liquidmusic

A radical democratic project of new Liquid Music. 

Become part of a community that holds the rights collectively and is solving the question of profit redistribution a 100% horizontally. 

If you are supporting the project today, you will get back your share of the proceeds of the record sales each quarter. This means the money flows in both directions, but the exact share isn’t determined from the very beginning, but is going to be determined dynamically by the collective. 

How to split the cake? 

Very simple, by online voting – one person, one vote. Everyone of the community is casting his or her vote about how he/she thinks that the profits should be divided between all groups of participants. Participant is everybody, the composer, the musicians, technicians, supporters and also the people who are going to buy the record who are active listeners, not just consumers in our opinion. 

Ten musicians and three singers are performing new Liquid Music – a new musical style which is opening up the space of imagination for each individual listener. It is exploring the gray areas and surfing between different genres without ever tipping into the defined language of any specific genre. 

When? 

The crowdfunding campaign starts immediately, in the middle of May the recording is taking place, the album release is planned for mid June. 

Where? 

In the acoustically beautiful church “Paterskirche” in the little town of Kempen in North Rhine- Westphalia. This church is regularly used as a concert and recording space and there is a beautiful Steinway piano that we are going to integrate. 

Why this format? 

Because music making is not a one way road, but a collective undertaking. The magic is happening in a triangle between the musicians, the spirit and the active listeners who are able to decode the music emotionally and intellectually. We want to do justice to this idea and want to integrate every participant into the economic value added and want to determine the redistribution of profits collectively. In addition, in the musical compositions we leave some space open, we are trying to integrate blank space, to give the listener room for his/her own phantasy. This means the artistic process and the organizational structure go together and are contingent upon each other. 

The end product 

A recording album which is going to be available as CD or download, later maybe as Vinyl; but not as a streaming- file! Why? Because we are refusing any collaboration with streaming platforms, which are designed by extremely exploitive business models. On top of that, the global streaming of content is, because of its massive consumption of electricity, mutating into a major driving force of CO2 emissions; meanwhile around 4% of the global use; in comparison: the entire global air traffic is around 2,5% – did you ever hear of “streaming shame”? 

Supporting, why? 

The project is already supported by the Art Foundation of North Rhine- Westphalia, which is covering the fees for the musicians and the composition in order to pay the musicians an appropriate salary. For an ensemble of thirteen musicians this is the biggest chunk in the budget (around € 25.000.-). But, we still need to acquire money for the production costs: sound engineers, travel- and hotel costs, production of CD’s, organization and pr, etc. 

The production costs are about € 10.000.- and this is also our goal for our crowdfunding campaign. 

How does the process work in detail? 

The bigger the amount of money you contribute, the bigger is your percentage, your share within the category “supporters”. Still, how big the percentage of the category “supporters” is going to be of the entire pie of the overall profits is going to be determined collectively. 

There are six categories: 

1. The composer and initiator of the project Leonhard Bartussek
2. The participating musicians
3. The supporters, contributing to the crowdfunding campaign
4. The sound engineers 
5. Administration and organization 
6. The people who buy the recording

Every supporter and later everyone who buys the album gets access to the online voting. Then, everybody can cast his/her vote about how he/she thinks the 100% of the profits should be divided between these six categories. Then we collect the individual outcomes, calculate the average and will redistribute the profits accordingly each quarter. 

The price of the album as download

Everyone chooses the amount of money he/she wants to contribute, in order to support the project where everyone (thus oneself as well) is going to benefit from. 

The actual amount of money one chooses to contribute does not affect the redistribution within the category “6. The people who buy the recording”. 

We do believe in a universal sense of justice of human beings and that everybody wants to be as generous as possible (within the realm of their individual capacities), if the cause is good, fair and transparent. 

The same rules apply for the purchase of a CD and maybe a Vinyl, only that the production costs and the costs for shipping have to be covered. 

Transparency 

All financial figures and all transactions of money will be made transparent for each participant. In which exact way is not clear yet, there are different options online, or offline. The project is still in the process of development and we will have to see which options are practical and appropriate according the efforts for such a project of small scale.

Leonhard Bartussek – piano, recitation, voice, lyrics and composition

Sabrina Haunsperg – soprano

Valer Sabadus – countertenor

Justus Seeger – baritone

Roy Amotz – baroque flute

Valerie Colen – baroque oboe, English horn

Katrin Lazar – baroque bassoon

Evgeni Sviridov – violin

Alfia Bakieva – violin

Johannes Platz – viola

Kit Scotney – double bass, G- violone

Roger Schaffrath – electric guitar

Christian Bakanic – accordion, bandoneón 

The project is a model experiment, trying to transcend capitalism. Unleashed global capitalism is about to destroy our planet. We have to find radically different solutions. According to climate scientists we have a window of opportunities of about ten years, to avert the worst catastrophe and its unimaginable terrible consequences. 

What is capitalism? The core problem is very simple: The person which has the money, which is at the top of a hierarchy, is giving orders and is taking all the profits. This logic starts with a small project like this and upscaled to big multinational corporations is unfolding all its destructive potential by relentless exploitation of resources, nature, animals and human beings. 

So what is different with this project? The person who is at the top of this project, in this case the composer and initiator Leonhard Bartussek, is not determining top to down the question of how the profits are going to be shared. He has the exact same say, the same vote like every other participant, like each musician, each engineer, each supporter and each person which buys the recording and which is an equally important part in the collective experience. 

Motivation? Overcoming Spotify. The different Streaming Services, all modeled after the business practices of Spotify, are the biggest machinery of exploitation of human creativity of millions of musicians worldwide in the history of mankind. We are rejecting this system and want to develop a different approach which could be an attractive alternative model for musicians. Why? Because everybody would benefit, a stronger community could evolve. We could strengthen a stronger relationship and identification between the musicians and the fans, which to our understanding are not just consumers, but active, participating listeners. 

The development of a platform called Liquify, which is designed to be a radical, cooperative alternative to Spotify and others. All independent artists of all genres could present their projects, could solve the question of how to redistribute the profits in accordance with their fan- communities and could strengthen and nourish the relationship with their fan- base. The platform will follow the exact same principles like in this pilot project; this means a possible profit of the platform will be rewarded by the users and not determined top to down in the conventional capitalist logic. 

If the pilot project Liquid Edge would become a real substantial success, this could open up the space for other projects and music groups and the platform Liquify could become a real alternative to Spotify. Developing this approach and turning it into a professionally smooth running service would be a very complex challenge, technically but legally as well. 

But maybe we can create a big wave, a movement together for a more just world, giving value to everybody, a world where everybody can grow and benefit!