sudara/alonetone

(Just looking to make a donation? [Jump ahead](#support-alonetone))

👋 Hi! Sudara here.

I started alonetone more than 15 years ago!

In 2007, it was very clear to me that the internet had made music distribution essentially free.

I thought: Why not build a free service to do just that? For myself, my friends, and anyone else who wanted to join.

## Why should sharing our music be... business?

Other sites launched around the same time we did. However they were clearly businesses, looking to make it BIG! They offered free service at the start, but started setting upload limits, running ads, squeezing artists for money, yikes...

I wasn't a huuuuuge fan of that idea from the start. Why should sharing one's music with friends and fans have to be a business, or worse, a startup? It costs next to nothing to distribute some mp3 files, why should musicians pay?

Anyway, that's the simple premise alonetone was built on. I've kept it running as the primary developer the last 15 years. The site has served 6 million streams of 90,000 tracks from 6500 artists.

That's a blip on the global internet scale (welcome to the true long tail of the internet) but hey — I'm one person working in my *part time* delivering this service with a 15 year uptime (and hey, maybe we'll outlive SoundCloud?!).

## alonetone was actually built with a *lot* of help.

Well ok, it wasn't *only* 1 person in their part time building alonetone.

I have a close friend Samo, who I collaborate on design with. And a [talented frontend dev](https://alonetone.com/montgomeru) who also handles some community aspects. I've paid many other contributors over the years, including frontend devs, backend devs, illustrators, and so on. Not to mention the **many** motivated passionate users who contributed so much time and effort to help shape it into a home.

The number of friendships, connections made and lives changed by the site has been truly unexpected and humbling.

## It wasn't always a smooth ride

However, there were also times where alonetone didn't get the love and attention it deserved. It suffered socially and technically. There are many features that we *still* haven't had the bandwidth to build (like comment replies!). I got busy or didn't have enough money to hire help while features fell into disrepair.

Other times have been great! In 2017-2019, my consulting business was going especially well. I decided to do a big mobile-first modernization of alonetone. I contracted a few talented friends and we overhauled almost every aspect of the app.

I restricted my consulting to part time and invested hundreds and hundreds of hours on the refresh. In addition to my time, I spent over **$100k** to pay others, just for this one refresh cycle.

## What we dream the internet *could* be

I've made this investment over and over again because the internet *needs* projects like alonetone.

We deserve high quality non-commercial venues for art and music. We need connection to others in our global communities.

We shouldn't leave these services to startups and companies looking to profit off of those connections as middlemen. Their priorities are... strange at best, and hostile at worst.  Gamifying platforms to maximize engagement quickly devolves into a lowest common denominator popularity contest. (Hey, TikTok has its merits, but unless you are doing entertaining meme music, it's a terrible place to share a song you poured your heart and soul into).

On top of that, open source should serve more than business needs, it should serve  *community* needs. (Yes, alonetone is [open source](https://github.com/sudara/alonetone)).

## Ensuring a healthy future

There used to be *so many more* indie sites like alonetone on the internet!

A lot of them ran modified forums or custom built software. Some were open source. But almost *all* have shut down over the years.

I totally understand why most of the other sites shut down. Maintaining and developing a web application is *not* trivial, especially as time passes and technology changes. It's far from cost-free.


## Reducing risk

A big "aha" moment came for me was when I finally internalized that alonetone as a venue depends completely on my personal situation... it's 100% coupled to how much free time and extra money I have. For many many years I was idealistic and stubborn about this. I  **wanted** to shoulder the burden on my own — but it wasn't always ideal.

I setup a Patreon in 2020 and asked the community if they could cover the server and related costs — they happily did!

Our hard costs are around 2k/year. Unfortunately, they pale in comparison with the human time. A **lot** of human time is needed per-year — even just to keep things running as-is, status quo, with no apparent changes to anyone else. Proper maintenance requires regular effort from a backend dev, a frontend dev, sometimes a designer (not to mention the social/community aspects).

## What does it actually cost, realistically?

I went back and looked through my financials and hours over the years. In *addition* to my own time, it costs at minimum $20-40k/year of human time (at under-market "friend rates") to maintain the site, to keep things alive and moving.

However, I'm not always in a position to divert huge chunks of hours for the project. To allow me to prioritize alonetone over my other paid work or to pay someone else to take some of my duties, it takes more like $50-100k/year.

$100k is a ****ton of money (especially to most musicians!). However, it's 2023. The reality is $100k/year isn't really enough to even hire **one** talented person full time in tech. Luckily, I have a network of great people who love to help and a history of working well together. The impact would be huge.

So $100k a year is my high bar goal. I know we can move mountains and keep alonetone happy and sustainable for years to come with that level of real support.

I'm on a mission to make that happen.

## Final form? A non-profit

Oh right, so I buried the lede a bit. All of this is to say: we've taken the next step to ensure alonetone's longevity.

We founded ModernThings, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, to formally provide for alonetone's future. It was started by myself, alonetone's longtime frontend dev and a close friend of ours, an original believer in the project.

We are now accepting tax deductible donations in the US (and normal donations worldwide). 100% of donations to the non-profit go directly to maintaining and improving alonetone.

## Onwards, upwards

I still believe 100% in alonetone's original premise: the internet has rendered music distribution essentially free.

This fact has had an amazing impact on my generation and the generations following. I know others believe strongly in this too: they tell it to my face and write me long emails about it.

## Support alonetone

If you believe in our mission and want alonetone to remain a shining example of what a community focused internet can look like, invest in us.

Just to be clear: We're looking for donations from the tech community and others who are financially stable.

In other words, if you are an artist struggling to make it month to month — **keep your money!** — you've done enough by joining us here, sharing your music and believing in us. There are others out there who share our dream of what internet can be and have the means to help us make that possible. Let's give them an opportunity to join us in building the future we all want to be a part of.

Thank you.

Sudara, January 2023

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