As of 13 October 2026
The big idea
I’m building one home on the internet where independent artists can get everything they need: a page of their own, a shop, music streaming, sales, show listings, and a community. All of it runs on servers I control, not on big tech platforms.
Three promises guide it:
- Artists pay nothing up front. No monthly fees and no cut of their music income. The platform pays for itself from anonymous audience trends (totals only, never anyone’s personal data), sponsor ads on its radio, and a share of endorsement deals artists choose to take on.
- Sales and plays should count. Music sold here is set up to be reported to Luminate, the company behind the Billboard charts, so independent sales can count toward the charts.
- Privacy comes first. No ad trackers and no selling of personal data. Only anonymous totals that can’t identify anyone are ever shared, radio ads are audio only, endorsement links carry no tracking, and personal information is deleted on a schedule.
Right now everything lives on a test server, where each piece gets built and proven. Once it all works, it moves to the live server.
The problem it solves
Starting out costs money before an artist has fans or income: pressing records, printing merch, getting music onto streaming services. Label deals that cover those costs take most of the artist’s earnings. This platform cuts the overhead so most of the money reaches the artist.
- Zero-stock merchandise. Nothing is made until a fan buys it. CDs and vinyl records are made and shipped one copy at a time (working in test mode now), and print-on-demand merch is planned. No pressing bills, no minimum orders, no boxes of unsold stock.
- An automated music label. Software does the work a label would: upload once, and the music is checked, stored, streamed, sold as downloads and physical copies, and reported to the charts. Sending it to Spotify, Apple Music and other services is planned.
- Low overhead, more for the artist. Artists pay nothing to join, and the platform takes no cut of their music income. Keeping the platform’s own costs low is what makes that possible.
Human-made music only
This platform is for music made by people. AI can help, but it can’t make the music, the words or the cover:
- No AI-generated vocals. AI on your own voice (tuning, effects) is fine.
- No AI-composed melodies, arrangements or instrumentals.
- No AI-written lyrics and no AI-generated cover art.
- Loop packs made entirely by AI must be declared, and can be no more than half of the different samples in a track.
- No using AI to imitate a specific artist: no cloning someone else’s voice, no “in the style of” a named artist, no passing a track off as theirs. Genres and general sounds are fine, and so is sounding like your influences.
- Studio tools that use AI (mastering, noise removal, stem separation) are fine.
If a track is questioned, the artist gets 14 days to show how it was made, and a different reviewer from the one who raised it makes the decision. One mistake doesn’t mean a lifetime ban, but repeated breaches lead to removal. A removed track keeps its release codes, so the artist can still put it out elsewhere.
I used AI as a tool to build this platform, to help keep AI from taking over the music industry. The rule is about the art, not the software behind it.
What’s built so far
The core of the platform is working on the test server. Here is each piece and what it does.
| Piece | What it does |
|---|---|
| Website and shop | One website with a shared store. Every artist gets their own page and their own products in the shop. |
| Artist stats | Artists log in and see how often their songs are being played. |
| Press kit | Each artist gets a public press page with their bio, photos, links and song credits (who wrote, produced, mixed). Handy for venues, blogs and radio. |
| Shows and bookings | Artists list upcoming shows, which fans can add to their calendar. Venues and promoters can send a booking request straight from the artist’s page. |
| Digital music sales | Fans can buy albums or single tracks as high-quality downloads. Sales are prepared for chart reporting, with strict rules so only clean sales are counted. |
| Music streaming | Listeners can stream music in a web player or phone apps. Every play is logged so artists get stats and plays can one day count toward charts. |
| Artist file storage | Each approved artist gets a private storage space for uploading music, videos and photos. A companion upload app for Windows is being built alongside it. |
| Live streaming | An artist can go live once and the server sends the stream to YouTube, Facebook, X, TikTok and Instagram at the same time, including a vertical version for phones. |
| Discord community | A hub Discord server with a custom look, a music bot that plays the platform’s playlists, and automatic posts for new products and new shows. Artists can link their own Discord servers to it. |
| Ready for testers | Artists join by invite link. Anyone can download their data or ask for it to be deleted. There’s a feedback channel on Discord and nightly backups. |
Getting sales counted on the charts
The goal is for music sold here to count toward the Billboard charts, just like a sale on a major store. Today it doesn’t count yet. The system is built, but the official reporting relationship comes next.
