Streaming music feels broken. What would make it better? Many music lovers already know the answer: Artists getting paid more. Fans finding more new music. More interaction and sharing. More humans, fewer algos.

These responses have shaped Vocana, a new music service combining truly user-centric payout models, fan contact info for artists, human curation, and a full range of social features meant to draw communities together around one important thing: music. Currently in public beta, Vocana is built for the thriving indie sector, the artists who are the engine of creative innovation in music. 

“Independent music is on the precipice of blowing up, and not just in streaming. The indie sector is growing faster than the overall music market, and by some estimates should reach more than $71B by 2030,” explains Vocana President Neil Sheehan. “It’s the real heartbeat of music in an era with fewer global superstars.”

To nurture this heartbeat, Vocana has created a service built around the goals and habits of musicmakers and fans, not the Magnificent 7, algorithms, or major labels. It wants to be a home for scattered online music communities that are underserved by current offerings, that may be splayed across platforms and social networks. To create this home, Vocana is working with some of the biggest names in independent music, inking recent deals with CD Baby and DistroKid, with more on the way.

The vision behind Vocana emerged from its founders' epiphany that the independent artists they loved seeing live were struggling to earn decent money from streaming, even when their music was great. Successful entrepreneurs new to music, co-founders Jim Knight and Dale Chorba resolved to end the on-stage tip jar and the streaming penny fraction and try to build something better for musicians. They wanted artists to get paid more and get heard more. They decided to build an app and a company. They founded Vocana.

Over the several years that followed, the Vocana team came up with interlocking solutions to streaming music’s biggest issues. They decided to go all in on indie. To diagnose the needs of independent artists, the founders turned to Sheehan, who had an extensive track record of successful independent music projects including a large concert promotion company and a label with hits that topped the Billboard indie charts. Sheehan knew what artists faced and insisted on several key areas of focus, if Vocana wanted to help music communities and set itself apart.

One of the biggest innovations was deploying a truly user-centric royalty payout model, one that benefits emerging and niche artists from the very first stream. Different from the pro-rata system at Spotify and from the artist-centric models deployed by SoundCloud and Deezer, it may sound nerdy, but it addresses one of music’s most daunting injustices and puts more revenue in more artists’ pockets. In simplest terms, Vocana’s model means that when a subscriber pays $8 for Vocana and listens to just four artists, those artists each get $2, instead of sharing a fraction of a penny with Drake and Bieber and millions of others paid out from one big pot of money. Along with giving emerging and indie artists a fairer share of the royalties, this model precludes fraud, as there’s no way to divert subscriber fees to artists these subscribers didn’t listen to. (A stream farmer would just get back what they put in.) 

“An artist or band trying to build their career, playing small shows and scraping together all their resources, has to scale massively before they can see much return from streaming using a pro-rata model. They won’t see anything from certain DSPs until they reach 1,000 streams,” explains Sheehan. “On Vocana, artists will see payment from every listener and from the first stream.”

Along with payout systems that better reward artists and better reflect fan listening habits, Vocana offers artists something else of value: data about who is listening, right down to the stream level. Artists can see the profiles of potential fans and message them, while fans can connect with other fans. Fans can opt in to share their emails with artists they like. This granular data and direct exchange are a far cry from the usage information shared by streaming platforms. 

For fans, Vocana creates a truly music-centered place to interact with others and discover their next favorite artist and fellow stans. With a full mix of social features, inspired by the spirit of MySpace, Vocana revolves around hubs, online gathering places for music fans of certain genres, scenes, or artists, as well as around human-curated playlists. Artists will soon be able to pitch these curators directly from within Vocana by pressing a button and filling out a simple form. Then the independent curators—non-commercial radio DJs, tastemakers, and music influencers—can reference these new releases and add them to their playlists.

With social sharing in app and a human editorial team, Vocana promises to supercharge discovery and surface tracks that would be buried on existing services. “Right now, only about four million tracks out of more than 200 million are served up algorithmically to listeners on services like Spotify,” notes Sheehan. “We want to surface music that isn’t from that thin layer of top tracks.”

By doing so, Vocana aims to help the artists and creatives most likely to bring innovative change to the art and business of music. “The way we see it, an independent artist is someone who takes control of their music and career. They embrace creative freedom and a direct connection with fans,” reflects Sheehan. “They are vital to the music ecosystem, providing authentic art that stands apart from market-driven outputs. With Vocana, we’re giving them a place where they can connect on their own terms and be rewarded fairly.”