often open doors for the bigger steps!

btown 3y ago
The problems with aggregated payments go far beyond just ensuring someone can pay hosting and card processing fees. Who will take chargeback risk? Handle KYC for payouts (especially since many garage bands won’t have business entities)? Handle fraud at scale, including fraud rings using your service to validate stolen credit cards? https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/candy-japan-hit-with-credit-card-fraud https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/candy-japan-hit... is an old (2015) but still relevant illustration of this. Centralizing payments requires human monitoring and capital cushions. With services like Stripe this can be cheaper, but still requires nontrivial resources.
- kevinsync 3y ago
  Also IMO it would need to handle distributing royalties correctly, global tax remittance, etc. That stuff gets incredibly complicated, incredibly fast.
- catapart 3y ago
  The "publisher" takes all of the financial risk. That's part of the deal. I would never use a website that said "you pay us, but if you have payment problems, you have to take that up with the product manufacturer". The aggregator has to take enough off of the payment in order to insure their business, just like they have to take enough off of the payment in order to afford any of their other capital (salaries, utilities, rent, etc). I'm assuming you have doubts about the practical feasibility of charging "that much". But it has, historically, been one of the best cost-to-compensation models ever created, with entire industries being built around enshrining an ever-more predatory pricing structure that funnels more and more of the product profit to a small council of investors.

btown 3y ago

The problems with aggregated payments go far beyond just ensuring someone can pay hosting and card processing fees. Who will take chargeback risk? Handle KYC for payouts (especially since many garage bands won’t have business entities)? Handle fraud at scale, including fraud rings using your service to validate stolen credit cards? https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/candy-japan-hit-with-credit-card-fraud https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/candy-japan-hit... is an old (2015) but still relevant illustration of this. Centralizing payments requires human monitoring and capital cushions. With services like Stripe this can be cheaper, but still requires nontrivial resources.

kevinsync 3y ago
Also IMO it would need to handle distributing royalties correctly, global tax remittance, etc. That stuff gets incredibly complicated, incredibly fast.
catapart 3y ago
The "publisher" takes all of the financial risk. That's part of the deal. I would never use a website that said "you pay us, but if you have payment problems, you have to take that up with the product manufacturer". The aggregator has to take enough off of the payment in order to insure their business, just like they have to take enough off of the payment in order to afford any of their other capital (salaries, utilities, rent, etc). I'm assuming you have doubts about the practical feasibility of charging "that much". But it has, historically, been one of the best cost-to-compensation models ever created, with entire industries being built around enshrining an ever-more predatory pricing structure that funnels more and more of the product profit to a small council of investors.