Dear community,

I am thinking about introducing a revenue share model in the future. That means that contributors would get rewarded financially for uploading- for example with a 'per sound' rate.

I would like to give something back to the community and this could potentially boost uploads and help us grow the library in a much faster rate.

Its a model called 'crowdsourcing' where people collaborate through the web to create something (iStockphoto does something similar).

However, I fear that:

1) This could lead to lower quality of samples and copyright infringement

2) It could drain us financially, if we are obliged to accept most sounds and have to pay every contributor

3) We might have to start selling the sounds (for a low price), apply a membership model or limit free downloads to a certain number and sell advanced memberships for unlimited use.

Of course, the two first issues can be sorted to a certain extent by controlling which sounds are uploaded through admin filtering.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this important issue

- Do you think that there would be many more pros uploading if there was a financial reward?

- Is this something you would like to see happen with the community?

- How do you think we can grow into the top sound resource of the world?

Its still 2008 over here :-)

The info will be uploaded in a minute!

Hi Consonance,

All work in design and programming falls under the 'Quality, Time, Price' rule.

Everyone tries to do everything perfect, fast and cheap.
But unfortunately, in the real world you have to make compromises.

I 'm a big fan of quality and getting things to work and look good. But this sometimes results in time delays and having to pay pricey bills.

We usually have one very talented person (Robb Canfield) and sometimes one or two others working on them on a freelance basis. But thats not whats slowing us down.

At the moment, we 're shaping the concept to be confident that we get it right. So please stay tuned for more info.

Dear David,

Thanks for your input.

I think that every kind of music is useful to Soundsnap.

Especially 'world' music or folk is a great example of the usefulness of the Internet for the distribution of culture. From your house in Brazil, you can upload samples that will be mixed, cut and tweaked in every corner of the world.

So the answer is definitely YES, we 're interested.

But we 'll all have to wait a little bit until we finalize the upload model.

Geeesh!

All these exciting changes happening and I seemed to have missed all of them! As a contributor to Soundsnap I have unfortunately not been able to contribute any sounds in the last months, due to moving to another country. I did however get a chance to record some more sounds recently and was keen to upload them this morning but was faced with all these changes!

I read as much of the posts here as I could and I must say that I do support this move. It is a brave one but I am very glad to see that you really do care about your contributors Tasos and I think that the plans you are implementing shows that!

A lot has been said about quantity over quality.....seeing that soundsnap was build on a system of contributors sharing their sounds without getting any money, I don't expect them to now lower the standard of work because they are getting some money...that just doesn't make sense.....however this might be applicable to new contributors whose sole drive is to make some money!

Personally this new move has motivated me to get out there and make some more recordings and share them here at Soundsnap. I hope you can resolve all the logistical issues soon and that we can share sounds again!

All the best
Dan

Hi Hessburg.

Thanks for your feedback.

You have a good point there.

We would have offered unlimited downloads, but want to limit auto-download bots and piracy.

If 100 sounds are not enough, you can then sign up for another 100.
I think this is still fair and a great bargain ($29 for 100 sounds).

Your point about the credits is very valid and we will definitely consider having a credit system in the future.

But for now, our current system with 5 Free sounds and Pro accounts should be able to satisfy 99% of our users.

Cheers!