In spring of last year, we set a fixed 7% platform fee to support Mirlo’s operations. Over the course of 2024, this fee generated $412.14 in revenue. For comparison, monthly support from our community brought in $3,122.49—though tracking these contributions has been tricky, the numbers align with our initial predictions about where our funding would come from.
While the platform fee is a smaller slice of our income, it’s clear that both revenue streams play a role in keeping Mirlo sustainable.
Mirlo is rooted in a theory of change that prioritizes mutual aid and financial flexibility for artists. We believe that artists should have agency over how much they contribute, especially when every dollar counts. This ethos sets us apart and reflects our commitment to building a community-driven platform.
From today on we'll allow musicians to change the platform fee on their releases. The default rate when you sign up will be 10%, but you can change that to whatever you want. Any releases that were uploaded to the platform before this went into effect will continue to have the 7% fee, and it's up to the artists to increase or lower it for them. We will roll this change out to subscriptions and tips soon too.
Inspired by the Aorta public program rates model, we’ll encourage contributing to the platform in these brackets: 0% (Solidarity), 5% (Sustain), 10% (Full Cost), and 15% (Redistribution).
We're working on some exciting new features in the background as well, and will share them once they're ready.
Other updates
On the topic of finances, we published our Q4 finances last month.
Wondering what features are new in Mirlo from the past year? Here's a little celebration post documenting them.
Want to rock a stylin' Mirlo baseball cap? You can get one from our merch store.
As always, Mirlo relies on your monthly contributions. Monthly contributions keep this platform running, and make it so that our workers can carve out time to work on it.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://mirlo.space/team/post/204