[Librefm-discuss] Tipping System Proposal

[Mike Sheldon]

Hi all,

 Below are my thoughts on a potential tipping mechanism:

 In addition to possible integration with existing tipping services
(such as flattr), I suggest that we develop our own tipping mechanism
that can be easily accessed via our API so that desktop clients can
include a tip button.

 Rather than going down the same route that many micropayment systems
seem to take, whereby you load up your account with funds and then start
tipping (creating an initial hurdle to getting started), we should do
the opposite: Allow users to tip artists without any prior setup (other
than that they have a Libre.fm account), then at the end of any month in
which they've tipped some artists send them an e-mail listing the
artists that they've tipped and providing them with a link to a page on
which they can contribute however much they like (which then gets evenly
distributed between all the tipped artists).

 We can also use this as a means by which to get artists more involved
with Libre.fm. Since there is a delay of up to a month between an artist
being tipped and the money being collected we can enable tipping for all
artists, then contact any artists who have been tipped asking them to
sign in to the artist management page and provide their payment details
(any who don't want to or don't respond can then have tipping disabled,
and their tips removed from any users who tried to tip them that month).
This way we'll know which artists to focus our attention on.

 In addition to this we could offer artists the option of donating a
percentage of their tips to Libre.fm. Artists who only get the
occasional tip might feel it's not really worth their time to collect
their tips, but if a number of such artists agree to donate their tips
to Libre.fm it could build up to a useful amount for our future
expenditure (outreach programs, new merchandise, bobblehead toys, etc.).

 Thoughts?


Mike.