Who decides what counts. Luminate is the company that tracks music sales and streams in the US and Canada. The Billboard charts are built from its numbers. A store’s sales only count if the store is an approved Luminate data provider and sends a daily sales report that follows Luminate’s rules.
Why that’s hard for independent artists. Most artist-run shops never become approved reporters, so those sales are invisible to the charts. Artists usually have to go through big platforms to be counted. This platform aims to report directly to Luminate on artists’ behalf. It also starts a relationship with Luminate that can later support a bigger goal: an independent streaming service whose plays count too.
What’s already built. Every digital sale is checked against the rules Luminate is known to use. Only clean sales go into the daily report. Anything doubtful is held back, with the reason logged:
- Sales below the minimum price (reported as $7.99 for an album and $0.69 for a track; being confirmed with Luminate)
- Buyers outside the US and Canada (they can still buy; the sale just isn’t reported)
- Albums not yet downloaded, since an album counts once the buyer downloads it
- Refunds, test orders, music bundled with merch, and artists buying their own music
- Repeat purchases and bulk-buying patterns that look like chart manipulation
Being strict matters. Luminate can suspend a store that sends bad data, so the platform would rather under-report than risk it. The held-back total is kept so the rules can be adjusted if it grows.
The path to counting:
- Register the business as an LLC (needed to sign Luminate’s agreement and to take card payments).
- Apply to Luminate as a sales data provider and get their official file format.
- Run a 4-week test, sending daily reports for Luminate to check.
- Become an official reporter, with sales sent automatically every day.
Several artists have offered to help prove it works with real releases.
How people’s data is treated
The platform is built to follow Europe’s GDPR privacy rules from day one, not as an afterthought.
- Only what’s needed. Every feature is planned around the smallest amount of personal data it can work with.
- Nothing kept forever. Data has an expiry date and is deleted automatically. For example, booking requests are removed after 6 months.
- No tracking. No ads, no analytics companies, no third-party trackers following visitors around.
- Your data, your call. Users can download everything held about them, or ask for it to be deleted.
- Kept in-house. Data stays on our own servers wherever possible and isn’t passed to outside companies without a good reason.
What’s next
The next stage is getting real artists testing it, then moving everything to the live server.
- Tester phase. A small group of artists tries the platform and reports bugs and ideas on Discord.
- Uploads to storage. Finish the path from the artist’s upload app to secure cloud storage, so new music goes live automatically.
- Artist Discord servers and fan tiers. The hub server is already set up by a script. Next, the same setup for each artist’s own Discord server, with paid fan tiers, plus a guide showing artists how they can earn from their server if they want to.
- 24/7 radio. Round-the-clock stations by genre and theme, playing on the website, on Discord, and anywhere else through a stream link (.m3u8) that other sites and apps can embed, sometimes with live DJs. Artists choose track by track what goes on air. There’s no pay per play: the radio is paid for by audio sponsor ads, and half of each period’s radio ad income is shared among the artists whose songs were played. It waits for the LLC and a lawyer’s review.
- Artist endorsements. Artists can choose to endorse products they actually use. Every endorsement is clearly labelled as an ad, links are plain with no tracking, and the platform takes a share. It waits for the LLC.
- Payments and money splits. Card payments, print-on-demand merch and automatic revenue splits between collaborators start once the business is registered as an LLC.
- Chart reporting. Set up direct reporting of sales to Luminate, as a first step toward pitching an independent streaming service whose plays count too.
- Go live. Rebuild the live server from the proven test setup.