This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
By John S. James, 2015-08-21
Paywalls discourage visitors. Try charging one penny (US $0.01) per download and you will probably lose 90% to 99% of your audience, even if paying the penny was no issue for anyone -- because the time and attention required to decide to pay and then process the payment are issues. Big corporations own Congress and can force small payments from each end user, but they also lose audience, and they take a big cut and imposes burdensome conditions. Requesting donations for the artist seldom works unless the artist is already well connected or well known.
A kind of tragedy of the commons results. Today an artist can deliver online art worldwide with almost no cost or delay. But this logistics revolution has not made it easier for most artists to get paid for their digital work. A few superstars do well, but almost everyone does not.
Here is a way to bypass the corporations, and require payment for the art without excluding those who cannot pay. And this proposed mass-sponsorship distribution can work well on a small scale or large scale. No need to have thousands of followers first.
Every copy of the art is prepaid by sponsors (who can be anybody who can pay online). The sponsor receives a smart link, and can choose how to distribute it. Then end users can download the art free and registration-free through that link, whenever the link has more than zero prepaid copies.
Anyone who hears a song or sees an article they like (or otherwise want to promote) can sponsor any number of copies, usually in bulk at quantity-discounted prices -- and then distribute this access through their social networks or otherwise as they choose.
Each sponsor can optionally send a short note to anyone who uses a download which that sponsor paid for. The note can be anything, including an ad. We plan to limit this message to text at first (like Google AdSense), but images or video could be provided.
A key difference from conventional advertising is that when all sponsorships in a smart link run out, that link stops giving free copies temporarily -- hopefully motivating end users to find more sponsorships in order to restore free access. Also, the end of free copies lets new or previous sponsors seek good will by adding new sponsorship -- instantly restoring free access through all copies of that link, anywhere in the world. These new sponsorships further pay the artist, who receives almost all the money. (Contrast ordinary advertising: if the market doesn't respond then the content stays free until it goes away permanently, when the site shuts down due to lack of revenue, or the artist finds another career to make a living.) With mass sponsorship, the free access goes away temporarily, motivating new sponsorship instead of shutting the process down.
Anyone who likes the art can add additional sponsorships to the link at any time, with his, her, or its own (optional) message. Note that even if all sponsorships are exhausted so there are no free copies, the link will always have copies for sale, and sponsorships for sale. It may also have free samples for anyone (if the artist provided them). Clicking the smart link generates a minimal public dashboard that offers these choices.
Sponsors can use proven smart links to reach valuable audiences, such as opinion leaders in a field. To do so, the potential sponsors must have a copy of the link to start with (it might circulate privately and not be publicly available). The link can provide some metrics, such as how many paid copies it currently has, and a graph showing how many times it has delivered copies and when, but community knowledge may be more important for sponsors in deciding which links to use, which ones have most penetration into the communities they want to reach. Then they add a new sponsorship with their own ad or other message to a link, and anyone anywhere who has that link and uses it to download the art will see the message of the sponsor who funded that free download or streaming. (Which sponsorship the smart link uses first when more than one are available will depend on political decisions by the mass-sponsorship service, and/or by each artist. Sponsors might or might not be able to pay extra for priority.)
So when you appreciate a song, photo, video, investigative news article, words of encouragement, or other online work distributed this way, you can support the author or artist by buying a sponsorship -- and sending the smart link to others likely to want to know about it (and you can add your own sponsor's message if you wish). The links can be passed on through social networks, email, or any other way, even published in print. This builds constituency, helping the artist more than just donating the money. People first hear a new song (or view a documentary or other work) not because it plays on the radio or has already gone viral online, but because a friend cared enough to send them a prepaid opportunity.
We guesstimate that about 98% of downloads will be free and registration-free. Artists can control this percentage by adjusting their prices. So those who can pay will support the work (for many reasons, some listed below), and few potential fans will be excluded from the art due to inability to pay.
When a mass-sponsorship system is running, the first step in using it is that the artist sets up an account, and uploads a work to be sold this way. The setup process will provide the first smart link for that work. The artist will choose a per-copy price of course, and may select a bulk-discount policy from among several suggested. And the artist can specify an initial number of free copies (say 100 copies) that anyone who has a copy of the link can use (and/or provide a free sample of the work), so that anyone can see or hear what the work is, before paying for a sponsorship. The artist tells friends, colleagues, and others that these free copies are available, and includes the link to get them.
So far no money has changed hands.
Then anyone who has a copy of that link can click it to visit a small public dashboard that (1) offers a free download if any is currently available, (2) offers a free sample if the artist provided it, available any time whether free copies exist or not, and (3) offers a chance to buy a new sponsorship, sometimes creating a new smart link. The artist receives the first link created during setup, and it will be the ancestor of all later smart links that provide the particular song, video, journalism, or other work, on this particular mass-sponsorship system.
Smart links need never expire but can circulate indefinitely -- paying the artist(s) as long as the links can find public interest in the work (and new sponsorships). And these smart links will keep "trying" to find public interest, as long as the people or organizations that have a copy of that link send it to others who might like the online art it provides.
