Introducing Voltra’s ‘Stream To Own’ Approach
Although the idea of owning music may seem antiquated in the streaming age, a new online store known as Voltra is approaching things differently by offering consumers a 'stream to own' option, where users can initially listen to a song for free, and then pay for it incrementally with each consecutive listen until they have fully purchased the song.
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Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0
You’d think that owning music is a thing of the past, yet the iTunes music store still does over a $1 billion a year selling downloads. Streaming may be putting a big hit on downloads, but a new online store called Voltra is coming at it with a new approach that might benefit both music consumers and artists alike.
Voltra allows users to listen to an entire song once for free, and then pay a small fee for each consecutive listen. After the 10th play, the track is fully paid for and officially owned by the user. Best of all, the dreaded 30 second preview is gone from the service and there are no ads. You listen for free, then if you like the song, you then begin to pay for it.
Voltra users also has a premium membership tier for the typical $10 a month. The stream-to-own deal is still the same, but the user’s files are automatically backed up to Amazon’s Glacier storage. The advantage here is that if a user cancels the account, there’s little danger of losing your music like with some other services.
How is this better for artists? Artists who sign directly with Voltra will receive 100 percent of their earnings, since the company doesn’t deduct a commission from their song profits. And it’s free to upload your music as well. Reportedly an artist can earn 99 cents after only 10 streams on Voltra, compared to 226 streams on Spotify, 134 on Apple Music, and 146 on Google Play, so it’s a pretty good deal. Artists and labels can also opt out of this stream-to-own option, but so far it looks like most in the service’s catalog are going along with it.
The problem is that Voltra is just launching and the service’s desktop and mobile players are in beta (they’re free to download). According to the company there’s about 5,000 users in the beta program and a song catalog of around 3 million so far.
This is a pretty cool idea. Let’s see if this gets some traction. Find out more at Voltra.co.
Sounds like a good music service. Hope it makes its way to the public soon.
So a second Bandcamp, an indie platform with stream to own? Is there really room for two?
Rental-purchase? My view: not gonna make a big enough dent in an overcrowded marketplace.
The story here is that most people don’t seem to care about the artists let alone them getting paid 100% or 99cents. People are listening but not buying. People want everything for nothing. Who is buying CD’s on a daily, weekly or monthly basis? Whats the last song you downloaded? Who is downloaded from iTunes, or buying from Bandcamp? Are these indie communities mainly friends and family and music heads. A small niche of people. Has the rise of DIY and indie just made it a pool of millions of artists trying to sell stuff to people who don’t really care either way.
There seems to be negative comments here. I’m interested in seeing what Voltra are offering besides a music player with a store front. The stream to own is a model we are also developing at Black Bedroom. We are a $12 million VC funded started up developing a new modern IOS and Android platform full of features for both artists and fans. It is a hybrid of Bandcamp and Spotify with so much more social and creative features to offer the producers and songwriters behind the industry as well as the musicians trying to break through on top of the mainstream artist a place to connect with music fans on mobile. We launch in 2018 and will innovate the streaming and social marketplace.
How come there is no mention of Voltra’s catalog? Have they gone out and licensed music from labels for this stream to own?!