Well, two weeks ago we told you that we had not made much meaningful progress toward Stanza in the previous weeks. I wish I could tell you that in the weeks since we have built half the app, but I can’t. You see, this mildly interesting event happened. Our founder Taylor Dirks decided that, on the whole, getting married was something not to be shunned as an undesirable course of events, but rather an action to be embraced with eagerness and vigor, as a lover might embrace his beloved, or as an early riser might embrace the warmth of his coffee cup. So yeah, he’s been a little distracted lately, but that’s okay. We’re all happy for him.
Those of us not currently engaged have gotten a few things done these past weeks. Kent got the last of the coffee cups sent out to our Canadian donors, so I’m sure he’s relieved to have them off his hands. At least, we think we have all the cups shipped out. If you donated $75 or more and have not received your coffee cup yet, we want to hear from you. See the bottom of this post for ways to contact us.
In our last weekly call, we decided to start the hiring process for a programmer to begin building the user interface in SwiftUI. The user interface is only the visual part of the app–the pages and buttons that you will interact with. The non-visible part of the app–the databases, systems, and servers that connect to it and make it run–will also have to be coded and connected to the user interface. Also, we are only starting with the iOS app. This whole process will have to be repeated for the Android app. We’ve been in discussion about which individual or company would be our best choice to do these tasks. I can’t go into detail about who they are, but rest assured we want to use your donations in as efficient a manner as possible.
We have continued, as always, to discuss royalty payments and refine our system until we are sure of the numbers we want to go with. We want to make sure that everything balances between the subscription payments coming in and the royalty payments going out, as well as leaving enough margin to pay for platform maintenance and future updates. We were nearly confident enough in our numbers to announce them in this blog post, but we decided to postpone that announcement so we can discuss it a little more. When it comes to printing many songs many times on a single subscription, in the case of a youth rally book or a wedding choir book, Stanza will lose money. We think there may have to be an extra charge for printing large batches or simply a cap on the number of song copies allowed to be printed per month. This function needs more discussion.
How much will Stanza cost the subscribers?
This is a very common question, and it’s a big one. We have avoided answering it with confidence because we really didn’t know. We had a general idea, but nothing concrete. Recently, though, we decided that when Stanza launches we should charge $5 per month or $50 per year. We feel like this will be affordable for subscribers and also cover our costs. If it becomes apparent that we can sustainably offer a lower rate, we will do so.
How will digital uses be tracked?
When a song is viewed in the app for longer than 90 seconds, it will be counted as a digital use and the author will be paid accordingly. This way, when you are just casually browsing through lots of songs, Stanza doesn’t have to pay the author for every song that you open for 20 seconds or however long. When you actually stay on the song long enough to sing it, it will be counted as a digital use.
We still welcome your questions about any part of the app, Stanza Music Inc, royalty payments, or whatever your are curious about. We want to be transparent about Stanza and we want you to understand why we do the things we do. Feel free to post your questions in the comments, reach out to us via the Contact form, or message one of us personally. Our contact information can be found on the About page.
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