We doubt that DRM (digital rights management) will be necessary. Legitimate sponsored copies will be as free as pirate copies, easier to download and use, and they do pay the artists, which most fans prefer.
But will there be enough sponsored copies? If hundreds of people want copies, there will likely be someone among them, or a small group, who are able and willing to pay for the sponsorship, and get their sponsors' message(s) out to the others. It helps that sponsors will be popular by default, since they make free access available to dozens or hundreds of people, while supporting the artist(s). (But they could sponsor confidentially if they wish, if the server and the artist choose to allow that.)
If there aren't enough sponsorships, perhaps the artist set the price too high. For example, if the artist sets a low per-copy price at 10 cents, then just $20 in sponsorship(s) will buy 200 copies -- with quantity discounts, maybe 300 or more. Surely 200+ people can come up with $20 between them, if the community cares about the art.
In any case, mass sponsorship does not provide DRM, and neither forbids nor requires it. We hope it will make DRM unnecessary.
The basic form of the smart link is:
server.com/artist/work
where:
"server.com" is the website running the mass-sponsorship system;
"artist" can be the name of the artist or other owner or distributor of the work;
and "work" is the name of the particular song, video, investigative article, or other online art distributed by this smart link.
When someone clicks a smart link, they will visit a minimal public dashboard. If that sponsorship currently holds any paid copies of the art it provides, the visitor might see a big green button for an immediate download or streamed access to the work. The smart link then decrements the number of copies remaining by 1. If no copies remain, that download button will be shown as disabled.
The dashboard should also show how many prepaid copies currently exist -- so that anyone can pass that smart link on to friends, with reasonable confidence that it will still have prepaid copies available when their friends use it. If the prepayment is zero or marginal, the sender can add a sponsorship to top it up before sending it on -- or obtain his or her new sponsorship in a new link, which only the sender controls.
The dashboard will always have another active button, shaped and colored differently, to purchase another sponsorship (of any size) to this work. The previous sponsorships do not need to be exhausted first.
The artists might also check a box at set-up time or later, to offer a free sample of the work to anyone who clicks any smart link to it. In that case, buttons or links to all free samples will appear in the dashboard. Hearing or viewing a free sample does not decrement the number of paid copies in the smart link. The samples are always available, even if zero sponsored (prepaid) copies remain. Also, providing samples lets artists display highlights of their work.
An optional language field may appear in the smart link -- such as 'es' (Spanish), 'fr' (French), or perhaps 'zh-Hans' (Simplified Chinese), etc. This field changes the language in which the smart link interacts with sponsors or end users -- especially, anyone wanting to buy a sponsorship. It allows multiple copies of the same smart link to do business in multiple supported languages, simultaneously. The language field can also offer different payment and shopping-cart options to potential sponsors in different countries. But probably it will not need to change the alphabet of the smart link itself.
The interaction of end users is simple enough that they may never need to set the language code -- meaning that end users can speak any language, not necessarily one supported by the server. Anyone using the Web will know how to click a link, and will know how to click the large, prominent button that provides free access to the art. Sponsors, however, may need to use a language supported by the server.
Note that adding sponsorship to an exhausted link immediately restores free access through all copies of that link anywhere in the world. By doing this, sponsors can generate good will for themselves, their organization, or their cause.
Why will sponsors pay for music, journalism, or other art for others? For many reasons, including:
We believe that the first proof-of-principle software should be free and open-source, available for anyone to use and modify, commercially or otherwise. Investment is unlikely (as there are no exclusive rights to fight over), so the team will probably be volunteer. Therefore the first development milestone should be not too difficult, while being practical and useful for some artists selling their work. Here is a way to do that:
The smart link does a lot, so writing the software may look like a big project. But the design can be simplified by starting with an infrastructure that creates each new sponsorship object largely by copying its parent sponsorship. (The parent always exists, except for the initial smart link for the art work, created at setup time for the artist.) Once created, the new sponsorship is entirely independent of its parent. The sponsors are usually different people.
Python (version 3) is an excellent language for this project, though of course others could be used. (Python version 2 is less suitable, because of hassles with string processing.)
I have no personal proprietary claims for my innovations in this design, and want my work to be available for anyone to use. So a proof-of-principle development project does not need any permission or involvement from me. Though I would like to discuss it and perhaps be involved.
To make it harder for someone else to take my work and patent it, I published this site and made sure that copies are on the Internet Archive. Some of the ideas also appear in predecessor sites that I have published for several years during the development of this design.
Not all online art or information can or should be sold through mass sponsorship. But much could be. Mass sponsorship will provide a paid, flexible, grassroots option, bypassing giant corporations with their permanent greed and non-negotiable abuse.
And mass sponsorship has the critical advantage of working well even on the smallest scale, for just one artist and a few friends -- even if no one else in the world is using mass sponsorship. And it should work just as well on a large scale. There is no learning curve for end users, and almost none for sponsors (who already know how to pay online). Only the artists or their agents will need to learn something new. They are motivated, and that learning curve is easy.
John S. James, jj(at)MassSponsorship.org, 215-703-7001.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.