To what extent do fan-gates benefit Soundcloud music producers?

For this essay I will be taking a closer look at the website Soundcloud. Soundcloud is an audio hosting platform that allows users to create a webpage with which to showcase music they have produced. While it unnecessary to sign up to Soundcloud in order to listen to the music available, non-music-producers can set up their own page and save music they enjoy to their page in various ways. For DJs, in particular, it is an extremely useful resource for finding new music and is the main way in which I use the site as a DJ myself. Unknown or up and coming music producers often post their new productions with the offer to download the track for free in order to get their name and music out there. While there are now ways for DJs to DJ with streamed music (as oppose to playing downloads saved on USB or hard drive) streaming is still a relatively new area of DJing and somewhat reliant on a completely stable internet connection while playing live. Therefore the download of a WAV or MP3 of a track is still the best option currently for a DJ. While Soundcloud does not offer an inbuilt automatic way to thank producers who offer their music for free (other than for the DJ to promote it to their audience) there are options to like or repost a track. Liking a track will add it to your own page under the Liked section. Reposting a track will cause it to appear in your feed which other Soundcloud users who follow your page can see. Your feed also makes up the central part of your own page and can be seen by anyone who visits your page whether they follow you or not. As previously mentioned, it is not a requirement in Soundcloud to like or repost a track in order to download it. As a result of this several external services have appeared offering the ability for the creation of a fan-gate, free-wall or like-gate that can be integrated with a user's Soundcloud account. In this essay I will take a close look at how fan-gates work and what the effects from them are.

With fan-gates there are two ways data is being received, linking two concepts to this matter, the reputation and free economies. In Structuring feeling: Web 2.0, online ranking and rating, and the digital ‘reputation’ economy Alison Hearn discusses automated rating mechanisms which "are what Chrysanthos Dellarocas has called ‘the digitization of word of mouth’ and have proliferated throughout the world of ecommerce, working as ‘a viable mechanism for fostering cooperation among strangers’" (Hearn 431). Fan-gate services on Soundcloud closely resemble the automated rating mechanisms she uses as examples, such as the eBay feedback system, but operate in a slightly different way. Essentially the process starts by the music producer (who wishes to offer up their music for free download) signing up to a web service that offers fan-gates such as Hypeddit or Toneden. They do this via the service website and pay a fee (usually monthly). Once signed up for the service it allows the music producer to set up a link from their Soundcloud tracks, which another user can click on, and which takes users to a webpage external to Soundcloud. On this webpage the user has to offer up certain information in exchange for the free download. The information required is customisable by the music producer but typically requires the fan to sign up to an email mailing list, to like and repost the track on Soundcloud in addition to making a complimentary comment about the music which will be shown on the track. Usually you will also be required to follow the music artist and any of their associated accounts in Soundcloud such as their record label. Additional requirements might also include having to follow the music producer on other platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Spotify etc. This all might seem a lot but the fan-gate services such as Hypeddit and Toneden compress the doing of all of this into a few button presses which might only take thirty seconds or so. Often, if the DJ downloading the free music has a reputation for discovering new artists before they become more well known, the exchange benefits the reputation of both parties. As Green & Jenkins put it: "The decision to share the content […] transforms it into a form of gift, which enters us into a system of reciprocal social relations. We are not simply creating meaning based on what the content says; we are also creating meaning through the exchange of that content, which constitutes and reaffirms our interconnections with others in our network’ (Green & Jenkins 119-120).

The benefits of this reciprocal exchange are manifold for today's up and coming music producer, especially given the steep decrease in sales revenues of recorded music caused by the internet, and point to a growing embrace of free economics in the field. In Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business Chris Anderson offers several examples: "Offering free music proved successful for Radiohead, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and a swarm of other bands on MySpace that grasped the audience-building merits of zero" (Anderson 2). Further, in breaking down the concept of priceless economies, Anderson gives the following example when discussing the category of zero marginal cost: "Some artists give away their music online as a way of marketing concerts, merchandise, licensing, and other paid fare. But others have simply accepted that, for them, music is not a moneymaking business" (Anderson 10). However, in their article The Like economy: Social buttons and the data-intensive web Gerlitz and Helmod offer further clarification: "User activities are of economic value because they produce valuable user data that can enter multiple relations of exchange and are set up to multiply themselves" (Gerlitz & Helmond 13).

While we have seen the many benefits of fan-gates for music producers (and the users required to use them) in order to access free music some negative issues have been encountered which resulted in Facebook banning their use in August 2014 citing that "Facebook wants users to like […] pages because they actually 'like' them, not because they were promised some freebie or contest entry for doing it" (Loomer). From the perspective of a DJ using them on Soundcloud however, with the exception of possible fatigue from overuse, the reciprocal nature of the transaction they facilitate feels fair and equal and what remains questionable is why Soundcloud do not offer their own version of the service integrated into their platform.

Bibliography

1. Hearn A. (2010) 'Structuring feeling: Web 2.0, online ranking and rating, and the digital ‘reputation’ economy'. In Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, 10 (3/4), pp. 412-38.
2. “RSD - KINGFISHER REMIX [PANIX & RANKING DAN] FREE DL.” SoundCloud, soundcloud.com/dmwsound/kingfisher-remix. Accessed 30 April 2020.
3. Green, Joshua, and Henry Jenkins. "How Audiences Create Value and Meaning in a Networked Economy." The handbook of media audiences 5 (2011).
4. Anderson Co. (2008) 'Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.' In Wired, 16 March 2008. 
5. Gerlitz C., and Helmond A (2013) 'The Like economy: Social buttons and the data-intensive web'. In New Media & Society, 0 (0), pp. 1-18.
6. Loomer, Jon. “No More Facebook Like-Gating: What It Means and Why You Should Care.” Jon Loomer Digital, 24 Sept. 2014, www.jonloomer.com/2014/08/11/facebook-like-gating/.